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U.S. Navy to Deploy Rail Guns by 2011
Walter Francis writes "The U.S. Navy has apparently been busy. They have been focusing heavily on the next generation of weapons and propulsion systems, including Microwave, Laser, and Electromagnetic-Kinetic weapons, more commonly known as railguns. What specifically surprised me was the fact that the Navy plans to deploy these systems as early as 2011, on their DD(X) frigates. The range of these rail guns is estimated to be over 250 miles."
name USS Abraham Lincoln
set cl_maxpackets 120
set rate 20000
set snaps 40
set cg_fov 80
Sigs cause cancer.
"Impressive!!!"
#include sig.h
I just know my archnemesis NoobFragger69 will be camping it the moment it's deployed.
Ok, so range - 250 miles? What happens if they miss the target... some random object/person gets blasted 250 miles down the road? Yeah, that sounds like a great idea...
Forget the railguns--I wanna hear more about these Dance Dance Xtreme frigates--sounds like a great way for swabbies to get in shape and destroy the enemy at the same time!
P.S. Linking to PDFs in article summaries makes baby Mozilla cry.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Great. The next big American stereotype will be that we're all 'faggot campers'.
"Derp de derp."
Don't forget the Wave Motion Gun!
It's our only hope against Desslok and the Gamalons!
Sing it with me now... "We're off to outer space..."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
...and the server already seems to be having problems, it's mirrored here.
The Army reading list
Now we'll have guns to accidentally kill Middle-Eastern civilians from 250 miles away! We are so 1337!
2. Nitpick: the term 'DD' generally denotes a Destroyer, not a Frigate ('FF').
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Now all they need is a plasma gun and ill join the navy!
I always thought one of these would come in as a great ending to those retarded Gap ads where everyone is dancing around in front of a white background. There are several points during the dance that they are all in a straight line. DA-DA-DA-DA-DA *FOOOM*.."Impressive"
In other news, Arnold will take a break from being the Governor of CA and will be test driving this beauty..
Seriously, what better character to fire this weapon than our very own Governator?
Alright you Illegal Aliens..line up.. preferably in a straight line..Hold...
Rapid Nirvana
What? No BFG?... This is the part where I get an "overrated" or "offtopic...."
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Are rail guns the weapons used in the Governator classic Eraser?
So theoretically, you can shoot these things farther than you can see on the horizon, if the velocity's high enough. Does this mean air support would be crucial in relaying information about targets below the horizon and that the naval ships can technically hit ships that have no way of retaliating.
"Our bottom line is that if we can put millions of joules of energy onto a target, something will happen."
Indeed.
the army starts giving soldiers the BFG2k as standard operating gear?
This was in last month's Popular Science as a damn cover story.
2 543,636378,00.html
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,1
wdd
"Our bottom line is that if we can put millions of joules of energy onto a target, something will happen."
I want ships...ships with freakin lasers!
..."DD" designation (such as DDG) implies that destroyers, not firgates (perhaps both, I suppose) will be fit with these devices.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
~
give all
god
~
Ok lets goto war!!
Shows the navy sure has some humor left..
"Our bottom line is that if we can put millions of joules of energy onto a target, something will happen."
Hell Yeah!! Lets line up Osama and his cronies..
Multi-Kill!!!!
Rapid Nirvana
Ah yes, Enemy Territory just rang through my head after reading that blurb. As long as you keep MGers healthy and shooting under the track, they'll have a very difficult time firing the railgun.
Other than that, enjoy.
These pieces of shit have been in development for over 20 years and they've been nothing but trouble. The rail melts after one shot, the projectile melts in mid air, they need giant generators, blah, blah, blah. it's a crappy gee-wiz technology. go navy!
and no, this was not a troll, it's just a negative criticism of the navy and its new technologies.
back in 70's they spent trillions of dollars on ICBMs.. and today we have an ever-growing desire to develop more efficient weapons of mass destruction..
i wonder if people gone mad.
Other sites are also covering this -- without needing to use acrobat reader.
I can't read the original, but according to the link I'm including, they're not just talking railguns - they're also talking free electron lasers and masers. Now, if only they'd provision a banana-fana-fo-faser, we'd be set.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
Build your own railgun Today! Kids love this one!
Is anyone else scared shitless by the incredible power the US is pumping into their weapons? Is there even any country in the world that can match this type of military power?
Just a thought.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
check out voltsamps.com on how to build your own railgun
Man, this just doesn't sound good. I mean, this is going to lead to a new arms race, etc... Lots of paranoia, military spending, national debt, etc... Oh, joy.
My other question is how well shielded are these things? What does it do to the gunners to be near one of these things when it discharges? How strong is that magnetic field? I know for instance that machinists can't get MRI scans of their head because the magnets will pull little metal fragments out of their faces in a painful / vision endangering manner.
The military doesn't have a stellar record when it comes to safety/health in deploying new weapons. Look at Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, and the atomic bomb.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
"Our bottom line is that if we can put millions of joules of energy onto a target, something will happen."
Well no shit. Really?
I love my country. I hate what we have let it become
Well that's neat but I'm still not joining the army until they invent the respawn point.
"Derp de derp."
...err, that would, of course, be FRIGATES. :)
We're the best.
Has anybody ever thought about a precision weapon from 250 miles away could do? Talk about bringing new meaning to the words decapitative strike... Imagine someone assassinating a world leader from 250 miles away, possibly in another country. How would we protect against it? (Assuming the person had a straight shot...)
;)
Ah well I didn't read it too much, so I guess one of you guys can correct me
so, umm.. how long until the USNavy decides to mount a rail gun on a bipedal robot with nuclear launch capacity? In Alaska? I want my own Metal Gear....
"Good night, good work, sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning." - Dread Pirate Roberts
Interesting, yet so Cold War oriented. This will stop terrorists, how?
Been playing too much quake lately
Major: "I don't date losers. I frag 'em"
Does anyone else find Major sexy? I like her when she say's the above line
See subject if you're wondering why the Navy feels the need to develop/deploy such a weapon.
Much of the US military now focuses on China as their new "war game" adversary. China, of course, is focused on Taiwan with its war games. Of course, the rail guns might be a little late, since China wants to get Taiwan back by 2010.
Casual Games/Downloads
there was something on some show on Discovery (i think?) about how there is interest in basically dropping large steel rods from really really really high up and use some minimal navigation..... the idea is that they would fly like a "smartbomb" and when going at their terminal velocity (or however fast they can get) they don't even need explosives to cause massive destruction apon impact.....
did i dream this? i don't think so but i guess it's possible. then again i didn't think rail guns or private space flights were coming anytime soon either.
Or, to hit stuff in orbit?
The article says the rounds from these railguns can penentrate a target pretty deep and can bore a 10 feet hole in a surface. This is pretty serious damage considering that explosives can be done away with - something tells me that future war would/should be fought with conventional weapons which do damage purely based on the speed of the projectiles and spare the world from collateral damage resulting from the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Ideally, there should be no war but don't the big guns (no pun intended) believe that peace is a break in between wars?
An interesting read about the future of war here!.
While the Euroweenies were wailing, Reagan, with the blessing of the Pope, put those ICBM's at the Russian's back door.
If Rail Guns can facilitate the fall of Islam or the ChiComs then bravo.
how are they planning to generate that much power?
7.5 Megawatts output from the generators, but the ship is using some of that
Either, they just fire it straight from the socket and all the lights go out.
Or, they have a very big bank of capacitors.
Or, they have a homopolar generator.
I'm hoping for the massive spinning disk, but that could be a pain to use if the ship is under attack.
Perhaps it'll hail a new age for dreadnoughts, with the range upped somewhat!
FGD 135
The range of these rail guns is estimated to be over 250 miles.
Yeah, but at that distance, the enemy will be smaller than a single pixel... you won't even be able to see him behind your little aiming dot.
I was created a few years ago, but it seems to apply more and more. America is leaving the classification of "superpower" behind and moving towards what can be defined as a "hyperpower".
Many new weapon systems currently deployed or being staged for deployment are many years advanced, even decades, compared to other nations that it begs to question.
Will the US be perceived more as a threat to the world or will the world be perceived as less of a threat to the US. There is a distiction there that might escape people.
The NAVY is moving their big obvious targets further out of range of land based weaponary while also developing non-interceptable technologies (as in very fast projectiles ala a RG). The Air Force is set to deploy the F22 which is literally can fight a squadron of previous generation fighters on its own. With GPS guided everything it puts a big stand off range.
The only wrench in the scenarios, is how do you protect your populace versus terrorist who don't play by normal rules? Will it come down to holding "terrorist" countries hostage to the actions of a few of their people or the groups they support?
Scary times.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
It will be a total flop. A missile system that is supposed to protect the US but needs listening posts in the EU for it to work, which wouldn't be protected by the shield.
What will happen is the budget will be overrun, and all of bushes friends in the Carlyle Group will get that bit richer.
if they use these things to swat aircraft or is this ship-to-ship weaponry?
My only regret... is that I have... bonitis..
I don't post with HREF very often. It is not because it is hard or because it is time consuming, afterall I used to write web pages for a living. Rather, I do it because of all the goatse links out there. Let them see the URL before they click it
Yabut...why cant you just mouse over the HREF'd URL to see what the real URL is, before you click it? Opera shows you the URL in the status bar, as I'm sure IE/Mozilla/etc do as well. Am I missing something?
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
I deployed rail guns in Quake almost a decade ago.
For those who have RTFA, and still thirst for more, a great summary of the DD(X) Destroyer program can be found at.
s hi p/dd-x.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
I suppose there will be anti-rail gun boots allowing for that ridiculous jumping around to stop me from aiming my $@%!$ rail gun.
Nobody attacks the position of strength. What good is a BFG when we're the only target and small groups pick at us piece by piece?
The range of these rail guns is estimated to be over 250 miles.
That is damn impressive! The railgun I used back in the mid 1990s could barely fire all the way across 2fort4!
What I'd like to know is, what kind of tactical advantage does a railgun bring? Sure, it can hit a target some 200+ miles out, but so can a missile. Missiles also have the advantage of being self-guided. All this thing is, is a way to build a more powerful battleship. And yet, the U.S. has put all of its Battleships on active reserve. In their place, they've been deploying missile carriers at a lower cost and higher degree of flexibility.
In short, what does the railgun bring to a Real World(TM) battle?
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And don't forget about Nova. She was the hottest animated babe ever, even hotter than Betty Rubble.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
The US will get the pants sued off of them.
Yeah, I'd go with Betty, but I'd be thinkin' of Wilma.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Hmmm... So they think they can fling a couple of ounces of unguided plastic or ceramic 250 miles from the deck of a heaving ship...
I guess something in the target area will be destroyed, but if they're aiming at something on the scale of a patrol boat or tank, it'd be really hard to get a hit.
If the rate of fire is high enough, I suppose it would do just fine against a ship.
Also, it seems their propulsion is to be produced something like this:
Chemical Potential- -Heat- -Kinetic- -Electric- -Chemical Potential- -Electric- -Kinetic
Rather than the tried and true:
Chemical Potential- -Heat- -Kinetic
So they're doing 6 transitions instead of the 2 that are traditionally used. If every transition is 90% efficient, the overall system ends up being 53% efficient, whereas the traditional would be 81% efficient.
To me it would make a lot more sense to just put in annother big generator.
I can't help wondering how this is connected to the free battleships and submarines that the US is giving away.
If I recall correctly, I thought SDI back in the 80s was going to use rail guns to shoot down the missles. I thought that was the first time I ever heard anything about that, then they just seemed to drop off the face of the earth. I never understood why development didn't continue.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
They'll shoot right over us! The country is too small.
Bert
Just think about Lord of the Rings with one of these.
CH 1 - Frodo gets ring
CH 2 - Merry and Pippen kill every Orc within 250 miles (including those fsckin nazgul at the BrandyWine bridge).
CH 3 - Waltz into Mt. Doom, Drop ring, drink ale.
Scouring of the Shire left out due to time constraints. 10 minute films are just too long.
If it doesn't shoot through water it won't hit another ship of low flying airplane until it is very near, because earth has a little bend to it.
If it does shoot through... damn, they would rock in deep water.
They're firing 44lb masses which delivers 16.9 megajoules of energy...
