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Navy Railgun Unveiled
The U.S. Navy has publicly unveiled its long awaited railgun at the Future Force Science and Technology Expo in Washington. Talked about since the days of Reagan’s Star Wars program, the weapon uses electromagnetic pulses to generate a magnetic force between two long rails.
Whereas a Hellfire missile travels at about Mach 1, the railgun projectile flies at Mach 7. This speed is so fast that the “bullet” does not need gunpowder or explosives; the impact alone will obliterate the target. It also travels a long way. Instead of 13-mile range of a 5-inch naval gun, the railgun can hit targets 110 miles away.
Reuters has a video of the superweapon in action.
http://youtu.be/o4ZqfEJTGzw
Published in General
I have to admit, I’m a little scared. I think I’ll stay on my porch.
Ooooh… that’s gonna leave a mark.
With a range of 110 miles, the Navy guys can just about stay on their porches and fire the gun from home.
One of the benefits is it makes ships safer. No gun powder, much lower risk of fire.
Can they run that off reactor power? That could be really interesting.
Fabulous! Keeping ahead in the field of weapons!
Well, it can hit *something* 110 miles away.
Only 110 nautical miles. Not impressed.
A nautical mile is 1.151 statute miles, so that’s actually just shy of 127 miles.
Whether it’s a nuclear reactor, gas turbine, or diesel power plant on the ship the electricity at the socket is the same. Short answer: yes.
Holy Moley!
but the important question:
Can it be mounted on a Warthog?
This is fair, skips the physics in favor of the morass that is military procurement
It pains me as an electrical engineer to think as a taxpayer, and not as an 8 year old boy.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394715/railguns-next-big-pentagon-boondoggle-mike-fredenburg
DOH re me. Imagine how you could arm a modern Iowa-class battleship with just Mach 7 projectiles and uranium. And food and rum of course.
OK, so I like rail guns as much as the next guy, but how on earth do you hit something at 127 miles? At that range you are putting the projectile half-way into orbit.
“It’s like a Flux Capacitor…”
No. No it isn’t. That’s the worst pop culture analogy you could possibly come up with. Who the heck wrote that for you?! Go home Admiral, you’re clearly drunk.
Is anyone able to address Sabrdance’s question–that is, how do you hit something 127 miles away? If that kind of range is actually practicable, and if we mounted this weapon on, say, half a dozen ships, then we could cover a great deal of Mediterranean world (including Libya and Lebanon) without having to to move in terribly close to shore, where our ships might be vulnerable to attacks from small craft such as those that crippled the USS Cole.
That’d make a lot of very bad guys very nervous.
Is anyone able to address Sabrdance’s question–that is, how do you hit something 127 miles away?
The obvious answer is, with a rail gun.
Seriously though, over the horizon fires such as the rail gun is capable of would generally concentrate on fixed (buildings, bridges, etc…) or semi-fixed (command and control facilities, logistic depots, etc…) targets. When combined with forward observation, either manned or unmanned, it is even possible to engage tactical equipment such as artillery or air defense pieces while stationary.
Sorry but I was showing my land force bias. If I was commanding the planned Chinese carrier, this capability would scare the bejeezes out of me.
The hyper-expensive Zumwalts are the only ships that will be capable of carrying them anyway. At around $4 billion apiece… for a frickin’ destroyer …. we can’t afford more than the 3 we have budgeted. And retrofitting the Burke Class would cost too much and displace other needed equipment.
BTW, I’m more convinced every day that the Zumwalt Class is either someone’s idea of a joke in the Navy Dept, or someone at flag rank is actively whizzing on ole’ Elmo’s grave. The guy who advocated the cheap + many strategy getting a Destroyer named after him that cost as much as a Nimitz carrier cost in the 90’s…
Short answer: GPS. Rounds can be made maneuverable, and guided by GPS.
This is already done for ground-based artillery rounds as well as naval rounds now in development.
Question will be whether/when they can develop a round with terminal guidance that can withstand a 0-to-Mach 7 launch. I’m sure someone is working on it.
I wonder what sort of sustained fire rate they are targeting.
I’m about halfway through Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, and let’s just say a 100-mile reach for a destroyer or destroyer escort would have solved a lot of problems in the Leyte Gulf.
As others have noted, not having to tote gunpowder and explosive rounds in a magazine (or less of both of them) is a bonus. You’re just carrying the rounds for your naval rifle.
I’m less concerned about equipment, however, than I am about having a president who’s unwilling or unable to understand the value of the military in ways other than as bargaining chips to be given away in return for nothing.
Actually, the rounds fired by a railgun are solid – no GPS. The targeting is via sophisticated ballistic programs.
Power density is high, so it required the engineering plant of the Zumwalt’s to mount the railgun. The Zumwalt – especially the electric plant – was Mike Mullen’s baby. It is too expensive, but does work as a great technology demonstrator and experimental platform.
The railgun does some interesting things and has great potential. It does not do a lot of other things, however – active guidance missions are not something it can handle. In combination with sea-based laser systems and the next generation missiles, it will provide a new margin of weapons superiority – so it’s a good thing.
Great news! Now we just have to make sure the plans don’t show up in Bejing via diplomatic pouch.
It would take less than 90 seconds for a projectile traveling at Mach 7 to reach a target 127 miles away. This assumes no deceleration due to air friction, so the actual time to target would be slightly longer. Still, pretty darn fast.
Isn’t it? There clearly is some manner of capacitor array in the thing; how else would one store the necessary charge? (Whether that particular admiral knows this or not is a separate question.)
My nitpick is with the announcer at the start of the video. Nowhere in Star Wars (in the original trilogy, at least) was a railgun mentioned. The only weapons I remember were laser blasters and proton torpedoes.
Railguns are more common in future-earth sci fi like Mass Effect. They may be mentioned at some point in the Star Wars EU, but I can’t remember any off the top of my head.
Oh, I’m sure the railgun employs all sorts of fancy electrical capacitors, but Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor stored up temporal energy. Tachyons, probably.
;-)
How are they powering it? Have they come up with anything better than a homo-polar generator? Because that can be as dangerous, in terms of potential energy, as a munitions dump.
Who needs a diplomatic pouch, when China can simply hack defense company computers and get it instantly? The Chinese have built what is in essence a two-engined F-35, thanks to data they lifted directly from Lockheed Martin’s servers. I expect they’ll continue to get whatever they want from BAE or any other contractor via similar methods.