Posted on 03/27/2017 8:55:09 PM PDT by MtnClimber
he US Navy recently released footage of its first testfire of an electromagnetic railgun at their new terminal at Office of Naval Research and Naval Surface Warfare Center.
Railguns use 20 to 32 mega joules of electromagnetic energy to fire projectiles at seven to nine times the speed of sound, according to a Congressional Research Service report on the weapons.
Because they fire with electricity alone — not chemical explosives like conventional ammunition — railguns can potentially operate much cheaper and fire much much faster than weapons currently used by the Navy.
The Navy has long sought the technology as a potential game-changer for surface warfare, as China, Russia, and the US all race towards building hypersonic weapons that no ship can currently defend against. The newest classes of Navy ships, like the Zumwalt and Ford carriers, have been planned with outsized power generators in anticipation of the revolutionary weapon.
Despite looking like a typical cannon blast, the railgun only emits fire and sparks from metal components that become molten during the firing process that forces the components to fire at mind boggling speeds.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
interesting links at #11
I still think the Naval future is nuclear powered drone subs outfitted with launchable flying drones (either fire and forget or recoverable), cruise missles, and maybe one of these rail guns.
Someone at Norad periodically activates it to ensure all systems are go and operates the whole sub remotely and then additional crew is added to operate the additional launched drones.
I wasn’t arguing the point. CVN’s are still useful in low-intensity conflicts and possibly late-stages of major conflicts (after your opponents SIGINT birds are downed.
Question is: do you invest in force structure on the chance of some limited utility in a major war. Probably not. The “Ford” will be the last big-deck carrier class built here, and I suspect that it will be 2-ship class.
Imagine a different ship with a conex box full of electronics spoofing the signature - I’ll bet that couldn’t be done.
Darn. I was kind of looking forward to seeing how that first broadside was going to go.
;)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.