K=mv^2
16.9e6=20*v^2
v=900
They've made a gun that will lob a 20kg mass, basically a really heavy bowling ball, at 900 m/s... That'll splatter someone really well...
Dude... it's only arrogance if you're wrong. So either 1) the U.S. is the most powerful, and thus it's not arrogant to state the truth, or 2) the U.S. says they are the most powerful, yet aren't: arrogant, false visions of grandeur based on the past... nope, that would be *France*.
IANAP but how do you get over the problems implicit in an arcing firing strategy when you're firing something at 4.4 km/sec? I mean, with slower, conventional fire, projectiles are typically released in a trajectory that arcs significantly and eliminates the need for line-of-sight. But if you're firing at 4.4 km/sec at any target under 200km away, you really can't arc without overshooting your target, so you need pretty direct line-of-sight. They'll need to build in significant variability in firing velocities in order to make it work (which, I believe, is tough for a rail gun)
Read jack phelps dot net
Doesn't it bother the rest of the civilized world in the slightest that we (the USA) are slowly moving into a position where we could just walk across the planet and dominate it?
Always good to see the Americans pushing the arms race to even more absurd heights.
Terrorist leaders killed in freak hi-tech pizza delivery accident...
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
A lot of people might wonder why the government is spending so much money on this program, with terrorism and urban warfare being the new big threat to the country and its soldiers (or so we're told). After all, there isn't a navy on the planet that can go toe to toe with the U.S. fleet today, nevermind in 7 years. The Cold War is over.
Well, beyond the "just in case" part of things, this a big step towards phasing out the chemical rockets traditionally fired from ships. This is good for a few reasons. 1) The rail gun projectiles are cheaper than rockets, and easier to maintain 2) They don't need the amount of fuel rockets do (making them even cheaper, and making the chance of a catastrophic ordinance explosion less likely ) and 3) They are small (check out the figure at the link), which means you can store more on a ship, where space is always limited.
It's a nice solution to current problems, making things cheaper and more reliable (theoretically).
How long till there's a 5 day waiting period and background check to purchase one of these babies for "home defense" or "sporting / hunting" purposes from your local Wal-Mart? Aside from the 250 mile range, it still sounds more sporting than your average assault rifle...
Railgun project
We're off to outer space
We're leaving Mother Earth
To save the human race
Our Star Blazers
Searching for a distant star
Heading off to Iscandar
Leaving all we love behind
Who knows what danger we'll find?
We must be strong and brave
Our home we've got to save
If we don't in just one year
Mother Earth will disappear
Fighting with the Gamilons
We won't stop until we've won
Then we'll return and when we arrive
The Earth will survive
With our Star Blazers
Back in my day, we had Star Blazers, Astro Boy, and Kimba the White Lion. We didn't have no 'Adult Swim' or fancy cable so we had to stand next to the TV doing the UHF stance and stare through a staticy mess to see our anime, and WE LIKED IT!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Nothing in this article technically prohibits an array of rail guns arranged in a Gatling gun fashion. Of course, the energy requirement will be incredibly high, to say nothing about the kick-backs. An interesting idea, nevertheless.
Could this gun be used to shoot stuff into orbit? Or, to hit stuff in orbit?
The lowest commonly-used orbits are in the 200-300 mile range, so this couldn't hit them. Even something in a 100-mile transfer orbit is iffy. However, with good enough targeting, it could hit a ballistic missile during boost or re-entry, and could probably hit any aircraft.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
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Obviously, we can't predict the future of conflict, but I can't help but think that the biggest danger that is faced by the United States comes from small groups of individuals using terrorist tactics in protest at US Foreign Policy
;-p
The attack on the USS Cole in Aden, on 12th October 2000, is a typical example. A small speedboat loaded with explosives was navigated to a position against the destroyer's hull and exploded, 17 sailors were killed. A friend of mine was a medical orderly on a Royal Navy anti-submarine cruiser which rendered assistance and described it as a scene of devastation.
A rail-gun is a formidable weapon, but its only really of use for attacking a rival navy, or a military establishment on a coastal shore. No nation nowadays has that sort of power. The USSR's navy is largely laid up in shipyards and few ships are still serviceable. China has a warm-water navy and has shown little interest in Ocean-going ships for over a millennium. N.Korea, Libya, Iran aren't naval powers in any real sense at all.
Which leads me to the conclusion that the USA sees Britain or France as the biggest threat to its current security! A rail-gun won't defend against a zodiac full of nitrate explosive, or a saboteur with a limpet mine.
It seems to be thinking grounded in the 1980s when the *enemy* had Aircraft-carriers, destroyers, cruisers and subs. That just doesn't seem to be the case now
Bet someone's said this in shorter form now and I get modded redundant
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Artillery is much lower cost, but typically limited to LOS (13-21 miles). 250 miles is a substantial increase in that. And cheaper per pound of explosive on target. None of that fussy electronics on the missile to get in the way.
As if navy didn't sound gay already.
a weapon like this could (in theory) also take out satellites and such.
The PDF shows in there the ERGM round but it doesn't show the AGS (Advanced Gun System) Shell. Both of these are made to be gun fired out of the main guns of the DDX destroyer. After being fired the like an artillery shell the rocket motor kicks in to take it up to a higher trajectory and then it guides its self to the target using GPS navigation. Each AGS gun will have a rate of fire of 8 shells per minute , so both guns will be able lob 16 precision GPS shells at about 100 miles on to a shore target. Those shell can be fired at slightly differing angles and trajectories so they arrive at the same time.
Sunthorn
Proud Member of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Atoms. Save a atom, use recyled electrons in your message
Damn those sweaty sailors! What's next? Twister carriers?
I would of suspected that orbit requires speed and control, thus a rail gun based launching system would lack the control to obtain orbit.
Plus I think you will be doing more than the Mach 25 required for orbit, and thus you might just shoot off into space.
Great for launching planitary probes though...
NeoThermic
Use my link above, or to view my server, NeoThermic.com
I hear their dancing to some kickass tracks laid down by the Party Posse. Yvan eht nioj, hctib.
I also reply below your current threshold.
"the burning and blinding of an optical system, or cutting an [airplane's] wing off, or causing a fire that results in an explosion."
As terrorists around the world turn and say "Hmm, interesting, can't wait to see one on the black market."
Let's not help al Queda or other such organizations shall we?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Hmm... Well, let's ask Mr. Google. Hey, Google, how far is it to the horizon at sea level? In fact, say you're actually 100' up on the bridge of a cruiser. Google says: "11 miles".
So, yes, 250 miles is farther than the horizon. Theoretically.
And is this a new thing? Well, let's let Google tell us again...
So, in other words, nothing new here in terms of "targets that have no way of retaliating". That's been the case since WWII, when in nearly all of the carrier battles, the opposing forces would be over the horizon and everything was either via plane or via large guns with planes as spotters.
-T
Railguns are old news, especially the macro versions. Big deal that a monster gun can shoot large payloads long distances. We already knew that. Check outmy BIC pen, though. It can shoot a speck of dust through an enemy agent's heart without leaving a trace. I love my new PDA software that can automatically target an enemy agent through facial recognition. I just leave my devices running while I eat croissants on champs elysee and nobody messes with me.
Luckily this is the US, otherwise we would be considering sanctions and maybe even sending UN inspectors.
I know this sounds like a troll, but just think about it for two minutes.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Peace through fear brought about by superior firepower. It worked against Lybia and its WMD's, and it kept the cold war from heating up.
From past readings, most respectable rail guns launch their ammunition at a significant percentage of the speed of light (1/4?). I would assume that the curvature of the earth could be become a problem for direct shots with such a weapon. I bet it will fire at a much lower speed and use an arc like conventional naval guns.
One thing that might work very well would be a shotgun style rail gun for anti-missile defense. Among other tactics, the US Navy currently uses rapid fire, Gatling style guns to shoot down inbound missiles. Can you imagine thousands of tiny particles accelerated to 1/4 the speed of light, then dispersing like the bb pellets in a shotgun? Even with the tiny mass of each of these, with this type of velocity they would really do some serious damage to a missile. And I have to think that over a short distance they will decelerate, and not cause any down-range destruction.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
It's not powerful enough to hit something in orbit. Escape velocity is 11,000 m/s, this gun only gets 900m/s. You'd need at least escape velocity to actually damage a satellite, not just touch it and drop back down...
There's a whooshing sound. Oops, you missed it.
Ya right, just because America has blown the best part of half its national budget trying to secure a massive land and sea area for the last 30 years (unsuccessfully of course), how long do you think it would take the EU to get up to speed in the event of hostilities? About five minutes, thats how long...
Heck the Germans by themselves nearly kicked everyones asses with only a few years run-up. Never mind the Russians; theres a quote, ask a Russian to design a shoe, he comes back with something that looks like the shoebox. Ask him to design something that kills Germans, and he turns into Thomas Edison, heheh. You really want that focused on you?
The EU (which includes the UK BTW ya boob) has three times the population of the US and a far superior industrial and commercial infrastructure. As well as centuries more experience at being badasses worldwide. Collectively there is no power or combination of powers on earth that can match the EU, should its wheels start grinding...
As for China, heh I would be shocked if they could beat even a moderate power in conventional warfare. So they have half a billion people to throw around, so does frickin India. Theres also this handy little invention we have these days called a "machine gun". For examples of its efficienct against massed troops, try googling "Battle of the Somme"...
Gawwd that felt good.
In other news, the Army plans to deploy Quad Damage by 2009.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
the announcer in the background go "Excellent!" when the camping railgunner kills two enemy soldiers with one shot.
Yes, China. Give them a few years.
I always wondered where that guy went!
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
. . . all the Quad Damage power ups? And just who's gonna float around the ocean dropping 'em off as far way from the respawn site as possible?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Germany's Rail Gun i've destroyed this thing many times... -armus
Railruns are dangerous. But like every measure there will be an countermeasure.
And thinking that these projectiles will be about 100% iron, it should have some weak point.
I could think of (magic/magnetic) shields that flicker positive/negative (or just rotation of north pole) so that the projectile will blow away itself using its own speed.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Coilguns are the new hotness.
(I have to admit the free-electron laser part is interesting though)
Getting OT, but ew. I just saw a piece of a Flintstones episode today on TV, after several years. I already remembered the animation was bad, but I didn't remember it was *that* crappy. Heck, even the cheapest anime looks much smoother in comparison.
Like the way we are 'dominating' iraq? We are in no position to go out and conquor the world.
The short answer is no. The physics of railguns seems to limit muzzle velocity to around 6 km/sec, which is substantially lower than orbital or escape velocity (at least when I was working on them - best case vacuum launch).
You might imagine a railgun launcher to give a conventional rocket some initial velocity thereby reducing the on board fuel requirements for the rocket. However, given a rail track less than a number of kilometers, the G forces of the launch would turn most anything into mush or rubble, so about all you could launch would be slugs of inert or hardened material. If the rail track were several kilometers long, it would be a bitch to aim.
This also disregards atmospheric drag issues.
The simple fact is that the earth is so massive we cannot jump off of it. The only way into space for the near future is rockets - until we master gravity.
P.S. Linking to PDFs in article summaries makes baby Mozilla cry.
:].
Linking to PDF makes my baby Mozilla Firefox launch Acrobat Reader. You just have to configure it not to display PDFs in Firefox window, 'cause that makes *me* cry waiting for task manager to kill the lagging Mozilla beast
Stuff navies.
If we ever come across a hostile alien species (a real life go-ould perhaps), it would make a viable space-based weapon, since it doesn't rely on the prescence of oxygen
FGD 135
I remember reading about this about a month ago in popular mechanics about a month ago. Anouther things that was in the article was about the Air Force putting into space what are essentially guided titanium darts. The darts would be launched from geo orbit, and be able to strike almost any target on the golbe with precision, using kenetic enery alone as its explisive.
So, any SM1's I saw being transferred during unrep were strictly figments of my imagination.
The Unites States currently has nine super-carrier battle groups, which is nine more than the rest of the world combined. What was the last major conflict in which the Navy played a significant role? From a pure resource-allocation point of view, the huge amounts of money being put into the Navy are pointless.
FYI - 3 seasons of Star Blazers are available on DVD now!!
Definitely worth picking up..
They're talking about a Mach 7.5 speed for these rounds.
