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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."
...and the server already seems to be having problems, it's mirrored here.
The Army reading list
2. Nitpick: the term 'DD' generally denotes a Destroyer, not a Frigate ('FF').
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
check out voltsamps.com on how to build your own railgun
Doh! I looked at the second link, not the first.
Here are some actual other sources. DD(x) Frigate info
Cost of the DD(x) frigate, and rollout schedule
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
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
In other words, it brings a lot to a Real World(TM) battle.
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
It has a few obvious benefits, especially as compared to rockets/missiles:
1: It cannot be tracked in a meaningful amount of time. In other words, because of the comparatively high speed (6 minutes in the air, as compared to 60 minutes or 10 minutes for the ERGM and LRLAP), and significally smaller size (30 inches as compared to 60 inches for an ERGM or 88 inches for an LRLAP) and higher impact force (16.9 MJ as compared to 2.2MJ and 7.8 MJ for the ERGM and LRLAP respectively) the rail cannot be anticipated anywhere nearly as easily.
2: Because of this, it is almost impossible to deflect it/move out of the way.
3: Also, the cost of individual rails will be significantly less than the cost of an individual missile.
"Stumble before you crawl"
name USS Abraham Lincoln
Well, Abraham Lincoln wouldn't be a name for a destroyer. President names are used for Nimitz-class super carriers. In fact, Lincoln is already taken by the CVN-72. I think destroyers take their names from famous Navy personnel.
What was the last major conflict in which the Navy played a significant role?
Err, how about all of them ? Or do you think men and equipment just teleport themselves to the theatre? (The Air Force can't move all that stuff, it's not cost effective and in some cases not possible; think heavy artillery.)
You obviously have no clue.
The article mentions all this. Traditional gas powered navy ships have two sets of turbines, one for propulsion the other for electric. The ships that will be carrying the rails guns will have turbines that power electric motors, the guns, and the rest of the ship. Sounds like it couldn't fire while moving but I doubt they'd really need to.
Additionally, it's a lot cheaper and safer to drop shells on an enemy from 250 miles away than it is to send an aircraft. Even though these shells are ballistic the do have guidance systems that let them control their 'fall'. They should be just as accurate as a cruise missle.
The rate of fire is slower than with traditional artillery(6 per minute), but their time to target is faster. So they can drop the same amount of rounds in a 15 minute engagement.
They won't replace carriers, but may lighten the load for the pilots. If we can take out the radar sites with these before sending in the planes it will save some lives.
Non gratis rodentus anus
RTFPDF. The rounds will likely be guided (by GPS).
Well, here is a quote from the link you gave:
Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, compiled statistics on civilian casualties from media reports and estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians died in the conflict.
Most people would probably consider it fair if you said 6,000. OTOH, I was looking at the other site you included, which puts the number at over 7,000. Either one would be fair.
It should be noted that both of those estimates include people killed by either side in the war too. Since you were replying to a post regarding acceptable losses by American mistakes(such as errant bombs) that's worth mentioning too. I'm not saying you are wrong, just saying that people need the complete story to make their own decisions.
BTW, I checked out your site. You need to either make the url link "www.costasandsandra.com" instead of "costasandsandra.com" or change your DNS a little. Congrats on your wedding. I'm getting married soon too, on Oct 30th.
Frigates are smaller than Destroyers, which are in turn smaller than Cruisers. Each has a different role - frigates are traditionally for convoy defense whereas destroyers are an attack platform.
Frigate != Destroyer
DD, DDG, DD(x) = Destroyer
FF, FFG = Frigate
Sorry to jump on this, but having lived aboard DDG-56 for 3 years, this mistake is akin to me referring to Linux as a program for Windows. Irritating.
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
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.
:-) I was right - I did get modded as a troll too.
Anyway, this amused me:
Because the US does not use their military might to colonize and subjugate other countries.
The US has a long track record of using their military, political, and economic might not to colonize but subjugate other countries. Take for example South Korea.
A few years back South Korea were looking to upgrade their air force, so they put out tenders to potential suppliers. They ended up with out-dated F-15s. This is widely considered by many Koreans to have been a very bad thing, especially when much better planes were on offer from elsewhere for similar amounts of money. However the Korean government was basically cajouled by the US government into going for the F-15 with threats of decreased investment in Korea and "reconsidered" their original decision to opt for a superior plane.
Now when I was told about this I thought "nah, the F-15's a good plane, they've even flown back home with wings blown off", so I investigated further. Sure enough the version of the F-15 that the Korean Air Force bought is quite a bit inferior to the current models, and it was originally their second choice.
Your points though about European imperialism are well taken.
I would say though that asserting that France duped the US into Vietnam doesn't ring true to me. The US jumped into Vietnam, same as it did in Korea, because of the paranoia about the spread of communism.
The Palestine fiasco can of course be directly linked to WWII and imperialism, however it was imperialistic actions of Britain and the USA that lead to the creation of Israel. It's currently the imperialistic attitude of the Israeli government and the virtually unconditional backing of them by the US government that is the root of the current problems. Given their history you would have thought that Israel would treat people better, however they have created a ghetto in their own country, which is eerily similar to what happened to them in Germany.
You are right that many of the problems in the Middle East come from European Imperialism, but they also come from US interference. Remember that Saddam was an ally of the US only a couple of decades ago.
DDX will probably be OK, though. Although the submitter calls it a frigate, she's slated to be around 15,500 tons - deep in heavy cruiser territory if you ask me (about 47% heavier than a Ticonderoga, about in line with a Salem-class CA, which carried either 9 or 12 rapid-cycle 203mm cannon)
;-)
And, with guided rounds, putting a mass-driver slug up the butt of an attacking MiG shouldn't be much harder than plinking it with an SM2-ER (which DDX will also carry, you know, just in case one needs to blow a hole the size of a Chevy in a Kirov-class
The g forces aren't of the same magnitude, from HAARP. With a railgun we are in the neighborhood of
1 Fa ll/Phyx135-2/19/railgun.htm
200,000,000 g's.
http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/200