Rail Guns

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
Let us recall that we have a wide audience, some of whom may be greatly interested in making loud bangs without regard to consequence. Others may wish the consequences.

At any rate, this is drifting far off topic.
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fa...ok-at-americas-supergun/ar-BBtyPuZ?li=BBnbcA1

Wish these guys writing this could have more science, but the story itself is cool.
Interesting article but poor Julian Barnes could use a physics lesson to understand why the barrel if a conventional gun is longer than the bullet.

In conventional guns, a bullet loses velocity from the moment the gunpowder ignites and sends it flying. The railgun projectile instead gains speed as it travels the length of a 32-foot barrel, exiting the muzzle at 4,500 miles an hour, or more than a mile a second.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,087
The Railgun target intercept solution in combat is a problem with a passive round. Sure it's fast, powerful and deadly to a static target but simple pseudo-random movement missile countermeasures would make the target solution extremely hard without some sort of smarts in the bullet due to the small kill radius and the slow rate of fire. The close-in solution today is a hail of dumb lead directed at the predicted cone of the targets flight-path envelope that get smaller as it nears the target. To push that shield out with a railgun would require a much higher rate of fire than 10 rounds a min or projectile guidance.

Drone attack with US CIWS


Others have similar systems. at about 0:38 you see one version of the Russian CIWS.

You don't want a gun battle with Russian ships!
 
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jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
A comment in one of the articles was to the effect that the railgun might bring back ship-to-ship battles. There, its penetration ability might have an advantage.

For faster moving targets, the Zumwalt's laser may be pretty good.

John
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,087
A comment in one of the articles was to the effect that the railgun might bring back ship-to-ship battles. There, its penetration ability might have an advantage.

For faster moving targets, the Zumwalt's laser may be pretty good.

John
Direct ship-to-ship battles is an incredibly stupid idea in this age of advanced weapons. First nobody will let you get even close to Railrun firing distance in a hot war before being shot at from several directions. Ships don't usually operate alone, there is a multi-layer defense grid around major ships like carriers for hundreds of miles. Railguns and lasers are primarily defensive weapons to deploy when something gets pass the air/sea defense grid. Blasting holes topside on the carrier (designed to survive torpedo hits below the waterline with heavy armor and complex compartmenting) won't stop the planes that launched an hour ago.

 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
I was only quoting what I read. Remember, there is a huge risk in preparing to fight the previous war again. Aircraft carriers are so WWII. ;) As I recall, the Cole attack was not much more than a dinghy-to-ship battle.

Who knows what the next real war (i.e., a war for survival) will be like. None of us do.

John
 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
For thousands of years, wars have been fought by armies. Civilians have been relatively unimportant to the outcome and have been mostly the victims of horrible acts ("spoils of war"). Vietnam saw the beginning of a change, and the current situation in the Middle East has accelerated that change. Civilians are now weapons of war. We call it terrorism. But how do you tell a terrorist from an ordinary civilian?

The next real war will be determined by civilian migrations and regime change by failed assimilation and "terrorism." It does not take a large percentage of the population to do that. Many years ago, I looked up what percentage of American colonists actually supported our revolution early on. It was quite low and was well less than a majority. Without looking it up again, as I recall, it was about 20%.

John
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,087
Back to railguns. The energy of the projectile is limited to what it gets from the gun unlike a missile with a warhead. 32 MJ (much less on target for a long range bombardment) as it leaves the gun vs something like 1000+ MJ at the target for a Harpoon missile. Once the first railgun rounds hit and is backtracked they will know your target vector so expect something heavy in response to a non-lethal shot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrahMos

Possible new types of Reactive Armour countermeasures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armour#Electric_reactive_armour

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394715/railguns-next-big-pentagon-boondoggle-mike-fredenburg
 
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Thread Starter

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Like all early technologies it will advance. The old ball and fuse pistol was a joke, at first. I expect rate of fire will increase along with other issues. If they can get projectiles with electronics to survive the EMP, for example, guided shells for example, might become practical.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,087
Like all early technologies it will advance. The old ball and fuse pistol was a joke, at first. I expect rate of fire will increase along with other issues. If they can get projectiles with electronics to survive the EMP, for example, guided shells for example, might become practical.
I agree but Railgun technology is nowhere close to being operational technology today. The actual lethality on large targets of the equivalent of really small warheads (EM energy in/KE out) at over the horizon distances is questionable at energies possible with even the latest ships designed for electric weapons systems. The last time we had a real sea-battle we kicked some butt with good old-fashioned missiles, guns and planes.

 
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recklessrog

Joined May 23, 2013
985
250 mfd capacitors charged to 15 KV fired a seven ounce aluminium disc over a mile!!!! We only found one out of about 50 fired. considering they were fired nearly vertically!!!! I'd better not say any more Lol
 

123Rowen

Joined Jun 3, 2016
5
Maybe i'm not specialist but how it will be supplied? I think creating such amount of kinetic energy will need a much amount of energy ;o
 

Thread Starter

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
If you are plugged into line voltage charging caps that isn't a big problem. Many navy ships are nuclear, which also means they don't have a problem with power.

While we (I) love to track them on this site it is against our Terms of Service to discuss the particulars. Gotta love watching them fire.
 

boatsman

Joined Jan 17, 2008
187
Why not just rename the disputed item 'peashooter'? Then the construction of a large electric peeshooter capable of hurling hard boiled ostrich eggs over a range of hundreds of kilometres could be discussed.
 
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