I suppose the trick will be to build on the inland side of ocean facing mountains to thwart that attack.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Don't forget ricochet range. A projectile that skipped off the ocean (for example) could wind up somewhere much farther downrange than 30 miles.
I've seen plain old ordinary machine gun rounds do some amazing and unexpected things. I expect that scales with velocity.
Interesting point from the article - the author sees this system fitting into existing 5" gun mounts, and sees one gun as being able to deliver equivelent fire as a squadron of F18s. That means destroyers become as powerful as aircraft carriers.
How about that - the return of the battleship.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
What's happening by and large is that most countries are spending less and less on the military.
America spends more than say Europe, but has declined quite a bit from the Cold War peak of the late 80's. Most notable is that the absolute size and war fighting capability of the Army has declined dramatically from the Gulf War 1 era, particularly sea lift. The US isn't capable of something like Gulf War 1 anymore. All we have left is strategic bombing or Nukes which is a poor choice.
Current defense spending seems focused on "stand off" capabilities where the US can inflict damage on adversaries while putting few of it's servicemen at risk. The model seems to be Serbia of the late Nineties where Clinton led a bombing campaign that helped bring Milosevic to the bargaining table.
Rail guns, long range missles, air superiority, and various precision munitions including cruise missles and bombs are all useful things to have with a military facing uncertain threats from unstable countries (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran all come to mind). But it's only part of the package and the ability of the US to decisively defeat an enemy by taking over their territory and more importantly destroying their military is not very high. [Hitler, North Korea, North Vietnam, Serbia, and Saddam all had their military forces intact despite extensive bombing]
Part of the problem is an unwillingness to face real conflict and the sacrifices on a society that War (which is *always* destructive) requires. The main reason I suspect however is that there's a lot more money in systems like the F 22 or Rail Guns than creating an army with sea lift capability that can destroy an adversary's military and therefore stop things which are contrary to US interests (like say, a dirty bomb in Chicago assembled with Pakistani help as a hypothetical).
Stand off bombing has not served to destroy any military, and it only serves to encourage adversaries to negotiate and isn't decisive. Milosevic like North Vietnam had his own reasons to bargain and the bombing campaign only helped wasn't decisive.
It's also time to get realistic. "Terrorists" are usually allied with significant elements in unstable countries that have factions in the military and elites. Significant elements of Pakistan's Army and Intelligence services for example are PART of the Taliban and Al Queda network. They can however be deterred from helping nuke a major American city if there is a realistic chance that doing so would remove them and their comfortable regime. And so far America's woeful war-fighting capability is very good at bombing specific targets and very bad at removing regimes to provide that deterrence.
Would probably be research in better capacitors. Which would be pretty nice, if they got their capacity up to that of a battery, it'd be a lot nicer. Pretty much no charge limit, much faster charge and discharge time.
From the article: "Additionally, other approaches -- such as Alstom's advanced induction motor, American Superconductor's high-temperature superconductor and General Atomics' superconducting DC homopolar motor -- have attracted naval interest."
What? Homopolar motor attracting naval intrest?
I can hear it now Captian:"Engage homopolar motor full thrust!" "Did I say something funny soldier?"
Is this a good thing? We all know how it went with the invisibility power-up experiment, they tried in Philadelphia back in 1943!
As usual the Japanese are way ahead of us.
"Studies have shown that people who eat peanuts live longer than those who do not eat."
So when we moved into Afghanistan and Iraq, in pursuit of your nutjobs with boxcutters' friends, do you really believe that all of the fire that came down on them was dropped by the Air Force? Oh yeah, certainly a lot of it was. But I have vivid memories of watching cruise missiles fly overhead, too. And if the Navy can find a way to put a smaller hole in the ground, more accurately, and at a lower cost (meaning the guys on the ground can call for fire more often AND the taxpayer doesn't have to pay so much), then I'm all for it.
BTW, if you're crazy enough to think China's the only threat to national security, you need to up your caffeine intake, cuz you're sleeping. Iran, North Korea, Syria, and possibly Saudi Arabia are all actively engaged in efforts to kill Americans, both in the Middle East, AND here at home. Oh, btw, at least three of the five above have nuclear weapons, and probably all but one have chemical & biological stores.
Sean R. Baker
CDT, United States Army
"Lead me, follow me,
or get out of my way."
The cold war was asking Russians to design a shoe. The US never got in a shootin match with em. And believe me, they never want to.
Power Labs
Mod parent down for checking a joke for historical accuracy.
Vietnam.
You boob.
They state in the article that the muzzle velocity of one of these rounds can be as high as 6 km/sec. So we convert 44 lbs ~ 20kg and then find the energy transferred to the projectile
E = (1/2)(20 kg)(6000 m/s)^2 = 360 MJ
That gun is going to have one hell of a kick. It's been too long a day to work out the math, but it seems to be that this could really screw up the attitude control of a large ship, and perhaps even capsize something smaller (i.e. a Frigate).
And all Japanese people know what happens when baby God^H^H^HMozilla isn't happy.
If you read the article on Globalsecurity, there are other countries co-developing the railgun system with the US.
It sounds to me like they're trying to build a high-tech pocket battleship. Part of the justification for discontinuing their use was that you could use aircraft, cruise missiles, and vertically launched missiles to deliver the same firepower to a target. This sounds almost like a step backwards in their doctrine by going back to naval artillary. Either that, or the admirals saw the new technology and couldn't stop drooling.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
The military doesn't have a stellar record when it comes to safety/health in deploying new weapons. Look at Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, and the atomic bomb.
I think the atom bomb was meant to hurt people on purpose.
c-hack.com |
This ain't your daddy's Navy.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Even if you could get the velocity, you can't shoot things into orbit. All orbits pass through the last point the object accelerated (simplifying; none of the boundary cases apply here). So, any orbit you could "shoot" something into from the surface of the Earth would in fact pass back through that point... after having come around that point from "behind" and passing through some large amount of Earth's mantle and core.
In other words, not what we usually mean when we say orbit. That "orbit" would be called more of a "catastrophic re-entry".
The Space Shuttle does not boost straight up. It boosts up to get off the ground and out of the thickest part of the atmospere, but then turns to an angle that is closer to parallel to the Earth's surface, eventually ending effectively entirely parallel. This is because the occupants prefer orbits that do not intersect the atmosphere, let alone the surface.
oooh, bad idea:
-> Perfect!
(target blows up)
<--> Perfect!
(two targets blow up)
-> Great!
(target lists to one side)
<- Miss
(civilian casualties)
When, as you say, one new generation fighter can take on a full squadron, that means the military can redeploy the human resources to better cover and protect against small squad insurgency tactics.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
I always knew all those late night quake 3 sessions would help me score a job.
I wonder if there will be an audio system to accompany the railgun.
"Headshot!"
This is roughly 1/100 the circumference of the earth. (and who would really want to shoot more than half of that but still suborbital anyway, right?) Most of the world's population and industry is within 250 miles of deep sea, so this is rather effective anti-ground artillery. Anyone who the U.S. could conceivably face off against squarely in a naval battle (Russia or China?) would still only attack its fleet with long-range, transsonic cruise missiles, potentailly nuclear. Of course, the conventional logic is that if the U.S. military claims distances of 250 miles, it will probably be something like 400 in reality.
It's really just one 72 year-old virgin.
Perhaps NOW America's enemies will listen to Reason.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
P.S. Linking to PDFs in article summaries makes baby Mozilla cry.
Dude, I hate the Adobe Acrobat plugin for PDF files; it freezes your whole browser until it finishes the download! I got so frustrated with it that I disabled the plugin. Sounds reactionary, but the file still downloads and loads in the external Acrobat reader--freeing up my browser to continue using it. :)
Not sure how to disable this in Mozilla, but this is how in Firefox:
...directing photons in the case of the laser, or radio frequency energy in the case of the microwave...
So tell me again what radio waves are made of?
Karma police, I've given all I can, it's not enough, I've given all I can, but we're still on the payroll.
A friend and I started building an EM rail gun for a high school science project in 1985. We didn't even know about any military projects. We just thought it was cool to accelerate a nail using solenoids. It was years later that I found out our idea was being pursued by the military, and I looked up what I could find on the projects to see how it differed from ours. Besides bigger magnets and more power, it functions very much like what we built. In our case, the inside of the gun barrel had a "railroad track" of wires that used the metal projectile to complete a circuit and conduct electricity (through the projectile) to the correct solenoid (the one that would continue to accelerate the projectile). The only problem we had was that part of the momentum of the projectile would be thwarted by the fact that the iron in the nail would stick to the wire when current was passed through. The military solved this problem by using a tungsten rod positioned above a wad of metal foil (iron or steel). The metal foil completes the circuit and also, due to the extreme amounts of electricity, vaporizes. The foil plasma vapors are then pulled along the magnetic field just like the nail in our experiment, but without the sticking problem. The accelerating (and expanding) vapors push the projectile through the barrel, causing it to exit with astounding velocity. This kind of weapon goes through armor plating like a knife through butter.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Since when does the US Navy have the right to start arming our railroad locomotives? And do our trains really nead defensive weaponry?
As far as I know, coil guns do the same job rail guns do, but better. So why do they intend to use rail guns?
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Think about it this way. Instead of having a massive carrier battle group, with planes for recon and million-dollar cruise missles for tactical strike, you just send in a DD(X) ship. It uses cheap, disposable UAVs to do aerial recon, and rail guns have practically free ammo. As for rate of fire, the 50MW generators give you 3GJ of energy every minute!
So for most any small-time deployment within 250 miles of the sea, you can just send a destroyer instead of a whole battle group. These things should pay for themselves in no-time.
aQazaQa
So, how is it that they can effectively use flywheels on a moving ship? Wont the wave movement put unnecessary force against the natural gyro of flywheels, reducing their efficiency or the longevity of their bearings/axels?
There are so extremists, but so there are with other beliefs.
So to paint with a broad brush is a bit distasteful.
On the other hand, a lot of these guys from the middle east look like they could use a bath and a shave. They do smell, and that's not good.
But where's the god mode powerup?
Will they also be able to circle strafe, too?
Joe Siegler
Webmaster - 3D Realms & Black Sabbath Online
Probably not as loud as a real gun, which happily accelerates its projectile through the sound barrier using exploding gunpowder. That explosion causes lots of noise. With the railgun, you're using a linear accelerator to impart the force on the projectile. No explosion, so my guess is that it should be quieter.
This is not a cold war oriented weapon. The ability to fire 250 miles in to the, say, Russian Coast from the Pacific would result in the death of a few arctic mammals or perhaps Lichen of some sort. Firing from the Baltic wouldn't be terribly effective either.
This is a great weapon for taking out terrorist bases and the like. Imagine it. A tomahawk missile takes roughly one hour to reach its target and much, much longer to lock the target, flight path, etc. into. This gun can be ready to fire in minutes, there is no need to program a flight path, and the rounds get there in one tenth of the time.
It could very well prevent another Torah Borah. The ability to act quickly upon intelligence is absolutely vital to combatting terrorists.
Interesting article. I wonder if it would be possible to use a minature scramjet in the ammunition to have a more accurate guided projectile. The Railgun already accelerates the projectile to mach 5ish, which is close to what a scramjet needs to operate. Couldn't it them be possible to create mini scramjet guided missiles that are launched out of rail guns?
This is why the combination of 9/11 and Bush is the worst thing to have happened to the US since, err, a really long time ago. Trust is easy to lose, hard to regain.
"how long do you think it would take the EU to get up to speed in the event of hostilities?"
THey never will.
Here's why:
1) The US and UK will never fight each other.
2) The rest of Europe wouldn't fight if Hitler Junior came to power in Bavaria.
So to answer your question: NEVER.
Hehe.. This thing is so powerful that it might even make a good anti-satellite weapon!
Range of 250 miles? That's impressive.
The era of the big gun pretty much ended with the battle of Midway. After that, it became obvious that aircraft carriers could both defend themselves and attack enemy shipping without need for battleships and their guns. (Or, more to the point, without big guns and the battleships needed to haul 'em around.)
But I wonder what this development means? The railgun projectile is better in several respects than a missle: cheaper, higher rate of fire, harder to spoof or shoot down, apparently more hitting power. It seems to me that this railgun is closer to carrier based aircraft in relative performance than any guns have been since before WW2.
