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The US Navy's Railgun Program
RougeFive writes "Imagine a warship weapon that can launch projectiles at Mach 10 without explosives (more than three times the muzzle speed of an M16 rifle), that has a range of 220 miles and that uses the enormous speed to destroy the target by causing as much damage as a Tomahawk missile. Meet the U.S. Navy's electromagnetic railgun program."
We're going Schwarzenegger on your ass!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Muhahaha, now I can start building my evil empire!
Why is the summary written like we haven't heard about this before.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/11/046205/navy-tests-mach-8-electromagnetic-railgun
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/02/08/152224/us-navy-receives-first-industry-built-railgun-prototype
I recommend Mikoto Misaka.
In and of itself.. this article is very lacking and at face value is old news. We have been developing railguns for a long time. We have the principles down, but the problem comes with the energy needed to really run a weapons effective version.
Even the linked article just referrences an overview of the technology and it's goals. Why not an update... did they make a breakthrough? SOMETHING...
With a range of 220 miles, they'd better be damn sure they don't miss their target.
I suspect that BAE had all it's employees sign on to Slashdot and get this article on the front page.
sudo make me a sandwich
we can have handheld rail guns - quake3arena style.
Say it ain't so!
Hey look Ugg. Your club hurts, but I added a rock to the end of mine. Oh yea, well I have made a thinner club with a pointy edge to it so I can throw it at a distance. Oh yea. I put a sharp stone at the end of it so it will cut into my enemy further (and yes it has hunting applications too).
oh yea. Well I now can launch it with an other stick.
Heck I beat you with a more compact stick on a string.
By the way I have found to put sharper rocks at the end of sticks...
Hey check this out I found out how to melt rocks into this shiny stuff that doesn't shatter like a rock does, and I can grind it to make it sharper.
Yea I took your idea and made mine longer.
Yea, Well mine is sharper and better balanced.
Hey I just came back from China, I found this neat stuff that explodes.
Yea. I found I could make the direction better if I encase it metal that can contain and direct the explosion.
Well mine is bigger.
Well mine is more portable.
Well mine is more accurate.
Well mine can reload faster.
Well mine I can mass produce.
Well my big ones explode more.....
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Imagine a warship weapon that can launch projectiles at Mach 10 without explosives (more than three times the muzzle speed of an M16 rifle), that has a range 220 miles and that uses the enormous speed^H^H^H^H^H 'KINETIC ENERGY' to destroy the target by causing as much damage as a Tomahawk missile. Meet the US Navy's electromagnetic railgun program."
Wonderful! First our video games are on rails. Now our guns are.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
The power source is now a black hole. Oh wait! Skip the gun and throw the black hole at the target.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Schwerer Gustav built rail guns for the Nazis in the late 1930s. Those twin guns weighed about 1,350 tons and could lob 80 centimeter shells weighing 7 tons up to 29 miles. Of course that was using gun powder and this new one uses electromagnets to toss shells 220 miles. Still, it's interesting how little guns in general have changed throughout history.
Since when is M16 shooting bullets at Mach 3?
Articles on these types of "futuristic" technology projects so rarely take the time to explain the challenges involved in making it a viable tool. This article did. That was refreshing.
to eventually launch stuff into space in a clean fashion
those fucktards.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
You missed one MAJOR feature: cost.
New warfare is going to be all about cost. Nations/organizations battling on a ROI factor.
Case in point - Al Qu--whatever. They got a lot of dipshits who will die for Allah or whatever and they're giving the US a run for their money in those shitholes they're fighting in.
The US has all this high tech hardware that's been proven almost useless - the DRONES are being proven USEFULL.
You got a $190,000,000 aircraft? I got a 10 $10,000,000 aircraft that has a BETTER chance of shooting down the entire squadron of the $190M aircraft. You got ONE F-22 and a bunch of F-15s? So? I got 20+ Migs with assholes who'll die at any means to take YOU out.
And live to see another day.
President Eisenhower wasn't so far off (military industrial complex stuff), but he missed the fact of many many very poor people pissed off at the US for various reasons - and they'll die to hurt us.
People don't get it. They don't. Mitt RMoney is a moron. Obama sort of gets it.
""Imagine a warship weapon that can launch projectiles at Mach 10 without explosives..."
Well, that's not counting the railgun itself, I guess.
They tend to fail spectacularly.
and north korea is next!
