U.S. Navy Receives First Industry Built Railgun Prototype

Zothecula writes "Two years after BAE Systems was awarded a US$21 million contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to develop an advanced Electromagnetic Railgun for the U.S. Navy, the company has delivered the first industry-built prototype demonstrator to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren. The prototype launcher is now being prepared for testing which is scheduled to take place in the coming weeks."

Comments

Re:Wow

[mdsolar]

Actually no. The projectile survives. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BfU-wMwL2U

Re:not enough power....

[hAckz0r]

But if they had that much power they would have to be shooting at WWII Japanese aircraft carriers or German panzer tanks, and that war is already over. Why waste the time?

Besides, a link off of the article says "a one-ton vehicle moving at 100 mph equals a megajoule of energy", and therefor 33 Megajoules is clearly over the 88 mph threashold the car needs, and them some. Using electricity the gun you can at least save you on gas. Its just the sudden starts and stops that we need to learn to deal with.

Re:Obsoleting their own fleet?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Truly, if nothing makes a carrier more obsolete is a weapon that can hit one where there will likely be no practical defense. Is any surface ship safe from such a weapon? Yes I know you can definitely pilot an evasive course but you have to know your being attacked before you can do that.

Not sure I see how this will make a carrier obsolete, really.

It's not like a carrier is really worried about 5" shellfire, even at extended ranges - the big missiles with 450+ kg warheads are much more of a problem, really.

However, as to evading fire from such a weapon. At 200 km, and 2500 m/s muzzle speeds, we're talking pretty near two minutes (yes, it loses speed the whole way, so it won't be anywhere near as quick as 200/2.5 travel time) between shot and landing. And our radars can detect a shell-sized object now (that's what counterbattery radar is for, after all), so you have a minute or more to change your projected position by 200 meters - you can manage that without even turning, just speed up/down as needed.

This ignoring the detail that you won't even be able to see the carrier at 200 km without aerial surveillance, and the carrier air group will be doing its best to make sure your aerial surveillance quickly becomes sub-surface surveillance....

Re:Wow

[PPH]

If you've heard it, it means you've survived.

The projectile will arrive before the sound.

Re:WTF submitter?!

[Mashiki]

Sadly most people these days don't know what Janes is. Probably because most people don't follow either the military or gun culture on /. sad but true. Anyway, I keep wondering whether or not railgun tech will be what brings the battleship back into use. I can see scaled down versions of this on cruisers. But if you want to hammer something down from way off shore and cheaply, I don't think anything else beside a large chunk of floating iron will do.

Re:light gas gun

[rahvin112]

The beauty of the railgun and why the Navy is so aggressively pursing them is that explosive based weapons are very dangerous at sea under counter attack. The most secure portion of the ship is often the munitions storage area for this reason as a properly placed round can blow the bottom out of the ship by igniting the munitions stored.

The railgun does away with the whole bit, the munitions are rods of metal and the propellant is electricity. Without all the powder storage you can either dramatically reduce the size of ship and crew or dramatically increase the number of rounds deliverable before restocking. Finally the restocking ships aren't going to be carrying combustible munitions. A round 1/4 the size of the largest battleship guns fired from a railgun will do nearly 100 times the damage.

The goal of the Navy DDX program is ships with 1/4 the crew size, 10 times the firepower and a significant reduction in profile (stealth). Imagine being able to field twice the number of ships for half the cost and a single ship has more firepower than 10 current models.

Re:Comments at TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I did the math. Sufficiently slow acceleration of 3Gs would require a distance of several miles (going from memory here) to achieve 17,000 miles per hour. As much as it sucks, it's still better to put the propulsion system on the vehicle.

Regards,
Jason C. Wells

Re:Comments at TFA

[careysub]

I did the math. Sufficiently slow acceleration of 3Gs would require a distance of several miles (going from memory here) to achieve 17,000 miles per hour. As much as it sucks, it's still better to put the propulsion system on the vehicle.

Regards, Jason C. Wells

It is not possible to put something into orbit using a ground launcher alone. An on-board motor is essential at the very least to circularize the trajectory so that the "orbit" does not intersect the surface of the Earth before completing one revolution. And you lost way to much energy in the lower atmosphere (and create incredible heat loads) trying to ram through it at super-orbital speeds (in fact the G-loading from this deceleration alone will probably be prohibitive for humans).

For Earth-surface launches it could provide a replacement for the first stage - get you above 95%-99% of the atmosphere where rocket engines are most efficient and no longer have to fight lower atmosphere air resistance. This might make a single (rocket) stage to orbit system practical.