It's almost enough to make one think that the big gun could be effective again. Envision the "bad guys" having a submarine with railguns sneaking up to within 200 miles of a carrier battle group. It could surface to rapidly launch a few dozen hypersonic projectiles at the carrier. If it could launch a big salvo rapidly enough, the carrier would be in a world of hurt. The sub probably wouldn't survive the counterattack, but to disable a carrier that's probably a good trade.
Can an effective ASW umbrella be extended to beyond the range of these guns?
Hmmm.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Now, granted my knowledge of railguns is limited to what I remember from Grade 10 Science, but where would the "kick" come from, exactly? The projectile moving "forward" is a result of the differing magnetic charges on the "sides" of the gun itself, correct? Is this not more like converting "static" energy from the magnetic field to the kinetic moving projectile? I don't see anything that would produce a "kick".
Toolbag
The US has never been an occupying power.
One thing the US armed forces have excelled at is laying waste to huge areas. Look at our history. From Sherman, to Eisenhower, to Powell, the force is designed to pulverize and then leave.
We wouldn't occupy the EU. It would simply not exist any more. Then we'd go home.
Actually, the articles state that these projectiles are guided. Evidently it has some fins that can be wiggled to steer it in flight, with an 8 in^3 power source/guidance package.
For chrissake
Considering (1/2)m(v^2), with 6 km/sec muzzle velocity we won't need depleted uranium anymore. And considering the impact energy will be SO HIGH that they will vaporize everything they attack ergo no residual debris, waste, chemicals or ash.
I don't know how this happens, but lately Popular Science seems to consistently scooping Slashdot (!). I'll get my dead-tree, long-lead-time, paid-for, old-media issue of PopSci, read it, then maybe three or four weeks later I'll see one or more stories that were in it on Slashdot.
Can someone explain this to me? 'Cuz I don't get it.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
In any real conflict against a modern military, our carriers are going to be decorating the bottom of the ocean faster than you can say "What, they had rail guns too?"
Carriers are big floating target practice for the enemy. Already they have to drag with them a ridiculous entourage to detect and deter enemies outside of lethal range.
If you like, just imagine the U.S. attacking some other nation's navy and carriers... How many ways could we sink a target that size? Let's see... cruise missles, super-sonic torpedoes, and soon rail guns. Now there's a 250 mi radius circle around the carrier we need to keep clear.
We started to learn this in WWII, the last time carriers were involved in naval battles (to my knowledge). Carriers are too big, too expensive, and too easy to hit. Not that I'm defending the French's flaccid carrier fleet, but carrier size isn't what I'd use as penis surrogate when comparing navies.
The enemies of Democracy are
IAF wipes out USAF in the air.
You BELIEVE that you are Top Gun. In reality, Scumerican forces are worth jack shit. Sorry to burst your bubble, but when you played with the big boys, you lost.
you may now return to your regular "Dick and Bush Fvck Scumerica" programming.
Sig Heil: Scumerica - Land of the Free* (* 18+, valid papers, health insurance, some restrictions apply)
"I mean, this is going to lead to a new arms race, etc."
Who is going to race with us? France?
The US is already way ahead. If anything, a railgun ship will discourage small nations from spending money on ships, because they realize building a PT boat with a few torpedoes is useless against the power of the fully operational railship.
The US is no more of a "hyperpower" now than it was 30 years ago. The only difference between then and now is that there is no one to currently oppose them, but that will change quickly
Give it 50 years and the US will have competition on two fronts - China and the EU. The EU becomes more and more unified every year, and as it does so, the economic and military power of the area comes closer and closer to that of the US (the EU as a whole already surpasses the US in terms of GDP). So on one hand, you have the "friendly" EU competition. On the other hand, you have China - growing incredibly rapidly both technologically and militarily. Plus, they have the population to back up the technology on the ground if it ever came to that.
If you project out, by 2050 you have three huge global superpowers. All nuclear, all space-capable. And who knows what the global political scene will be like - tensions between the US and Europe have never been higher in recent memory, and the true goals of China in areas like Space are yet to be seen.
It's going to be an interesting 50 years for all of us, and rest assured, the US will not remain the "sole superpower" for very long in a historical sense. I mean, just 150 years ago ( a small blip on the global timeline ) the UK was the worlds superpower. 100 years ago the US was in such a depression people wondered if the whole nation was going to collapse. 50 years ago half the western world was under the control of Hitler.
The point is that in historical terms, the length of time the US has been dominant is miniscule. Let me know when the US has been the dominant global superpower for a thousand years ( see: Rome ) then we can start talking about "hyperpower".
Iirc the impact area of a sonic 'boom' is the cone created by the leading edges of the projectile, and it extends laterally away as the projectile moves at greater than mach 1 (not just while it 'breaks' the speed but at all times when it exceeds the speed). This means that the crew and the entire ship will never be in contact with the shock cone, so it will essentially make no noise at all during travel. It will make noise im sure as its fired, but probably nothing compared to a gunpowder projectile.
Am i right, or has high school physics failed again? (or rather did i fail physics...)
jeff
Putin as stated many times that Saddam wanted to attack the US. And the 911 event justified the means to the rest of the world to attack Iraq and oust Saddam (Plus a stable nation with oil is better for our economy in the long run; also for the best interest of national security).
But..... Some would say the invasion of Iraq was just a warm-up exercise to test new toys and tactics against the big battle yet to come. And that would be with China. It's seems this would be plausible considering the Pentagon whole purpose is to defend America. So I can understand this whole "big picture" thinking. After, you really have to plan way in advanced to maintaining a countries security.
Life is not for the lazy.
Last time carriers were used in war? I'm sure the crews of The General Belgrano and HMS Sheffield will disagree.
just to clarify, just silent to those on the ship. eh?
B1znatch
Sooner or later - we will have it as we have RPGs....
Osama
McGyver - give him a bean can and some shaving foam and he'll whip you up a silencer in no time. I saw him do it on TV once...
The impulse delivered to a projectile with a rail gun can be spread over a longer period of time, thus allowing more sensitive electronics of steerable munitions to survive launch. I think these munitions would be the logical next step of such a weapons system. The best target riffles fired from fixxed platforms are just capable of sub minute of arc accuracy. With the pitch and roll of a ship coupled with atmospheric effects, I should think that this weapons system would be very hard pressed to maintain MOA accuracy at range with conventional munitions. Keep in mind that a minute of arc at 250 miles is just under 384 feet. Even with a downrange spotter it would be extreamly difficult to hit the target at which you are aiming. So, here we are back to spending more for smart munitions to get the job done without wiping out a whole town/village. 'Tis all fairly silly.
This Slashdot post is misleading. According to the Navy League article, warships with electric propulsion systems will be deployed in 2011. But the advanced weapons (rail guns, lasers, etc.) will not. The advanced weapons will be made *possible* because of the electricity available from the new propulsion systems. But the article does NOT say that the weapons will be ready by 2011.
Methinks "a lot"...
We started to learn this in WWII, the last time carriers were involved in naval battles (to my knowledge). Carriers are too big, too expensive, and too easy to hit. Not that I'm defending the French's flaccid carrier fleet, but carrier size isn't what I'd use as penis surrogate when comparing navies.
Um, hello? What the Battle of Midway and many other engagements taught us is that the carrier is a mobile weapons platform with a strike range far beyond any conventional missile. The distances have increased, but keeping the carrier out of the line of fire has always been a priority. The screening ships are supposed to handle scouting and direct engagements. While they keep the enemy at bay, the carriers can provide massive strike capability within minutes. The Battle of Midway was so important in this respect because the Japanese sent their carriers out front and their battleships to the back, while the US keep their carriers in the back and their battleships to the front. Guess who got the pounding?
How many ways could we sink a target that size? Let's see... cruise missles, super-sonic torpedoes, and soon rail guns.
Actually, it would take something the size of a nuke (or a lucky hit) to sink a carrier. Take a look at how many hits the Yorktown and Essex class ships took during WWII. Now note that the current carriers are over three times their size, with much better survivability. Also, Railguns suffer from a traditional problem with projectiles: lack of collateral damage. Most bullets are designed to flatten and spread out as they hit the target. This allows them to maximize damage over a larger area. In the end however, you still can't get a much larger hole than the projectile. (Although shotguns allow for a lot of "splash" damage.) So intend of causing the big BOOM everyone was hoping for, a railgun would most likely just put a relatively small hole in the ship. Thus you'd need to aim for critical areas instead of recklessly lobbing them like with missiles.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Can anyone else say, "M-M-M-M-Monster Kill!" ?
This is crazy. She'll never leave Fred.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hmm...it just opens up XPDF in my browser...doesn't take any time at all....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
They also discuss directed-energy weapons, which promise the ability to deny areas to opponents without killing them (unless they can tolerate the agonizing feeling of being on fire... I doubt too many people will be up for that gig).
Actually, if they can tune the output of their directed-energy weapons the way they discuss in the article, it gives all kinds of options unavailable to current vessels, and may be VERY handy in various MOOTW scenarios (Military Operations Other Than War).
Doesn't seem that cold-war-ish to me.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
If they're storing a lot of energy in things like ultracapacitors, flywheels, etc., does the engine/power room become an even more critical space than before? What would happen to the ship if a large bank of fully-charged ultracapacitors suddenly was introduced to the sea?
But it will finally bring "Star Trek" to the real world. "Scotty, divert all power to the forward FEL!" "Aye, captain, but she canna take much more of this!"
At least the Flintstones had sort of acceptable stories. On Boomerang, you can watch all the Hanna-Barbera dreck from the 60's and 70's you can handle.
Oh no! Flashback to the Village People!!! "In the Navy...."
battleships are big, and *very* expensive and nobody wants to use the big guns on battleships because they're too big to put on anything but those big, expensive battleships
:-)
Actually Marines with 20 miles of the shore want them.
Yeah, screw private space flights. We do this Jules Verne style and just shoot people to the moon with a giant railgun!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Damn!
Why did I waste my Mod points on trolls?
I always ate Burritos before surviellance flights, it kept the pilot on O2 and I never had to worry about him getting hypoxia and passing out.
Well I know the story is already two hours old (gasp), but it appears to be ill-supported. The linked article plainly states ...
..."
..."
1. That this warship class will enter service in 2011:
"When the U.S. Navy's first integrated power system (IPS)/electric drive warship arrives in 2011 as the DD(X), the service will mark a technological breakthrough
2. That this warship class will debut without a rail gun or any other advanced weapon system:
" When the new ship arrives in service it will be armed with very advanced, but conventional weaponry, including two United Defense 155mm Advanced Gun System cannons and an 80-cell vertical launch system for various guided missiles. But these systems are stepping stones to greater capabilities
3. The Navy won't even decide whether to fund a rail gun for years:
"Whatever investment decisions are made for weapons the next several years, the Navy already is engineering the potential these technologies require, according to Collins and his IPS/electric drive team for DD(X)."
The speculative linked white paper goes no further, advocating that a rail gun *proof of concept test* *could* happen by 2008:
"A focused technology development program that leads to a series of experiments that culminate in a full-scale extended-range naval rail gun proof-of-concept demonstration in fiscal year 2008
is a sensible approach."
For a sense of how little this means, consider there was a successful "proof of concept" demonstartion for airborne anti-laser systems -- "Star Wars" SDI technology -- in 1984.
Well...maybe not for you.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
METAL GEAR!?
I see your point about aerial recon, but can we *really* aim at something 250 miles away? With what accuracy? These things are dumb bullets, not smart bombs. Less moving parts to break or be debugged is awesome, but seriously, *250* miles away? We're not talking about a straight shot either, which I can believe is within the realm of possibility.. they have to be arced up and down into the target because of the earth's curvature. What about wind resistance slowing it down or worse, deflecting it? Sure it's a huge amount of kinetic energy, but that's a huge amount of air to pass through.
How is this done?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
This looks like somebody looking for funding.
just coincidently, and I haven't seen it yet, but that's one of the aspects to moores new film I was just reading about. Like how much "free will" is really involved? He is showing (using his hometown of flint michigan as an example) how the recruiters specifically go into economically devasted areas and recruit there, knowing the kids don't have as much local opportunity for any sort of work that might actually pay anything or provide "benefits", etc. FWIW. I've heard it from a ton of young guys I have known who have gone in, "it's a job" "I'll get college out of it" and etc, going way back to before nam. Well, to be fair about it, back then it was more prudent(in some ways) to volunteer than get drafted, then you at least got the temporary illusion you might actually get to do something you might be interested in. I would say there's something to it, as witness the focus of their TV advertising that you see for "joining up".
