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 issue is barrel life. The objective is to get it to 100 shots. Currently you need to replace the barrel after just a few shots.
I am not quite sure what exactly this railgun will do. Does it knock out all electrical components of the target or does it silently fire a hunk of metal at 7 mach? Do you know?
LIDAR and directed energy weapons are going to make aircraft obsolete.
See link @ post # 77
lmao...
I don't deny that carrier could regain dominance, but not by airborne rail guns. Think WWI-WWII; planes didn't dominate supersede battleships by carrying 18-inch guns... Currently, this thing is room sized, it dissipates an extra-oridnary amount of heat, and it requires the kind of energy that only a large ship could provide-- sort of analogous to the 14 inch gun of the WWI era, if you will. Aircraft may find a way to beat this, but probably not by outgunning it, and it will probably take a bit of time for this to happen.
Poppycock! Give me a U.S. submarine and I'll take on whole surface world. The biggest (and only real threat given a good team) to a submarine is another submarine.
See power point presentation below; it is planned to go exo-atmospheric during mid-course trajectory.
No messy brains to clean up..........
Drat! I got the ‘page couldn’t be displayed’ edit. Must be getting lots of hits on that link!
Exactly!
From the Navy Powerpoint, the naval gun will shoot a 10 kg projectile at 2.5 km/sec. The recoil on that sucker would be a bit much for an airframe
What they want is an indirect-fire capability where the projectile is fired up in a sub-orbital trajectory at mach 7.5, and comes down up to 200 miles away at mach 5, with a 5 minute flight time
Just use a Dirt Devil and your through!..............
The threat of removing the Red Bull stash from the bunker fridge outta cut that stuff down to none.
No no no ... you dont get it ... this gun CREATES carbon credits, by stopping the exhalation of greenhouse gasses like CO2 at the point of impact. The US govt is going to become an exporter or carbon credits. Once a dem is in office, then freelancers will even let you ... for a few dollars more ... order carbon credits with a specific point of origin. /sarc but not really
It will be suborbital and spend most of its flight path outside the atmosphere
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.