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.
It would take a lot of mass to be effective at reasonable distances: air starts slowing the projectile immediately - regular mach 3 bullet [ballistic coefficient 0.56] after 1 km retains only about 50% of its velocity. Thus one needs to build a projectile with a very high ballistic coefficient - and this translates into a massive thin needle-like projectile. If you throw it at 2.5km/sec at something few miles away, by the time you hit it it would be flying much slower.
looks like we are going back to the Philadelphia experiment!
>>It should be obvious that this gun is meant soley for use on nuclear powered craft.<<
Didn't the article say it needed four AAA batteries?
man, you guys were WAY ahead of me...
Scaled-down airplane window tester.
>>BB's at 15000fps at 6000rpm<<
You'll put your eye out kid.
If a modern ship's electrical and/or electronic systems get knocked out, there are no weapons of any kind that will work, beyond the crew members' model 1911s.
In regard to the claim about the railgun being only for nuclear wessels, I don't see why. If you do the math, even conventional steam powered ships can be designed to come up with enough juice to run the gun.
There are several in the series and many related to the series
Redliners
Butchers Bill
Point of the Spear
and one that is unrelated, but just funny
All the way to the Gallows
Enjoy - and look for more as it would seem David will assume more of the load an Baen Books.
Exactly what I was thinking. A bit sloppy for a tech publication.
A depleted uranium round would do just fine.
Would that be the "Hammer's Slammers" series of military sci-fi novels/short stories... I can't recall the author right now.
Rail guns have ZERO explosive power! They are NOT firearms. Period.
February 14, 2006 Almost everything we use requires electrical storage via a battery - computers, cell phones, cars, personal entertainment devices and much more and as compelling functionality has increased in the digital age, so too has our reliance on the traditional battery which has changed little since it was developed by Alessandro Volta in 1800.
Now, work at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) holds the promise of the first technologically significant and economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in more than 200 years. Using nanotube structures, the LEES invention promises a significant increase on the storage capacity of existing commercial ultracapacitors by storing electrical fields at an atomic level.
The new LEES ultracapacitors could replace the conventional battery in everything from the smallest MP3 players through to electric automobiles and beyond, yielding batteries with a lifetime equivalent to the product they power and recharging times inside a minute. Most significantly, they promise a much smaller and lighter battery, and will be an enabling technology for many new concepts such as electric bicycles with the burst peak power of a motorcycle, or electrical trams with the capacity of a train but without the infrastructure.
In automotive terms, they raise the possibility of an integrated starter/generator and the capability of ultra-efficient regenerative braking systems. The work was presented at the recent 15th International Seminar on Double Layer Capacitors and Hybrid Energy Storage Devices and the LEES batteries could reach market within five years.
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