I live in the EU, and the EU doesn't seem to agree on anything. I wish it were true that the EU is a superpower in 50 years, but we'll probably still be drafting the EU-constitution and letting the voters kill the draft with a referendum.
China on the other hand will be the greatest economy long before 50 years have gone by. Invest in the Chinese stock-market!
Considering the well known cost advantage of outsourcing, this 56 billion may well be far more productive than the 277 billion.
Is BECAUSE we have the most advanced military. But technology doesn't stand still. It's silly to say "well we have the best today so we have no need to get any better". As a corillary in the bussiness world, this is precisely how Palm got themselves into their current situation.
Back in the beginning days of PDAs, it was Palm or nothing. You didn't own a PDA, you owned a Palm. Then Microsoft decided to try and step in with the laughable Windows CE. Palm decided there was nothing to worry about, after all CE was no competition, they were content in their superiority and didn't work on advancing to things like coloured PDAs.
Well with each successive release of Windows CE (which changed to the PocketPC artechiture) it sucked less, and started doing things that PalmOS couldn't Pretty quick, Palm was loosing marketshare and scrambling to roll out next gen handhelds that could do the cool things the PocketPCs did. Now there's a real fight going on between Palm, PocketPC, and Linux solutions.
Same thing applies to military technology. Just because your technology is the best today, doesn't mean it will be the best in 20 years. There are a number of US and USSR planes that were the best thing in ariel combat when they came out that now sit in boneyards since they are next to worthless against the current generation. I mean the German Fokker D VII was a scary plane in WWI and a great dogfighter. Useless now when an F-16 can blast it with a missle that it can't avoid from beyond it's visual range.
Also the military is all about being prepared for different kinds of threats. You don't want to say "well nothing threatens our carriers so let's just scrap the guns on support ships". Because what then happens if something DOES present a threat? You want to try and have forces that have as few weaknesses as possible and as many strengths as possible. A better gun is a strength for a frigate.
There's also the matter of cost savings in combat. It's much, much cheaper to shoot a shell than it is to fire a missle. Well, with 250 miles of range, one of these frigates could actually provide reasonable support for ground troops in many situations.
I'm not saying that this is a massively important development, or some decisive weapon that will make our forces much stronger, but it's another small improvement that helps keep the military strong.
The more intresting part of designing the ships that will carry these wepon systems is not the guns or lasers themselves. The tricky part is how you generate, store and transmit the MegaWatts of power these systems require.
This is especialy true if you bear in mind the overriding desire to not store it in a manor which reacts badly to sea water. Specifically if someones just put a hole in the side of your ship. Don't want to electrocute everyone now.... terribly bad form
impact energy will be SO HIGH that they will vaporize everything they attack ergo no residual debris, waste, chemicals or ash
Really? I find this interesting. Just where do you think everything will go? Hit something the size of an apartment building and you will not "Vaporize" everything into nothingness. The residents of a small town in Oregon found a dead whale washed up on their local beach. The whale was too big to be easily moved so they decided to blow it up. Sounded like a good idea at the time. Long story short, they only acomplished blowing rotting whale flesh all over the place.
Check it out: Here
Moral of the story: Blowing shit up does not necessarily get rid of it.
Given that the new DD(X) class ships will be part of carrier groups, speed of deployment won't be a problem. We can have a whole air wing, Marines, missiles, and artilery off of any coast in a day or two. As for being able to take a hit, the new DD(X) is designed to sit mostly below water and, be as survivable as possible. The thing looks almost more like a submarine than a surface ship. We've learned our lesson from the USS Cole. Besides, nothing is getting close to a carrier group if it's sitting 50 to 100 miles off-shore.
Why? The Navy tried hydrofoil and lifting body. The speed and maneuverability might be fine when fighting small boats in intercoastal waters, but those platforms don't support the firepower or high-seas capability that the Navy needs to have. I have no idea why you think VTOL Carriers are a good idea. Any advantages you might gain are completely outweighed by the reduction in firepower. Given the air and sea power surrounding the modern aircraft carrier, it is virtually invulnerable to anything less than a nuclear attack. The carrier group is designed to attack land based targets and support land-based operations and you can't do that effectively with a small platform.
What makes you think that being 50 miles offshore while bombarding targets 100 miles inland puts the destroyer at any greater risk than the ones it already faces? Just how far from shore do you think our carrier group(s) is in the Persian Gulf? The railgun is not designed to replace aircraft or missiles. The new system fills a particular niche in a ship's armament and does it better than any other system can. 1) The ammunition is cheap, small, and inert. This increases survivability in the event that the ship is hit and allows for sustained bombardment at much lower cost without having to resupply. 2) The munitions are guided. Most people in this thread seem to be overlooking that fact. This isn't a dumb-fire weapon designed to bombard large areas. 3) The munitions are delivered VERY rapidly. Imagine that special forces are on the ground and they have just identified an important enemy position that was previously unknown. 3 minutes later and with no warning, that enemy target is now a 20' crater. The time it takes to scramble an aircraft or wait for a missile could mean that the window of opportunity has passed. We are talking 3 minutes vs. 30 minutes and that's a HUGE difference. 4) Railgun munitions offer deep penetration. No cruise missle is going to penetrate 40' into a hardened target. Railguns can. 5) You can strike without warning. If you are 50 miles from shore and launch a hypersonic projectile, no one is going to know it's coming until it hits. Missiles and aircraft can be detected and shot down or diverted.
Just to re-iterate, the railgun is a supplement to missiles and conventional guns, not a replacement. This is not a return to big/clunky battleship mentality, but a realization of the high accuracy, rapid delivery, deep penetration goals that new weapons are aiming to meet.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
Needless to say Google provides a lot of information to make one yourselve.
:)
I have a little different idea about how to make one, but it seems quite complex. Time to study...
http://www.railgun.org/physics/
Privacy is terrorism.
That clip is hilarious in the context of the grand parent's post.
It's worth the karma hit to say this: you are truly a moron.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Someone get on the phone to the Pentagon. They should be listening to this tactical genius. Especially about "super-sonic torpedos." Give me a break.
Now you've done it. Now the U.S.'s enemies know that the use of our so-called high energy weapons (which we will rename to the Wave Motion Gun Works after some petitioning) will leave each ship defenseless for a minute, will render us unable to warp, and it will require manual aiming by some guy dressed in red that needs to look just like Keith in Voltron I. Also they can tell we're aiming at them if we turn our ships straight at them.
Oh well.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
... how big was 2fort4 anyway? Did you design a 250 mile map to test maximum range? I did, but when I loaded it, for some reason the rail projectiles moved very sloooowly and I got bored waiting for them to hit the other end.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Geiger581 is onto it. This weapon system is mainly about being able to cheaply attack land targets with impunity.
That's right. Finger of God within a 250 mile radius. Choose a grid coordinate, any coordinate: two minutes later, a hole appears. And being supersonic, you won't even hear it coming.
No need to land ships and establish a beachhead. No pilots to get captured. No AMERICAN lives lost. Just holes appearing where your people and equipment used to be every ten seconds or so, per railgun.
And, did I mention it's cheap?
It is stunningly stupefacting that the American military-industrial complex is still so deeply entrenched in the power structures, that even without the merest shadow of a credible enemy (for well over a decade), the warmongers are able to gobble up billions of dollars to continue to improve the ability to slaughter and destroy.
but I wanted to go faster than the speed of speed!
A few million joules of energy will effectively render all waste byproducts nonexistant. Literally, like a solar furnace.
At least not in its present form. Too many countries making exceptions to the rules for themselves. Hell their idea of a Constitution is the worst abomination seen yet. They are trying to form a government of unequals which will never work.
China will become less of a threat the freerer its people become. Capitalism will lead them that way. The Chinese government knows this but is smart enough to NOT follow Russia's footsteps.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So the range is approx. 250 miles... On a completely unrelated note, Paris is about 110 miles from the coastline, Berlin is approx. 106 miles, London is about 100km... Oh, and Ottawa is too far from a coastline for it to work. Sorry.
Due to lack of disk space this user has been discontinued
The problem here is that gunpowder only has so much force and has limitations on it's expansion. If you want more power, you have to go to different chemicals. Modern smokeless burn much more powerfully than gunpowder. They also burn more slowly so that the internal pressure in the chamber is more of a constant to avoid damage to the firearm. Gunpowder 'explodes', so you get a spike of internal pressure.
As for the shape of the projectile, this has a huge effect. A ball isn't the most stable of projectiles, and the more powder you put behind it, the less barrel to travel down. With modern rifled breech-loaders, there are porportions that give far better stability and reduce drag.
Modern artillery already has ranges in excess of a hundred miles, and this technology allows a much more consistant acceleration, resulting in far more speed. Once the sound barrier is broken, the 'sonic boom' is a side-effect of drag, the drag isn't necessarily any more than what the projectile would experience per unit of distance sub-sonically.
It should be noted that some efforts have been made to make an orbital ranged gun.
I don't read AC A human right
They have n rounds and they fire two shots that's gona be two things doing mach 7.5 *2 for two shots. Now immagine 4000 of them so the whole bugger whill be LOUD and not conspicous, potentially blow up from heat to say nothing of the EM radiation...
Oh, I'm sure they already know and are planning for it.
But for your sake, enjoy a link.
The enemies of Democracy are
(Finally, my nick pays off!)
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
Gotta wonder if these could be fitted to a new class of submarines...
It's not just the money, it's the tech. No other country on Earth comes close to matching the military technology of the US. And that's not just in obvious stuff like nuclear weapons and aircraft, it's across the board - avionics, radar, communications, etc. It gives the US military unrivalled reach and power. One day others will catch up, presumably, but not in the near future.
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
The Battle of Midway was so important in this respect because the Japanese sent their carriers out front and their battleships to the back, while the US keep their carriers in the back and their battleships to the front. Guess who got the pounding?
Um, right. That's kind of what I was alluding to. Carriers are vulnerable, and if the enemy can take clear shots at them, then you can kiss it goodbye because it cannot evade.
Actually, it would take something the size of a nuke (or a lucky hit) to sink a carrier. Take a look at how many hits the Yorktown and Essex class ships took during WWII.
A nuke? Come on. Detonate a large enough torpedo underneath the center of the keel, and its own weight will crack it like a fortune cookie. If we can make shoulder-mounted anti-tank missles that aim for the top of the turret, we can surely make missles and torpedoes to aim for the weak parts of ships.
Also, Railguns suffer from a traditional problem with projectiles: lack of collateral damage.
Ah, very good point. Rail guns probably wouldn't be a good choice, then.
The enemies of Democracy are
Not sure why a body count is considered a metric for an event to be considered 'greater' than another... buuut, OK. Heck, while we're at it, why don't we use the amount of killed innocent people as a metric for this! The trip to the 'new world' would have SLAUGHTERED some pesky moon landing if you used this as a measuring point, since they couldn't kill anything on the moon! (AFAWK)
:-P
Point being is that this conversation is stupid. You're trying to compare significant events from several hundred years ago to events that happened just recently (relatively). What's more is that you're trying to use rather strange metrics to judge them by (money I can understand, even though it is still a little hard to compare IMHO, but number of dead in the attempt???). You had a good point about the US not being a 'hyper power' (whatever the hell that is...) but... not sure where this came from.
you'd get a +1 informative.
The enemies of Democracy are
any giudance (GPS?) system would need LOTS of shiedling to protect the electronics from the induced currents from the VERY strong EMag field used to accelerate the projectile.
considering it needs a GPS antenna and receiver, this could be complicated
I still wouldn't give a shit.
The enemies of Democracy are
Soo... what IS a 'hyperpower' exactly? How do you define a 'hyperpower?' Supercarriers? Railguns? Railgun-toting-supercarriers? You can't just make up words like this!!!
[reminded of various dictionaries adding the term McJob...]
Oh, screw it. hyperpower it is. [waves American flag]
Also, Railguns suffer from a traditional problem with projectiles: lack of collateral damage.
