Posted on 07/07/2006 1:12:03 PM PDT by Reaganesque
July 7, 2006 The United States Navy has awarded two contracts for the development of an electro-magnetic gun system capable of deployment on board naval surface combatant ships. The development work preliminary design for an Electro-Magnetic (EM) railgun prototype and the preliminary design of the U.S Navy's 32 megajoule (MJ) Laboratory Launcher. An electro-magnetic railgun uses electrical energy to accelerate projectiles to extreme velocities. Railguns do not require powders or explosives to fire the round and therefore free magazine space for other mission areas. In addition, electro-magnetic guns provide a highly consistent and uniform explosive charge that gives much greater accuracy. Thirty-two megajoule is equivalent to a firing speed of Mach 8 or eight times the speed of sound. This will be an intermediate step on the road to a 64-MJ Tactical System capable of deployment on-board naval surface combatant ships.
The development work includes a US$9.3 million contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop technologies and preliminary design for an Electro-Magnetic (EM) railgun prototype and a US$5.4M contract from Naval Special Warfare Center-Dahlgren for the design and fabrication of the U.S Navy's 32 megajoule (MJ) Laboratory Launcher.
BAE Systems was selected by ONR to advance to the next phase of the Innovative Naval Prototype Program. Under this 30-month phase, BAE Systems will take the state-of-the-art Electro-Magnetic Railgun technologies through technology maturation and develop a preliminary design of a 32-MJ EM Railgun. Thirty-two megajoule is equivalent to a firing speed of Mach 8 or eight times the speed of sound. This will be an intermediate step on the road to a 64-MJ Tactical System capable of deployment on-board naval surface combatant ships. The design and fabrication of the 32-MJ Laboratory Launcher will serve as a major step towards development of a full-scale tactical EM Gun weapon system for the U.S. Navy.
When can I get one, and how many boxtops will I have to send in?
Can it knock out a North Korean Ding-Dong II missile?
It should be obvious that this gun is meant soley for use on nuclear powered craft.
For some standard projectile, I take it.
Does the gun require explosives or not?
Nope. No propellant, no explosive charge. The projectile is a metal slug. When a projectile hits a target at hyper-sonic speed, there's not going to be much left of either the target or the round. No explosives needed.
That's just the prototype. The weapon they want to develop and deploy would actually put out 64 megajoules so, Mach 8 is actually the low end of the spectrum for how fast this thing will be able to fling projectiles.
Couldn't find an image of the gangster... :-(
1.7 Giggiawatts?
Once they up the power to a high enough level and get sufficient velocity, it will be an absolutely lethal air defense weapon as well. With a projectile of sufficient velocity, it would simply be point and shoot. Without a guidance system, or any need for one, the projectile couldn't be jammed in flight like a missile's radar.
Man! I've wanted one of these since the first time I played "DOOM!"
In fact, from what I understand, besides the projectile itself, an EMR would have no moving parts whatsoever.
A weapon of this type would not need to fire rounds that themselves had any explosive or incindiary properties -- the kenetic energy alone would do all the work; witness the saboted round fired by the 120mmm smoothbore cannon on the M1 Abrahms. And that's "only" 4000 fps -- much less than what is being described here. It would probably be difficult to create any such projectile that could withstand the incredible G forces in any case.
Rail Gun Rail Gun Yeahhhhh
I want a Gauss Rifle too :-)
Probably not using a dumb projectile. But using it as a launching tube for some type of guided missile ......
NASA has a 50cal. that fires at 3 times this speed.
With a device like this, we might just be able to propel the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile past Michael Moore's house before he empties it out.
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