It was in the movie.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
The rational, and chronologically not so young part of me has to wonder if it's really worth the cost. Can all of the issues with these be overcome and does the cost of doing so make it worth pursuing. Also, the cynical side of me wonders what will happen if we continue with developing this kind of tech. Can it be used to nullify the the "no nukes in space" treaty? Who needs nukes when you can hurl big rocks at an enemy through a mass accelerator. But the young geek side of me thinks these are truly awesome and should be developed. Firing metal slugs would be cheaper than cruise missiles. Plus they would be safer to carry around. Perhaps the tech can be modified for launching satellites cheaply or somehow helping our space program. Or we may need them to arm our moon base against the oncoming alien hoard. Or we can miniaturize them to fit on dolphins, for protection from shark mounted lasers beams.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If I point the rail gun straight up, how high can it launch one of it's projectiles?
No reflection at all about the deep problems that our obsession with inflicting violence on other people has got us into.
If all-holy technology is used to build a bigger, faster something - even if it's a terrifying weapon in the hands of a murderous empire like the US - then slaver over it on Slashdot. Because its about technology, and its about the gunz, and it has to be cool.
Since when US army gives a crap about collateral damage ?
Can't wait until Eve Online nerfs this railgun, too.
And you can only mount 6 of 'em, or 5 and one platform for a guy with a machine gun to stand on to shoot rafts with guys with handguns that get too close. Which you need or the handgun raft will pew pew you while it drags your 100,000-ton battlrship to a halt with a rope and 7.5 hp Evinrude.
Gotta love game "balance" and "rock-paper-scissors" design.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It worked pretty well but it only did 100 damage. A tomahawk probably does more.
Or another Hood? Or new Dreadnoughts?
See the problem? You're just reviving an old paradigma with all its old weaknesses - plus lack of any visual confirmation of hits whatsoever because you're firing way beyond the horizon, plus much longer time of flight due to distance. Accuracy just won't materialize in any way whatever, so you'll end up blanketing an area hoping to hit something sooner or later. If it's a moving target - forget about it.
You can't hit an object 220 miles away surface to surface by firing in a straight line. There's a big ball of rock and water in the way. If you have to fire in a balistic arc, is the high velocity of a rail gun of much use?
It would be more exciting if:
1. The barrel were long enough to keep the G-forces tolerable for humans.
2. The exit of the barrel were angled up.
3. The "projectile" was a spacecraft with an ablative coating that was jetisoned outside the atmosphere.
In other words, it'd be nice if you could get a large ammount of velocity before you even separated from the surface of the planet. Of course I'm sure they're nowhere near that. It might turn out not to be cost effective for humans; but it'd be interesting to see the "space gun" finally come into service for peaceful purposes. Ballistic launch has was big in early sci-fi. The rocket has won so far; but you never know how things might turn.
have known about this technology for quite a while now.
Imagine a warship weapon that can launch projectiles at Mach 10 without explosives
its offtopic but No. just, hell no. Every slashdot story about war-tech needs to have an icon of dick cheney, then perhaps we would begin to understand that every advancement in the american arsenal is diametrically opposed to the idea of technology as a whole, which is to make life better.
imagine a land where violent crime, grinding poverty, intractable inequality, and disease are a part of everyday life. its a nation with a standing debt of around sixteen trillion dollars, and it can think of no better use of its time or limited remaining resources than to invent a superweapon for an enemy that does not exist, to defend the collective interests of a handful of elites.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I would be more interested in ANY home brewed project that can throw a projectile the weight of the bullet in a 5.56 Nato round at the same velocity as that round.
That is 62 grains at 3100 ft/s or for you enlightened beings in the EU 4.02 grams 945.5 m/s
Then an article on how it's been 3D printed. :-D Bonus points if the coils are 3D printed inside the plastic extrusion.
There is no limit on size, I don't care if it uses a 30 farad starwars capacitor bank or coils the size of a farfergnuggen.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I wonder if the technology could be scaled up, so that we could built a gigantic version of one of these on some tall mountain near the equator (for an extra boost from Earth rotation), and shoot stuff into orbit. "Stuff" could include packages of slabs for a proper space station (to be welded together by robots in space), food and water for inhabitants, shielding material, etc. Even if the g forces would be harsh, there is all kinds of stuff that we want to get into space that would easily survive high g forces.
A simple sling system will achieve the necessary projectile speed you want. Set up a 3600rpm motor with the axis vertical. Attach a 2.5 metre long steel bar to the shaft and a counterweight on the other side, or use a 5m long bar mounted in the middle. Put your bullet on the end of the bar with some kind of remote-controlled hold/release device but remember it will be under considerable load from the centripetal forces.