Well, possibly. I'm not convinced that a high velocity rail gun wouldn't convert mostly into heat and gas overpressure as it hit the side of a large object, however. That's a lot of energy release.
C//
I would love to welcome our new American Imperial Overlords.
We so should. Tell the world to suck it, wet and sloppy like they mean it. All we do is give the whole world presents, and all we take is shit. If the world wants to whine, bitch and moan constantly looking over our fence while the tires in their backyard threaten to burn down their house. Fine. Seriously. But let's give them something to fucking bitch about. I say start with nuking muslim or arab cities (explosions look cool, and what have they done to keep me safe?). Hold the whole fucking world hostage. We could be 21st century Romans as imagined by Sid Meyer (or Kurt Vonnegut). Just wanted to say "Hello. And our words are backed up by NUCLEAR WEAPONS." "We find the trade aggrement ammenable and our words are backed up by NUCLEAR WEAPONS."
The French love to be subjegated. The love surrendering to Germans. The French who did love these things died for their ungreatful country men, and unfortunately their far superior genes were strongly selected against (see Warterloo, where he perfected the now French tradition of ignorance and arrogance regarding France's military prowess leading france from one crushing military defeat to the next) and those that survived likely fled to thriving examples of civilization. About the French Foreign Legion, there's a word in there that explains why they don't fight like the rest of the French. I'll give you three guesses.
Your selective reasoning is admirable, well perhaps enviable, or at least convienent. Yes america the great satan, who were the colonial powers that drew the middle east maps? Yes of course The United States, all of Europe warned agaist it, but America just wouldn't be denied. How about under the table arms sales, or the French stealing money for food and medicine literally from some of the poorest people on Earth, or how about all of Europe (save britain) had to be dragged kicking and screaming to interveine in just one case of genocide, and how they turn around and blame the apathetic US for not stopping another.
You know why America would like a world of Finlanders. Because their badasses. They handle their shit. They don't just bitch about the decline if Parisian prostitutes they can afford when their government falls. They destroy German heavy water supplies. They were a bullwark against the Russians that considerably out number them. What a wonderful fucking world that would be. Imagine a world where there weren't any pussy nationettes like France that can't even handle their own self-defense, either in total or cooperation and feel the need to throw in their irrelevant two cents anytime guns are going to be drawn on people not affiliated with Greenpeace. (No, I understand why they did it, start small, get some of that confidence back....)
Terrorism, state-sponsored or otherwise, isn't the only military issue in the world. The Cold War is long over--but in its place have appeared a number of smaller-scale regional conflicts. Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq are three that spring to mind. North Korea is certainly another potential threat that any responsible military commander will consider.
Do you have a world atlas handy? No? Click this link, it will take you to a small map showing North Korea--with a handy map scale in the lower left hand corner. You'll note that the entire Korean peninsula is less than 200 miles wide--meaning that a small handful of U.S. Navy destroyers armed with these railguns could effectively put incredible firepower onto practically any spot in either country. In practice (because there is a range of high mountains running like a spine down the eastern side of the peninsula) you'd have to position 2-3 destroyers on either side, and you'd have 100% fire cover.
That changes all sorts of equations. It lessens aviation requirements in the Korean theater, it lessens troop requirements in theater, and it is a technology that is easy to demonstrate--but well beyond the technological reach of the North Koreans (first because they have limited metalurgical assets to develop the guns, and second because they have very limited ability to find and thus target a ship far out at sea).
The effect may indeed impact anti-terrorism
The ability to inexpensively drop heavy-duty firepower onto the Korean peninsula raises the very real prospect that the U.S. would not need to keep 35,000 combat troops, and thousands of Air Force troops, not to mention planes, ships, and other equipment, focused on North Korea. Some of those forces could be put to better use--such as tracking, identifying, and killing terrorists.
"Remember the French Foreign Legion? Napoleon?"
Yes. Napoleon lost. Waterloo? Hello?
Godalmighty. The french always lose wars. Its like a disease.
As if that's any different than now?
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
Was created by DeGaulle right after WW2 as a way of covering up France's collaborative efforts in WW2.
The french resistance was invented to fan french nationalistic flames and was used by DeGaulle to propel his party to victory.
Even today, the french don't talk about the Nazi, *PRIMARILY* because to do so would drive home the point that France cooperated with Germany in the Holocaust.
Some countries fought back, others watched, but France was one of those that *HELPED* the nazis.
It really depends on what you hit. Some materials (like concrete) will break apart relatively easily, others won't (like Chobham armor). If the target is soft enough, the penetrator will even survive the impact without being scratched. If the target is very tough, you will still need to use DU for the penetrator material.
What good is a double standard if you can't enforce it?
Math isn't your strong suit, is it?
Remember the French Foreign Legion
Key word: FOREIGN
The French Foreign Legion. Meaning they ain't Frenchmen. I think you've missed a key point or two along the way here....
Obviously the acceleration needs scaling down (== longer launch path, eg up a convenient mountain) and the power requirements scale directly with mass for a given laugh velocity.
Shouldn't this be a real contender for unmanned satellite deployment? The velocities are there and you don't have to waste payload mass on launch propellant.
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 cs@cskk.id.au http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/
OK, maybe I'm off here, but these things fire at a 2.5 km/s muzzle velocity, right? And the escape velocity for Earth is just over 11 km/s, right? So these things are capable of firing projectiles within an order of magnitude of the speed necessary for them to permanently leave Earth. (Disregarding friction and everything, of course.)
This means if they can increase the power of these guns by a factor of, say, 10 or 20, then they have a gun that's so powerful they can point it straight upwards (at the right time of day, etc.), fire the gun, and strike the surface of the moon. DAMN!
There are no trolls. There are no trees out here.
MRI is not a extreme magnetic attraction in one direction. it is a Magnetic RESONANCE electromagnetic frequency is pumped at you and the resonance of your guts is recieved.
Exactly! MRI creates a high frequency magnetic field designed to resonate the [polar] water molecules in your body. The resonating molecules then give off [microwave] radiation that gets received by the MRI and then processed with a 2D discrete cosine transform to produce a visible image of what's inside your body.
I might have believed it the grandparent had said the metal bits warm up from micrwave frequency eddy currents, but this nonsense about having them fly out of our face is just uninformed FUD.
If you don't like "teh funney", mod it all down, and you can stroke your chin until you blow your load over all of "teh insightflu". Humor makes this world liveable, dig?
The tooltip text has a blurb about it, although nothing too detailed:
"Arguably the true star of 'Stealth,' the makeshift-aircraft of the same name sits under the softlights of Hangar Bay Two, June 15. Despite its size, Lincoln and embarked Sailors continued business as usual while underway. (Photo by JSN David Poe)"
There is an article linked on the bottom of the page that explains it. It's for a movie by the name of 'Stealth.'
Very well put. If I had mod points, you get some.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
I don't see the sonic boom is that much of a problem... But, aerodynamically, I don't know why 2.5khm/hr muzzle velocity is sufficient.
Here is my reasoning:
(from the PDF document)
conventional gun system: muzzle velocity 1.5 km/hr, range 50 miles
first generation of railgun: muzzle velcocity 2.5 km/hr, range 250 miles, Mach 5.0 (1.6 km/hr) at impact.
I assume the old shell decelerate to 0 km/hr at impact. In other words, speed drops by 1.5km/hr in 50 miles. For the rail gun round, the speed drops by mererly 0.9km/hr in 250 miles. It does not sound right to me. My mechanical engineering 101 knowlege suggested that the drag is proportional to the square of the velocity.
(the drag) R=0.5*D*rho*A*v^2, where D is the shape paramter, rho is the air density, A is the cross section area and v is the velocity.
At start, the drag of railgun round will be (2.5/1.5)^2, about 3 times of that of a shell... Of course, they will try to make the railgun rounds aerodynamically smooth, so did the conventionaly shells. Unless the railgun round spend most of the time at extremely high altitude, I don't see why it works.
Weapon: Gauss Rifle
Crit: 6
Tons: 12
While you may avoid ammo explosions, you need to watch out for the hits on the Gauss Rifle itself. That's a goddamn 30-point explosion on a critical hit! Blows the entire left torso off my Enforcer, and with the inflation of the C-bill, that's a real bite in any Merc's ass.
This technology claims to propel projectiles upto extremely high speeds, right, so what happens to the old Newtonian concept of action-reaction? Shouldn't the recoil be brutal on these kinds of weapons?
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Metal Gear Solid Rex has been released for public beta
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Now bush will finally have a cost effective solution for his moon base defences. But of cource he will run his moon base on insecure interplanetary wifi and his moon base will be hijacked by WarUFOing aliens.
The answer to your question is in the article. The new destroyers will use what is called the "Integrated Power System." In effect, the ship is a big power generator producing ~75 megawatts from four advanced turbines. That power is then used to turn the screws via electric motors, run the ship, and fire the railgun. 15MW doesn't sound like a problem for IPS.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
Yeah The Honeym^H^H^H^H^H^HFlintstones was a great and original show.
English is easier said than done.
The hyper velocity of the railgun projectiles poses some interesting problems in physics. The light weight of the projectiles, regardless of speed, will be deflected over a long distance due to (1) loss of speed and (2) differences in environmental conditions (wind speed & direction, humidity, weather). Even the use of a large number of projectiles (in order to assure a target kill) will not prevent a number of projectiles from going off course. Very rapid sequential deployment of these projectiles would conceivably alter a minature atmospheric tunnel that could be "walked" into the target kill zone. I guess there will be a lot more "nuke" ships in the future US Navy, because it will take a huge power source to power a surface naval exchange of any long time duration. I would not want to be anywhere downrange of such a barrage.
You know, naturally occurring carbon (such as you find in a human) is more radioactive than depleted uranium.
Of course, uranium is somewhat toxic, but then so is lead and basically any other heavy metal.
I was able to read the pdf on the rail gun. The concept sounds neat, but the pdf article didn't exactly address the electric generation problem of a rapid fire system. The article claims that it takes the same energy to deliver 6 round per minute as it does to run the ships propulsion system. Have we even solved that problem yet? I don't think the overall cost of developing the power generation was really highlighted in the rail gun pdf. I can really believe you can save that much money if you have to generate all of the weapon's destructive power every time you fire it.
Would it not be possible to use a giant railgun to rocket a spacecraft to speeds much faster than before?
They talked in one of the posted articles about NASA using it to shoot payload up into space, why not a spacecraft into space?
Probably not, but from the articles I've been reading, they're having one hellva time with barrel friction at this stage of development. Every shot is quite literally ripping the barrel apart. Once they nail that down , it'll just be a matter of inflight guidance. Other fun facts-- Did you know they will need to divert power from the engines to bring this thing online? Having Scotty divert power to the weapons has a whole new meaning ^_^
How prophetic of me...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Is it just me or is the US on some utterly bizarre wild goose chase, spending (read: WASTING) trillions developing military and weapon technology to outdistance itself technologically from other world armies by a factor of 100 instead of (the supposedly insufficient) factor of 50? Just WHO are they going to fight with their Seawolf subs, Aircraft Carriers, railguns, and that entire quadgizillion-consuming army? Terrorists? North Korea? Europe?
/.'ers), wouldn't it be nicer if your government was using YOUR taxmoney to do YOU some good?
Take a look at the UK for an example. They opted for a small fleet of SMALL aircraft carriers that are designed to rush in and handle local skirmishes and cost a helluvalot cheaper than their American leviathan counterparts and their trailing battlegroups (which are there just in case the Soviet Block comes back together and stops being poor all of a sudden, Marxism is revived, all western culture as we know it is abolished there and the Japanese decide to attack Pearl Harbor. Again.)
Yes, I know (;-)), A real live railgun will give any fps gamer who can pronounce "quake" a hard-on, but guys (I'm talking to the americans among us
Get you more IT jobs? Encourage tech-oriented businesses with tax levys? Hell, give it to NASA and have them build a space elevator before China does, that'll be a sure way of giving all us geeks an even bigger erection...
All you have to do is look at [modern, developed, not-dirt-poor] self-oriented countries such as Australia or Germany to see how useful a taxdollar can be when put on the right track.
-
I know her, she married somebody I know. The guy used to be in love with Nova's voice, then he grew up, met the voice actress, and it was one of those annoying relationships where the two people paw at each other constantly in public. Plus a huge age diff. Yech. Then they got hitched.
