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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.
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."
"Our bottom line is that if we can put millions of joules of energy onto a target, something will happen."
Indeed.
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
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.
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
In other words, it brings a lot to a Real World(TM) battle.
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
Rumor has it that the first draft proposed the use of giant anvils labelled with "ACME"
There is no such thing as an unlimited power expansion for a nation. Any nation.
The Roman Empire was defeated although it reached disproportionate economic and military expansion for its era. Same thing for every single Empire (including Dr.Evil's) through history.
So I'm sorry to break this to my american fellow geeks but the greatest nation of the world can produce as many railguns as it can/wants, the second law of thermodynamics has predicted its downfall upon its conception 300 years ago.
That is alright though, that is quite alright! See how the Germans, French, British have progressed since they abandoned their nationalistic bubble of delusion about Grandieur and Fanifested Destinies and such... (well I don't know about the British, it appears sometimes they haven't gone passed WWII)
The world will be a much safer place, and international peace and cooperation well founded, once USA realizes that there is nothing special about USA after all. It's just a passing moment of history that led to this economic and military growth, that's all.
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
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".