World's Most Powerful Rail Gun Delivered to US Navy

An anonymous reader writes "The world's most powerful functional rail gun capable of accelerating projectiles up to Mach 8 has been delivered to the Navy. The new rail gun is a 32-megajoule Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun. The Navy eventually hopes to have 64-megajoule ship mounted rail guns. 'The lab version doesn't look particularly menacing -- more like a long, belt-fed airport screening device than like a futuristic cannon -- but the system will fire rounds at up to Mach 8, drawing on tremendous amounts of electricity to generate the current for each test shot. That, of course, is the problem with rail guns: Like lasers, they're out of step with modern-day generators and capacitors. Eight and 9-megajoule rail guns have been fired before, but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation.'"

Comments

How silly

[JesseL]

An effective military rail gun would need a huge vessel to carry the capacitor bank and a nuclear power station to make a rail gun practical. Where is the Navy going to get something like that?

Oh wait...

Re:How silly

[Ramble]

They added energy weapons to the Enterprise ages ago, they call them phasers.

Re:How silly

[Baddas]

Wait wait, are we talking a simple flesh wound here? Or like, a through and through to the calf? Because it might be worth it. Did it hurt when they shot you?

Re:How silly

[LeafOnTheWind]

I'm afraid you're misinformed: the USS Enterprise is equipped with a single power generator - a deuterium matter-antimatter power plant. In addition, while the Enterprise does employ a variety of energy weapons, including a full bank of 12 phaser arrays, the primary purpose of the warp core is to provide the energy for warp-speed interstellar travel.

Re:How silly

[Duhavid]

"Everything beyond that is classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have to shoot you."

You have it backwards! Shoot them first, then tell them.

And to optimize this, you can remove the 'nop', and just shoot them.

I mean, telling them and shooting them is not good, unless they
support transactions. ACID and all that.

Re:How silly

[AKAImBatman]

*cough* cole.... *cough*

*cough* harbor... *cough*

Beowulf?

[iceyone]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

Obligatory

[DeadDecoy]

They need to attach some focal confirmation for when you hit the target:
Headshot!

1.21 gigawatts

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know when the flux capacitors get fully charged...

Oblig

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

A spokesman for the Iranian Navy was reported as saying ..."Camping faggots!"

Newton

[dorix]

It's also capable of propelling ships in reverse at speeds of up to Mach 3.

Re:Newton

[clarkkent09]

Projectile weight = few pounds. Ship weight = 50,000 tons. I think the ship will win

Re:Newton

[agent_blue]

Rail guns do not work that way! Good Night!

What are they launching again?

[koa]

As far as I can tell- the article mentions nothing about the types of ammunition they fire with this- however upon closer inspection,
  I may have found a clue:

"Installation of the laboratory launcher is currently under way"

Seems like a waste of some perfectly good laboratories!

Re:What are they launching again?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just a cover-up. The production model is going to launch lavatories, but since that's biological warfare, they can't just call it what it is.

Can it be carried in a backpack?

[ross.w]

and what colour trail did the Navy pick?

Re:Fusion Power...here we come

[kabocox]

The REAL reason Fusion power will be perfected...so the Generals can fire their fancy guns more than a few times an hour.

Non-solar fusion won't produce that much energy any time soon. What we need is serious solar energy collection; I'm talking about solar powered orbital microwave death rays. That's how to properly power your death dealing toys. With a proper number of death rays, you should be able to fry any acre of land on the globe fairly easily. It's assumed that frying the land will kill off all enemy soldiers, peasants, and nature lovers that may be hiding there.

I've got Wood

[cthulu_mt]

God, this is why I love being an American.

Bill Gates was heard to comment...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one needs more than a 64-megajoule rail gun.

Re:Wave Motion Gun

[robvs68]

I hope that the Navy's new Rail Gun doesn't require a brief but critical period to charge before firing, and I hope that is does not require all non-essential power systems to be deactivated, leaving the ship powerless and adrift for a short time after firing... (wiki)

Re:Fusion Power...here we come

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, good then. We already have hydrogen bombs, which use nuclear fusion to boost a typical fission bomb. On to power!

Re:I miss the days of gunpowder

[Monokeros]

That clearly depends on how awesomely you want to kill them.

Re:Einstein on rail guns

[xleeko]

I don't know if World War III will be fought with railguns or belt-fed airport screening devices, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

No, no ... you got the quote all wrong.

"World War III will be fought with radioactive Monkey-Snake Hybrids, World War IV will be fought with watermelons and trebuchets, World War V will be fought with intelligent berzerker cheeses, and World War VI will be fought with sticks and stones ... the size of planets!"

The US military measures the power of it's weapons

[Colin Smith]

By the size of the bits of canvas left after they hit the tents.

Respawn...

[Misch]

The editor who posted this was fragged with the BFG, but respawned this article a few days later.

Re:Space Gun

[Muirisara]

Um... OK, Doc Ruby on Rail Guns. :P

Re:uh, wrong. please check your math.

[baldass_newbie]

I have no idea how an "advanced" arresting gear differs from a "regular" arresting gear. i.e. The navy isn't saying. It's just... advanced.

These go to 11.

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Anonymous Cowpat]

well, a simple mis-application of Fleming's left-hand rule could result in anyone standing directly behind the gun from getting a fairly substantial hole put in them. That could go wrong.

Re:I miss the days of gunpowder

[Alsee]

The videogame generation has grown up and become our military and our engineers.
Putting a bullet through someone's chest is the black-and-white-TV of fatality moves.

-

Re:whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[IndustrialComplex]

Of course, I imagine it would also take a hell of a lot of genetically modified mosquitos to scare the cat, too.


I find that one extraordinarily large genetically modified mosquito works as well.