Anyway, Nova ain't that hot in real life(TM). Neither is her hubby but he had money in the family soooo there you go.
2nd season (the Comet Empire):
We're off to outer space
We're leaving mother Earth
To save the human race
Our Star Blazers
A cry for help, a desperate plight
Makes our Star Force reunite
As we rush to meet our fate
The Comet Empire awaits
We must be strong and brave
To stop its evil ways
If Zordar's plot should work
He'll destroy the universe
We'll fight the Comet Empire
Battle through the raging fire
Filled with the hope that Earth will survive
We'll keep peace alive with
Our Star Blazers
Closing lyrics:
We're off in outer space
Protecting Mother Earth
To save the human race
Our Star Blazers
Danger lurking everywhere
But we know we've got to dare
Evil men with evil schemes
They can't destroy all our dreams
We must be strong and brave
Our home we've got to save
We must make the fighting cease
So Mother Earth will be at peace
Through all the fire and the smoke
We will never give up hope
If we can win the Earth will survive
We'll keep peace alive
With our Star Blazers
(I know it's irrelevant to the topic, but I've never seen so many Star Blazers posts together in Slashdot... As a tear drop always appears in my eyes when Star Blazers is mentioned, as the most glorious piece of music beats in my mind and my heart, I had to post something...)
here
... the boches had one in 1918 - Lange Max
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Please look out of your basement window. You see that little patch of blue up there? That's the real world. In the real world, developing cheaper, more efficient, more usable methods of killing and maiming other humans is not cool.
Are we all clear on that now?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Don't forget about the super guns which had a long barrel and was laid on top of a dirt mound embankment to give it pointing elevation. They supposedly already reached 100-200 miles then using special explosive poweders.
As far as Newton is concerned, yep. It would have to bolted to the deck pretty tightly.
Here's a very short description: Railgun recoil and relativity
I know you say, "total momentum of the pieces remains the same" But that is only true in a true vacuum.
Now instead of air resistance on one object you have air resistance on all the smaller object (that are most likely not aerodynamic at all). The friction from the air would burn them up.
It is much like those silly people say they if you blow up an falling meteor that the damage will just be the same.... well if just calculate how much dust falls from space in a given year and put that into one ball and see how much that it.... it is a killer meteor weight.
Something to be said about the power of friction over the surface area of an object. More Surface area = more resistance and hence more friction hence greater chance the smaller object will be 'burnt' up. It is good to have atmosphere!
I wouldn't call it friction, since the railgun's magnetic. I don't think friction would be much of a problem; I was always under the impression that the slug floated. I do know what your saying though, but it's the huge magnetic forces ripping the barrel apart, not friction.
That link may not be very trustworthy.
Timbro (the think-tank you linked to) is a strongly ideological organization.
It's mission is basically to turn Sweden into a smaller copy of their utopia, the USA.
Therefore they have a vested interest in making the USA look good, and the EU look bad in any comparison.
You may still be right, but if I were you I would find statistics from a less politically motivated and more respected source.
As things are now, you linked to something akin to soviet-era Pravda...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
OK, I can't vouch for the trustworthiness of Timbro, and you still may be right, but I've heard from so many sources that the EU countries have a GDP that is far behind the GDP of the US, and the gap is widening due to the much slower growth - I think it would be too much to explain with political motivation.
Passing it once was enough, thank you very much.
Now could someone pass the parent a lavatory brush and a dictionary please.
Do we really need a huge weapon that can liquify its target at 250km when the typical infantry unit can't even be trusted with a six-shooter ?
Couldn't they just all jump into a really deep ditch while we fill it with cement, so we can get back to spending those billions in government funds on something CREATIVE rather than DESTRUCTIVE ?
Blowing shit up is fun, blowing people up is NOT.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
And aim the gun in the direction AWAY from where you want the ship to go.
Rest energy is rest mass times speed of light squared (E0=m0 * c^2). Rest mass is the mass of the body at rest (in the reference frame). At these velocities, the Newtonian formula for kinetic energy becomes too inaccurate, and you have to use the formula from (Special) Relativity Theory, which is E(kin)=(m - m0) * c^2, where m is the observed mass and m0 is the rest mass. Actually, m=m0/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2), so you get:
E(kin)=(1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) - 1) * m0 * c^2
The Newtonian formula E(kin)=1/2 * m0 * v^2 is actually a good approximation for velocities v much smaller than the speed of light c. U c? :) The relativistic kinetic energy grows much faster than the Newtonian one the closer you get to speed of light. Approaching speed of light, it goes off towards infinity, which means that only particles with zero rest mass can actually travel at speed of light (e.g. photons), otherwise they would have infinite mass and thus make for some nice black holes. ;)
sqrt means square root; More explanations can be found on Wikipedia
I love C++
In Eraser they claimed that these guns fired bullets at speed of light. Since this would mean that the projectile has infinite momentum and thus the recoil would be infinite, let's say they reached only 90% of speed of light (c). A projectile with a rest mass of 5g would have a mass of 11.5g at 90% c, and a momentum of 0.0115kg * 90% * 299792458 m/s (i.e. c) = ca. 3.1 million Newtonseconds. Let's assume that the recoil (identical to the projectile's momentum) would push Arnold back at no more than 10 meters per second. Then Arnie would have to have a mass of no less than 3.1 Meganewtonseconds / 10 m/s = 310 metric tons. I conclude that either the movie was a tiny bit unrealistic, or Schwarzenegger is somewhat heavier than I assumed.
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The British military funded horse cavalry right through to WW1. Only after the tank made it obvious did they try to actually meet the present threat instead of living in the past. The US military cannot escape its relationship with military contractors who love big expensive science projects.
Saudi Arabia has the world's largest secret police force yet it can't find people videotaping murders of foreigners in its own cities. The US has a hundred thousand men in Baghdad who likewise can't seem to locate the same types right under their noses.
Most NATO nations have had the capability to do this for decades. The US has had this capacity since it put very big guns on battleships in WW2. The original posters question stands - what kind of conflict will this be used in? Nothing we are currently facing.
The US has been withdrawing from this conflict partly because the South Koreans are no longer interested in proceeding as a US aggressor proxy when in fact it seeks to reunify with the North, not destroy it.
The bottom line is that the only times in the last forty years the US has fought a serious military adversary - Vietnam and Bosnia - much of the high tech that was promoted as being decisive failed. A conflict between he Koreas would probably show this again.
You have a good point. In Vietnam the winning side took 10x the losses but was determined to win. The problem for the US was that their adversary had decided it would fight to the last man. There are two routes you can go in this scenario - a costly 'total' war (as with Japan, that also basically fought to the very end) or abandonment (Vietnam). Its not clear yet what route the US will take in the Middle East.
International airports, seaways, telephone lines and cross border highways are the next attack vectors.
The British military also funded horse cavalry even as tank combat was evolving in WW1. Sometimes it just takes a very loud BOOM to get people to change their thinking. That has still not happened even after 9/11, but the inevitable use of bioweapons or atomic weapons inside a US city will probably do the trick, and at this rate of anti-US sentiment, this is virtually inevitable in the next three decades.
Once again, to anyone who makes idiotic claims about the invulnerability of these vessels and the strategies to employ them, I give you the USS Cole. Ooops, no one thought of that.
The Battle of Midway! Sink the Bismark! So what!?
... ?
A naval fight hasn't really been important since the cold war - and that's only because of submarines which were important for their ability to 1 - spy 2 - launch nukes.
Actual ships in a fight? Please. That sort of thing is left over from big nations trying to F- up each other's shipping lanes. WWII was the proof that the carrier is the most important thing on the ocean. And anyway, that sort of economic action is much more effectively enacted these days without anyone firing a shot. That's one thing that can be said FOR corporate globalism.
What the US wants to do rock on out to someplace in the third world, bust some heads, and then come back home. For that to work we need platforms to launch fighters, bombers, missle/gun, whatever else from. US warfare is all about "Hi, I sit in a room and push a button that makes you dead." So we need a big room that we can park sorta near but sorta far away from where you are needing to be killt. INSERT CARRIER GROUP HERE.
So then what? Yer gonna come after the US Carrier Group? With
A bunch of big ships? How do these not have the same weaknesses as the big ships you decry?
Little ships? The cool thing about attacking with a single little ship is that it's too small to notice. The problem is that it's too small to notice. Remember that suicide speedboat? Didn't kill it's target. 20 speedboats? They'd get noticed.
Oh Wait! Hypersonic Torpedos! Rail Guns! High Tech Weapon X! Ya see the thing is that the people who have those weapons are THE US. And maybe some other folks who aren't going to attack us, but really the US is on top of the high tech weapons thing. US = the only remaining superpower, and that means something.
If you try to come at the US with that "symmetric warfare" style thinking you're not going to even have a chance to look stupid before you are cut to hamburger. "Let's kill that carrier group!" is not a reasonable thought for enemies of the US. That makes as much sense as "Let's get a bunch of tanks and roll them on Washington!" It's just not modern warfare that involves the US.
We've got conventional warfare all sewn up (for now, and as far as we can see). All that's left is terrorism. Buy a bunch of fertilizer and kerosene. Hijack a plane. Strap explosives to yourself. Even this sort of thing isn't going to help you actually defeat the US Armed Forces in any macroscopic way. What it will help you do is upset the socio-economic environment, which is bad for everyone, but worse for the US because our way of life is so based on the fact that we kick ass and our socio-economics are ordered and profitable.
But "Bigger Carriers = Bigger Reefs"? In the kind of warfare that implies the US has no peer.
" Also, Railguns suffer from a traditional problem with projectiles: lack of collateral damage."
/. a while back. Meteorites and mach 5 projectiles do not go *thok* they go *kaboom*.
Naw.
When you're talking about mach 5 and such a projectile doesn't behave as if it was a stone you threw at something. It doesn't go *thok* and either bounce off or go through it's target.
It's more like the asteroid impact simulator that I saw a link to on
The armor piercing projectile from the 16" guns on an Iowa class battleship deliver approx. 1.6x10^8 Joules of energy to a target 24 miles down range. This calculation does not even take into account the high explosive in the shell. The aftermath of these little babies leaves plenty of debris lying about the place. Nothing like the solar furnace you describe. You can check my calculations if you like.
Mass = 1225kg
Downrange Velocity = 514m/s
Souorce
They should spend more of their time on developing armor plating to protect from roadside bombs and body armor to protect individual troops from snipers.
Or if they want a miracle weapon, come up with a bomb you can unleash over a mosque or wedding that only kills insurgents and not women and children.
These days war is more like surgery than war and collateral damage is the biggest issue.
It's best to avoid being just in front of a canon muzzle of any type.
The 10th physics expert hasn't reported back yet
CAUTION! Do not look into railgun with remaining eye!
When you're talking about mach 5 and such a projectile doesn't behave as if it was a stone you threw at something. It doesn't go *thok* and either bounce off or go through it's target.
What makes you think it would be flying at Mach 5? An asteroid is such a big problem because it has enough momentum to continuously overcome drag. But a railgun munition fired on a 250 mile ballistic trajectory will instead go up, then back down. Since it expended most of its energy on the way up, it's going to be flying at terminal velocity on the way down. Without knowing more, it's difficult to predict what that velocity would be. However, it's most likely only slightly supersonic upon impact. In addition, an asteroid has a lot of dust and frozen gasses to release in the "big boom". A solid metal shell would have an extremely high vaporization point, and would most likely cut through a carrier deck as if it were paper-machete.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
i live on the very most northeastern corner of mexico on the border with san diego ca. theres an helicopter school almost right on the border, and i basically get to see all the military ships coming in and out of port all the time. there's lots of military activiy going on all the time. about a year ago. i was driving just by the border. as in literally the fence dividing the two countries. when the radio on my car started switching stations and making fax-like noises afterwards my car died on me. it basically stood there for about 40 minutes until well the battery re-gained life and it was as if nothing had happened. funny thing was a friend of mine was driving around the same area, at around the same time and the same thing happened to him. people i know also "listen" to radar as in the way radar operators describe they can listen to the signals. as in somewhere in the back of your head. i've done some goggling on it on electromagnetic weapons. and what i've read they do just that, aim at something and you can turn it off. there's also stuff on mind/behaviour control on monkeys. don't know but seems pretty effective weapons to me.
