Posted on 01/31/2008 12:59:13 PM PST by Froufrou
The US Navy will astound the world tomorrow by test-firing a radical new weapon system at an unprecedented power level. The new piece of war-tech on trial is that old sci-fi favourite, an electromagnetic railgun.
According to the Office of Naval Research, which is in charge of the project, the electric cannon will deliver over ten megajoules of energy in one shot. The ONR say this is "a power level never before achieved" by a railgun, and already represents significantly more poke than a normal five-inch naval gun can put behind its shells.
The designers hope in future to get the technology up to 64 megajoule muzzle-energy levels, able to shoot hypervelocity projectiles at a blistering Mach 7 and strike targets two hundred miles away - still going at Mach 5 - with pinpoint precision.
The US navy is interested in the kit for a number of reasons. For one, its next generation warships are expected to use electric drive systems, meaning that they will be have 80 megawatts or more on hand. If this power can be used to put violence onto the enemy as well as driving the ship, that's good news for logistics and supply.
The only ammo you need is solid shot with guidance fins; there's no need for tons of high-explosive warheads and low-explosive chemical propellants for regular shells and missiles. These are replaced by nice simple fuel for the ship's engines.
The lack of exploding warheads could offer a chance to deliver more surgical strikes, too. They could take out a single vehicle from far out at sea, perhaps, rather than pulverising a whole area like present-day cruise missiles. This kind of thing is very trendy nowadays in military circles, though the problem of getting the right vehicle remains a tricky one.
Furthermore, even the ritziest missiles struggle to get above Mach 3-4, especially over any distance; thus the railgun slugs would be quicker to arrive when bombarding shore targets. They might also be good for shooting down fast-moving flying things.
Indeed, if the cannon could aim quickly enough and the hyper-bullets could steer well enough in flight, lighter-calibre weapons might tip the balance of naval warfare back in favour of surface craft. Ever since the Battle of Midway, sailors have reluctantly been forced to accept that aircraft win sea battles, not ships. But railguns might demote aircraft carriers from their current big-dog naval status and bring in electric dreadnoughts as the capital ships of tomorrow, able to sweep the skies of pesky aircraft or missiles as soon as they dared show themselves above the horizon.
It's easy to see why navies like the idea of electric hypercannons, then. But there are a lot of problems to be overcome. For one, the gun barrel tends to come apart after just a few shots. For another, packing a steady hundred-megawatt supply down into ultra-brief 64 megajoule pulses isn't simple.
One megajoule is one megawatt of power expended over a one second time period. Since I'm fairly sure that the firing energy is applied over a much shorter time, the peak power is probably in the range of hundreds of megawatts.
Except for the silently part, this is what is does.
The electrical discharge and air displacement from a piece of metal moving at Mach 7 (not to mention the sonic boom) are bound to be impressive. Kinda of like the noise you hear when a bolt of lightning hits a tree 50 feet away from you...
It fires a hunk of metal at very high velocity. A current naval gun fires an explosive shell using combustible propellant. A rail gun fires an inert round using electromagnets to accelerate the round down the “barrel”. While the round doesn’t contain explosives, it is going so fast that when it stops (hits) something there is A LOT of energy released in the target.
“If I remember my math correctly it’s about 14 kilotons per gram of antimatter. (That might be low by a factor of 2, but not further off).”
By E = mc2, when 1 kilogram of antimatter annihilates with 1 kilogram of matter the reaction produces 1.8×1017 J, which is equal to 42.96 Mt
A 150mm shell comes in at 50kg.
Assume you get about 1/10 to actually blow up before dispersal, and 1/2 of the mass would be the corresponding matter to match the antimatter.
(.1)(.5)(50)(42.96) = 106.725 megatons
Or roughly 7115 Nagaski bombs (may have slipped a decimal there — 711.5)
Hell, screw rail guns, let’s figure out how to make anti-matter in larger amounts and try one in Tehran.
Two cereal box tops plus cash or money order for $25 billion mailed to POB 1001, Battle Creek, MI. Please allow six to eight weeks for delivery.
“Leftists would get upset about “polluting the sun””
Yeah, it might end up radioactive.
My wife converted my megajewels to megawhat’s a long time ago.
Ergo one megajoule is one megawatt/second
But can slim pickens ride a rail gun round?
It’s still working for me.
Fox has it up on their main front page- try going thru there. http://www.foxnews.com
I’ll photobucket some of the pics and add them to the thread when I get home.
bump
“Even though I am just another dumb blond, it seems perfectly feasible to me that this can and will happen. I would dare hope it could make nuclear warheads obsolete.”
This weapon is to replace weapons that we use.
Nuclear weapons are made to keep someone else from using them, completely different purpose.
Doesn’t a hunk of metal become molten at those conditions?
I’d think it would be unable stay a solid?
That's the slug leaving the barrel. The cloud is described as ignited debris particles.
It’s better than that. At that speed the marshmallow will self roast and be ready for eating when it arrives! lol
Setting up those over-the-shoulder shots is tricky - here's the control panel:
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