The Warring States of NPF - US Navy to unveil rail gun

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US Navy to unveil rail gun

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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.
Obliteration by velocity

Another triumph from the Office of Dodgy Mottos.

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.

The railgun plan is, unsurprisingly, seen as a "high-risk" effort by the ONR. A long shot, in other words (*cough*). �

I think this is amazing. Despite how often I disagree with some of the things the USA does overseas, I AM glad that MY country will have this new powerful weapon before any other country, like our up-and-coming rival China. Also, this changes things greatly. Once upon a time people were predicting that Navies were becoming obsolete, but the rail gun looks like it might change that, as the article suggests.

Discussion points:

Do you think the US is spending too much money on weapons research and development?
Do you think the US is over stretching itself across the globe?
Do you think this new weapon, which may breath new life into the Navy, is merely going to delay the decline of the American empire?

I struggle to see much point in this.
It's the same reason that time and again a navy with big ships and huge weaopns have proven good on defence but completely ineffectual on attack, which is that huge ships can still be easily sunk by a good torpedo strike delivered by one of many little ships. People in the navy have been trying to promote a new way of thinking about ships for decades but no one has been listening.
Big pulverising weapons are good for defensive ships but I don't think the US is under threat of seaborne invasion anytime soon.

Especially considering the world has missiles now. >.>

I'm pretty sure this won't go far in the near future. We tend to think big and fall flat on the stuff Trekkies drool over. :sweatdrop

Missiles aren't as much of a sure-shot as some might imagine.

Torpedoes don't necessarily sink ships. It may take multiple hits to do it, but really, when was the last time a modern US ship has been sunk? Too long ago to really speculate much on the matter.

The point is that applications like these start small but then become much bigger. So the rail gun starts on a Navy ship, but it may be the first weapon used on a military space craft in the future. The US Air Force has a huge space program so that in the future the US can dominate space. A rail gun would be the perfect weapon on a space ship (maybe?).

Actually, in space the railgun would have no air for the electricity to arc through to get to the projectile and other rail. For the projectile to be touching both rails would cause a large amount of friction.

That said, Hell yes.

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The point is that applications like these start small but then become much bigger. So the rail gun starts on a Navy ship, but it may be the first weapon used on a military space craft in the future. The US Air Force has a huge space program so that in the future the US can dominate space. A rail gun would be the perfect weapon on a space ship (maybe?).

That's what I was thinking, on a spaceship they would be amazingly deadly, what with a vacumn to maintain their speed and all, and you'd have direct line of sight to your target.

But on a seafaring vessel, I'm not so sure. I mean how do you even aim at something as small as a truck at 200 miles distance? A missile would have no trouble, because it can actually track a target by heat and so score a hit, but with a railgun you'd have to actually aim by eye, which doesn't seem so plausible at those distances.

Considering the point is to nullify friction, it could be. The issue comes with the launch mechanism. Obviously, something has to give it a push, and the question of how much to give becomes an issue. If you miss, you fire natural resources into the frictionless void, to be lost forever. If that kept up, even common elements would eventually become precious resources, until the moon fell out of orbit due to iron mining, or we had to fight over the asteroid belt to monopolize the iron there. Any issue with war in space lies in the fact that by the time we can consider it on a practical level, we'll already have enough technology to be stupid in equally expansive proportions.

To TDK: If that's even an issue, and I'm not sure it is, it would be relatively simple to flood the breach with a high-conductivity gas moments before firing.

And to Hawk: "Indeed, if the cannon could aim quickly enough and the hyper-bullets could steer well enough in flight"

The article seems to suggest these projectiles are guided in flight, similar to the "Excalibur" GPS-guided artillery round. One aims by sattelite-triangulation eye and aftertouch. =P Edit: It also mentions light-calibur weapons, further distancing itself from heavy captial ships easily destroyed by torpedoes or missiles. Imagine if a 75mm gps-guided hypervelocity railgun were mounted on one of those fancy high-tech trimaran skimmer frigates, with very low draft and ECM technology.

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Originally Posted by TDK

But what if say, an ingenious system of gas valves were used?
Or maybe Gauss Rifles are the weapons of space.

Flooding the chamber with gas would be expensive and wasteful, and that would be one more thing it needs. Part of the appeal of rail guns are the relatively low material costs. After you have the gun, you just need a chunk of ferromagnetic metal. Well, basically, anyway.