At this stage it is relatively useless. the mass that can be accelerated is small in comparison with say a missile. When fired the projectile can go all the way through an aircraft carrier, a 2 to 3 inch hole going in and a 2 to 3 inch hole going out meaning you have to be lucky to hit something vital otherwise you have done nothing affecting the fighting capability of the vessel.
Nothing stays “at this stage” for that long, or we’d still be throwing rocks and wielding jawbones. That’s my point. Large aircraft carriers will not be the weapons of the future either. Now drone ships, maybe. We have the technology to have things stay in the sky almost indefinitely. Not only that, but satellites will one day play an even bigger role than they do now. “Progress” keeps moving forward.
Not exactly true. Saw a video a long time ago of the different projectile types they could design.
Once the gun goes from 1.5 to 6 or 7 megajoules, it will be quite literally like being hit by a smallish meteorite. Not the tiny type that puts a half inch hole in your roof...
Envision a hard shell over a slightly softer core like a tank sabot round, about the size of 2 liter bottle of soda... hitting your building at something under 7000 miles an hour (10,000 feet per second). It doesn’t just make a small entry and exit. It does the same thing that shooting a watermelon with a rifle does but on a vastly larger scale. It really IS at least as powerful as hitting the target with a Tomahawk.
So what would actually happen inside your theoretical aircraft carrier just after the first bulkhead or two would look a lot like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tTAYFSnRW4
They already stated that it would be very good at destroying whatever is inside of hardened concrete bunkers.
They could even make fragmentary rounds that would explode and damage every aircraft on an airfield enough to keep them from flying.
Amazing stuff.
Not useless at all.
EVERY frigate and destroyer and cruiser sized “warship” hit by even ONE weapon since WWII has lost either command, control, communication, or combat capacity for hours to days after that SINGLE hit. Sure, most have not sunk after that one hit. But none have been able to fight, flee, and maneuver.
Some of those hit - and over 50 have been hit by modern and improvised weapons - have lost propulsion. Some have been hit in the weapons magazine and lost defensive ability. Some have burned out. Some have had their hulls broke in half. Some have lost all radar capability. Some have had their bridges destroyed. Some their helicopter hangers. None, in any navy, have been able to keep fighting anything but damage control.
Now, a larger ship - you used an aircraft carrier in size asa an \example of a ship that can take damage - stays combat ready longer. But EVERY destroyer-cruiser sized surface ship - without exception - is put out of action after ONE hit.
Every time.
The kinetic dump alone will be sufficient to do tremendous damage to the ship. Tremendous damage. There is a real reason why close-range anti-missile defense systems have gone from gun-based CIWS like the Phalanx and GoalKeeper to missile based systems like the rolling airframe missile. Why? Because against supersonic anti-ship missiles (eg the old Sunburn, and the more modern Yakhont and supersonic Klub) even if the gun hits the missile directly the fragments will be moving so fast that the ship will, basically, get blasted by a gigantic supersonic shotgun. There are some tests (check YouTube) of the Indian-Russian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile,, whereby it hits a target dead Center. The missile doesn’t have a live warhead, but the devastation is interesting. At certain speeds a warhead is not necessary - the kinetic energy alone is more than sufficient. That projectile hitting the side of the ship at hypersonic speed will not make a small hole - the internal spall damage alone will be ridiculously damaging. It is like a larger and FAR faster version on the depleted uranium round the M1A2 Abrams fires at an enemy tank. A slender metal dart once it is out of it’s sabot, and when it hits it goes in and the spall makes whatever unfortunate soul was inside that T-72 experience a truly unique death. The rail gun would be like a giant Abrams firing a shot at hypersonic speed. Whatever gets hit will not have a small hole - it will be finished (whether it is fires or, at the very least, a mission kill). It is the same way a slender uranium dart from the Abrams main gun hits a T-72 and turns it’s insides into slapped hot metal and sheared hot flesh - just far far far faster and a whole lot more kinetic energy dump.
I did not do well in physics, but wouldn’t it act like a bullets and come apart upon contact? Or is the process of launching the thing too powerful to have a projectile like that?
I did some reading the process after seeing something the other day. Amazing technology. DuPont will not be happy to find that powder is going to go the way of the buggy whip.