Great news for humanity! We can efficiently shoot a projectile 250 miles to kill someone but we can't get a sandwich into the stomach of a starving boy across the street.
Ultimately the human race is doomed if the primary focus of our precious resources (intellectual, labor, raw materials) is on developing weapons to kill each other.
Let's stop the futility and focus all of these marvelous minds on things that save lives, not take them away. Live by the sword (or rail gun), die by the sword.
Ah, what WWII Carriers vs Battleships taught us was that the US is always ready to fight the last war.
So now we have Carriers - so we're all set to fight WWII and win it. Oh wait - that was the last war...
If the chinese wanted to take out a US carrier using only conventional forces, they'd lauch about 1000-2000 missles against it. Those missle of course collectively cost probably only 1/10th what the carrier costs, and I doubt that any defence system would be able to stop them. They could even make 80% of them cheap semi-guided decoys to save on money.
As far as US carriers taking muliple hits in WWII goes - look at the bomb technology. Those bombs dropped from planes were probably a few hundred pounds at most. The torpedos were probably the biggest danger - but they weren't much bigger. These days we have much more powerful explosives, and the bombs are a lot bigger, and they have the ability to know what part of the ship to target. Plus, due to automation you probably have fewer damage control workers on board the ship to save it.
Most smaller ships would be gone with a single hit. A huge ship might take two or three at most.
In any case, I doubt we'll ever see such a huge war between near-equals - everybody stands to lose a lot and gain very little. Sure, China like to talk big about Taiwan, but what would Taiwan really get them besides a bunch of people who don't want to be ruled by China? Oh, that and a huge war with the USA which takes place right on their coastline. And maybe a nuclear war and the end of all humanity. Who needs it? After all, in 5-10 years half of China will have an economy superior to Taiwan anyway...
And no, I'm not being a smartass. (Well, yes, I am. But you deserve it.) Because the projectile being fired at a line-of-sight target could conceivably (very easily) hit something outside of line-of-sight if it skips. Of course, you have to worry about skipping rounds from machine guns and suchlike, too, but they don't have 250 km ranges.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
ok - its a really nifty gun
that much i will agree with
but, just for thought...
take half the money, no, a third of the money we will spend on this and use it to build farms and houses for the people we are bombing back to the stone age...or clean up the nightmare that is africa right now...or south america...etc...
might be even more effective than a big gun, in some respects. the best war is the one you never have to fight...
now don't get me wrong - I'm not blind to the realities of the modern world, but i feel the biggest kids on the block should also be the nicest, and you have to admit that a lot of the aid we give out now just comes back into our economy as weapons purchases, which doesn't really help the situation imho...
just my 2 yen, ymmv...
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
"...everyone has known that if war actually sparked between the Koreas, Seoul would be levelled and there is little the US could do to stop it.."
Really? That memo must not have reached me. We managed to stop it the last time. I see no reason that we couldn't stop it now (unless we didn't want to). We are certainly better prepared. Heck, the North Korean army collapsed after we counter attacked (before the Chinese intervened) during the Korean war. Whether the South Korean's are any more effective at fighting...heck if I know...
I do believe the US supports the reunification of the penninsula in a peaceful manner. That hardly makes the US an aggressor-after all North Korea did invade South Korea and technically we are not at peace with North Korea (US, China, North Korea signed only an armistice not a peace agreement). After all, we don't regularly send troops into North Korea (the same cannot be said of NK sending troops/spies into SK). The ultimate outcome of the situation really depends on decisions made by North Korea (the actual aggressor in the situation).
The reason I brought up the number of people who died has nothing to do with body count, it has to do with guts and sheer determination as a society. Say the first 5 times a space launch was attempted, all personel on board had died. Do you honestly think the US space program would have continued as rapidly?
Dying while trying to cross the Atlantic was commonplace and a well known risk. If you were going on the voyage, chances were greatert han 50/50 you were never coming back. But people did it anywas.
Actually, the North did overrun Seoul in the early days of the Korean War, and came dangerously close to sweeping the entire length of the peninsula. Rapid reinforcements stemmed the invasion--and the subsequent landing at Inchon forced the North into headlong retreat. Then the Chinese intervened, yadda yadda yadda.
[Giggle]
Evidently you weren't paying attention during, oh, say, the first Gulf War. When the world's press was saying that the U.S. was sending inexperienced American kids against the battle-hardened Iraqis, the fourth-largest army in the world, and easily the best-armed of the Soviet client states. Saddam Hussein's PR types were telling everybody about their prepared "killing fields" which they would flood with oil and ignite--burning the American tank crews as they advanced. Practically every military analyst assured viewers or readers that the Iraqis were tough, motivated, well-armed, and had spent 10 long years in continuous combat against maniacal forces from Iran. Newspapers surveyed their readers about how they'd react to casualty counts of 10,000, 20,000, or more.
The war was, well, rather anti-climactic. The killing fields? The bunkers that controlled them were flattened by Fuel Air Explosives (FAE) that put more pressure per square inch on their targets than did the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Haven't heard any Americans talk about nuclear weapons in a decade or two? FAEs are one of the reasons why. All the destruction, none of the politics.)
The debut of the previously-unheard of F-117 completely changed the order of battle over Baghdad--and the use of laser- and video-guided weapons for precision bombing changed the world's perception of air power. And while a battleship launched in the 1940s may not be "new tech"--it's fire control and fire guidance systems were sufficiently new tech that Iraqi soldiers were videotaped surrendering to the spotter drone. (They figured out quickly that when the spotter drone appeared, 16-inch shells [weighing more than your car] would soon follow.)
And let's forget that the actual tank combat was completely assymetrical, because the Iraqis used roads, while the Americans used GPS--and appeared out of nowhere on the Iraqis flank.
Bosnia?
Perhaps you weren't old enough to remember Bosnia--where U.S. technology was so overpowering that there was no need to put U.S. troops on the ground. It was only after NATO was replaced by U.N. "peacekeepers" that the atrocities began--the Serbs figured out very, very early that they did not want to fsck with the U.S. Air Force. (The Air Force staged a little atrocity of their very own--using bombing, missiles, and close air attack to drive the Serbs into a very small area--which they carpet-bombed from B-52s.)
Those who know the North Koreans best (including leaders in the South Korean government who have repeated this views in my hearing) believe that they have--at best--an altered view of reality. But even the NK military leaders do not believe they can take on the U.S. That's why they have insisted on negotiating with the U.S., not the South, for decades. It has only been in the past few years, as the North has so clearly collapsed economically, that they have finally begun direct talks with the South. And the nature of the talks is one of mercy and kindness extended by a wealthy elder to a starving peasant--not the dialogue of equals.
The ultimate high-tech American weapon, of course...
...is the Internet. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Defense, the Internet has had, and is having, a radical effect on people around the world. And it is achieving the highest and best aim of any weapon--it prevents potential adversaries from going to war. The more we know about each other--and the more people can learn about their country from sources other than the official government news agency, the more the dictators tremble. Note carefully those regimes that are most opposed to participatory democracy--mainland China, Saudi Arab
The bottom line is that the only times in the last forty years the US has fought a serious military adversary - Vietnam and Bosnia - much of the high tech that was promoted as being decisive failed.
Gulf Wars 1 and 2?
I don't think it's fair to call Serbian militia a serious military adversary yet not classify the Special Republican Guard the same way.
Three words. Fuel Air Explosive. Combine that with some area denial mines.
/. a little while back about a land based laser system designed to deny artillery?
Or go about it another way: Take out the military command or the communications. Chances are the north koreans aren't very battle ready. If a surprise attack is launched, we could probably take out a good chunk of the artillery.
And, hey, didn't I read on
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Like trying to use the courts to ignore florida law
If by "ignore" you mean "enforce", then yes.
while hand picking certain counties for a hand recount
If you only have a limited amount of time to do recounts, doesn't it make sense to do them in counties with the highest degree of error?
lso include marks that were somewere close to the spot were gore's punch would have been
Its a well known, well documented flaw that as the paper punch machines fill up with chads, you can't punch all the way through, or even partially through.
Gores camp also tried to get service mens and other absentie ballots that were from overseas thrown out becuase they were typically republican friendly. Again florida law allowed for them to come in up to 10 d ays late if the post mark was before the deadline
No, they were trying to get ballots thrown out that were illegally cast AFTER the deadline. Which you seem to have mistakenly blamed on Gore for some reason. And they didn't argue this point remotely close to what right-wingers believe, as they were arguing "every vote should count" at the time.
changing the rules to selectivly influence the outcome
The courts found with the right to vote must come for the right for that to be counted, which means that of course different voting systems are going to have different methods.
Now there is the race card. The gore camp tried to pull out the division and sympathy of the masses by making statments that the minorities like black were disenfranchised from the proccess.
Uh, maybe because they were and this is undisputed fact? Aside from the voter intimidation that you (barely) acknowledged, of the bad voter scrub lists, half of them were minorities. As far as being not "wide spread" enough, less than 600 votes the other way would have swung the election.
ne of thier primary claims was that because police officers would sit in the middle of the road and watch trafic, black's and other democrate friendly minorities were afraid to goto the polls.
Oh, and asking for id. Oh, and not having enough polling stations. Oh, and closing them early. Nope, no problems there.
Records showed that these police cars sat in those locations on regular basis years before the elections debacle happend.
Of course, they were trying to meet their quota's for DWB tickets.
If gore fealt he was rite and should have won the election, after the supream court ruled that "you can't change the rules of the election midstream to benefit one person over the other" he should have petitioned the congress of the untited states.
Oh? Considering how much the media was buying the Republican spin that we had to resolve this now, not question the result, and hurry up and swear Bush into office? And may I remind you that Congress was under Republican control at the time. Yeah, great idea you have there, Sparky.
Most of the neocon's bitching about Gore can be summed up as: you bitch as if the Gore team was doing the recounts, not the state of Florida. Well obviously he wasn't, you your points are pretty much moot.
This didn't happen because Gore knew he was beat fair and square and with a more public investiugation that would have included public hearings as well as other investigation stuff, he would have looked foolish as well as fraudulent.
Thats so funny I almost shit my pants. Hello, thousands of mostly Democratic voters denied their right to vote by the Florida Secretary of State, who just happened to be Bush's campaign manager? If thats "fair and square" you need to have your head examined. And, if recounts were only done in the punch card ballot counties, yes Bush still would have won. But if a full statewide recount had been completed, as according to Florida law, Gore would have won the popular vote AND the electoral vote, and we'd have a different president.
you mean highest degree of probability for votes going your way. Thats the way it was being reported in the news before the counties/districs were challenged and that is the way it was reported after it. Also it was only one district being counted untill the numbers started looking like they were favoring bush, then more were added to the requested recount.
Umm no, It was specifically votes casted by the service members of our overseas military that had thier votes cast and mailed acording to the letter of the law and were sent in before the election day took place. The military postal service took too long to get them to the right place. Florida has made exceptions in the past about this and was doing it the verry same year GORE tried to stop it. There was somethign of the order of a 10 day delay, The court ruled that because the ballets were postmarked they must be excepted even though floida didn't have a law specificaly dealing with it. GORE was arguing EVERY VOTE FOR HIM should count.
yep not a problem there.. As a fact there was a problem and the clinton administrations own justice department said this happend but it was so wide spread that it didn't isolate anyone based on race, color, political leanings, or any of that stuff.. In casde you don't understand, this means that everyone was effected and just as many votes for bush was hampered as there were for gore. If it was really an issue there would have been a citation over it but there wasn't and NO subsecant law suites were filed because of it.
The congress was a 50-50 split at the time of the elections. With the history of the republicans bowing to public presure after the senate trial of the impeached bill clinton and the fact that if it was a specific party line vote, al gore "president pro temper" would have cast the deciding vote on it. Gore didn't challenge it to that level because he knew he was in the wrong. It is that simple.
OF course there was pressure to get it over with, there are deadlines in place that each president elect needs to keep in order to ensure a smooth transaction into office. This system was in jeapordy and some would argue made new president less capable if dealing with issues effecting the country like the colapsing economy clinton passed onto bush (before you start crying fowl, look at the stock drops, it supports it)
The point is as much moot as your point about gore being the winner. It was a close election, both sides did things it thought was right, some were backed up by courts of law and the laws of the land while other werent.