Slashdot Mirror
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.
I just know my archnemesis NoobFragger69 will be camping it the moment it's deployed.
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
2. Nitpick: the term 'DD' generally denotes a Destroyer, not a Frigate ('FF').
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
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
"Our bottom line is that if we can put millions of joules of energy onto a target, something will happen."
Indeed.
I want ships...ships with freakin lasers!
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!
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...
The 250 mile range is the ballistic range: a miss means something near the target gets pulped. The direct-fire range, where a miss could hit something well past the target, is probably only around 30 miles.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
check out voltsamps.com on how to build your own railgun
"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."
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.
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!
Well, considering that we have precision wesapons NOW that are as accurate, and with much greater range (The Tomahawk cruise missile, for one), it's easy to imagine.
What makes this gun so revolutionary is a) safety for the user. No gunpowder to go boom at inconvienent times and b) cost per round. Rather than spend the million+ to fire a Harpoon or SLAM at a target, we can now lob a few shells from this baby at it, at much lower cost.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
For a fictional view of how devastating this could be, see Niven & Pournelles 'Footfall'.
The scary part is that we could do this with current technology. It would just be horribly expensive. But once launched, the owner would have the ability to destroy any selected square meter of the Earth's surface, and there's nothing anyone could do about it (aside from shooting down the satellite).
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
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
Cheaper than missiles. The ammo is smaller, so more can be carried. And since it's a kinetic, non-incendiary (non explosive) weapon, there's less to worry about as far as storing them:
"Captain! They've hit our ammo storage!"
"Not to worry, it may be damaged, but at least the rest of the ship won't be destroyed."
In other words, it brings a lot to a Real World(TM) battle.
A missile has the *disadvantage* that it is slower--it can be shot down. A missile has the *disadvantage* that is self-guided--so the enemy can spoof that guidance and decoy the missile off target. This is easier than spoofing the firing ship because the ship has a lot more room for countermeasures. You mention battleships--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. The problem was never the guns, it was the fact that you had to have a battleship to use them. But a railgun you can put on a frigate--that changes things.
Chris Mattern
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"
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.
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
Conservation of momentum. You cannot blow a projectile into "harmless" bits, because the total momentum of the pieces remains the same. Instead of getting hit by one big projectile, you get hit by a bunch of dust, or vapor, or droplets of liquid metal. The total impact impulse will remain the same.
You also can't just deflect the projectile, because the force applied to deflect the projectile would be equally applied to the deflector device. Even if you did this via a magnetic field, the deflector would suffer damage.
There's simply not much you can do to stop a projectile moving at such velocities.
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.
Rumor has it that the first draft proposed the use of giant anvils labelled with "ACME"
I did.
The advantages of railguns have little to do with their effectiveness. As far as I can tell, they're not remarkably more effective than the guns mounted on naval warships now -- you know, the ones that fire explosive shells. The damage done by a railgun projectile is from the kinetic energy alone. That translates to much safer handling aboard ship. It's most certainly not a WMD, a weapon designed to massacre whole populations. Neither are any of the beam weapons mentioned -- pretty much by definition: beam weapons can only be trained on a single target at a time. And probably not people; that would be a huge waste of energy.
Consider this from the article:
So what's this? You favor the weapons in the current arsenal, where it's extremely difficult to avoid collateral damage and huge losses of life? And you disparage new weapons that allows the Navy to achieve its objectives while avoiding these things as much as possible?So yes, you're a troll.
And the brethren went away edified.
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
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?
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
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
What I meant is that it is much smaller than cannons of comparable power -- of which there really aren't any. Being able to fit something with that much range and power on a destroyer is a big step forward.
A cruise missle isn't really that small -- currently they are fired only from destroyers and cruisers, or large submarines. Each missile is large, having to carry both the fuel and the warhead. While the rail gun itself is larger than a cruise missle and launcher, each rail round is much smaller and much safer since it isn't a mix of high explosives and rocket fuel waiting to be hit by enemy ordinance. And if its speed you want, then the limiting factor is mass, and you can get a lot more rounds for less mass with a rail gun.
I don't see what the distance to the target has to do with its value... Why spend half a million destroying a warehouse when you can use a comparitively free lump of metal?
All in all, I think rail guns are a vastly positive improvement in weapon mobility. I don't see missles as having any advantage, outside of extra range.
The enemies of Democracy are
The projectiles are neither biological nor chemical in nature. They are not made of radioactive materials. They are, in effect, big crowbars.
They will likely be more precise than current artillery shells and even any bomb short of one which is laser guided. In spite of being ballistic projectiles, they are relatively small and have very limited frontal drag, meaning they will tend to stay on course. This means they are less likely to cause collateral damage.
In other words, these things are weapons of war, and not weapons of completely laying waste to a country.
By the way, we've been doing research on stuff like this at ordinary universities all over the country, and the technology is not exactly new, it's just new that the power requirements can reasonably be met. UT Austin has had an incredibly powerful small-projectile (about the size of your hand, but still pretty nasty when fired at about mach 4) railgun for quite some time now, and it can't be the only one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
(Finally, my nick pays off!)
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.
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.
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