Spin up the motor until it reaches its max rated speed, 3600 rpm. Air resistance etc. will be a problem but a big motor rated at a couple of kW should do the job if the bar is thin or profiled aerodynamically. At that speed the velocity of the end of the rod and the bullet will be about 900 m/s. Release the bullet and it will fly off. Where it goes depends on which point in the rotation you release it.
Note that this would work for any bullet size and weight -- .223, .50 BMG, 20MM cannonshell, 23mm DU penetrator etc. A mechanism to feed a stream of projectiles down the axis of rotation and along the arm into a suitable hold/release "breech" would turn it into a continuous-fire system at a rate of up to 3600 rounds per minute. Assuming a 5m double arm then this rate could be doubled to 7200 rpm.
A gearbox and higher rotational speed would allow the use of a shorter sling arm while maintaining the final projectile velocity although air resistance would become more of a problem.
A gasoline engine could be used to drive the slingshaft if electrical power is not to hand, or it could even be human-powered via pedals for a low-tech Mad Max scenario (possibly with a flywheel attached).
Actually, a huge tank of fossil fuels contains a tremendous amount of energy, this is how the world economy works. When I first read about the naval railguns, 7 or 8 years ago, there was no talk of nuclear propulsion. You need a lot of energy to move the ship in the first place, nuclear or not. The design was for a cruiser or destroyer ship, with electric propulsion. When firing, you divert the huge power that would have gone to the propelers otherwise, and charge the supercapacitor banks.
Doing it from a ship or land based gun will give you problems because the Earth has this curvature, and your hypersonic dart is pretty much going to travel in a straight line. So things that are over the horizon are pretty much out of reach since drilling straight through the Earth is not really practical.
These projectiles will certainly be guided (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/its-experimental-rail-gun-navy-wants-gps-guided-hypersonic-projectiles) with accuracies at least as good as current ICBM systems, and probably as good as existing precision bombing systems like JDAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition) and others. There are plenty of ways to guide a very fast munition that do not require sticking control surfaces out in a hypersonic air stream.
I'm wondering if the accuracy of these things is better or worse than a conventional shell. I'm thinking worse. At first blush one thinks, well it's faster so it must be better since wind velocity is less.
But let's do some calculating. Since this is a kinetic energy weapon you have to fire it at full velocity to achieve the full energy delivery. For any given range that you could hit with a conventional heavy explosive shell the faster to fire it the LONGER it takes to arrive. The reason for that is that you have to fire it increasingly upward to limit the range as you fire it faster. Thus it takes longer and longer to reach the target and the horizontal velocity gets lower and lower. Thus wind has a longer time to act on it.
Additionally the shell is lighter weight and it is going higher in the atmosphere were the wind velocity increases. So this makes the defelction even worse. I suppose at some point this thing gets to negligible atmosphere and it stops getting worse.
But it seems to me that as long as we require the kinetic energy then were stuck with a less accurate system for any conventional shell range. Of course for ranges beyond conventional then this is the only way to get there.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I hurt myself being bored with this post civil war, pre-1900s claptrap.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Muhahaha, now I can start building my evil empire!
I'll build mine cheaper when I get my hand one from Wal-Mart.
I don't care if it's made-in-China, or not.
And btw, Muahahahaha back !!
Another thing who that can kill people who probably didn't have it coming. But hey, THAT'S the shit that's important.
I'm sticking with the Wave Motion Gun.
No good deed goes unpunished.
The electricity has to be conducted to the magnets right? How many shots at such high current ratings can the cabling and metal housing for the machine withstand? I remember seeing threads on homemade railguns, and the problem was that with the higher power ratings the damn muzzle and receiver housing was actually melting O_O
Any word on how they are insulating & cooling this thing?
Conventional weapons, like rifles and shipboard guns, will continue to accellerate a projectile the entire length of the barrel ... at least until the velocity of the project matches that of the expanding gases (which, slow as they expand).
Contrast this to a railgun which does not depend upon expanding gases to provide the force to accellerate the projectile. The projectiles are limited only in their ability to withstand the accelerating forces (which, are electromagnetic in nature - Lorenzian forces) and friction when they exit the barrel of the railgun.
The advantage of a rail gun is that explosives typically aren't needed (but, very high electrical current in a very short pulse) to "fire" the weapon and that an explosive charge is not required by the projectile to do its damage - the damage is inflicted solely by the kinetic energy of the projectile hitting the target.
The disadvantage is that due to the high power that is required, the rails can be warped by the high currents and forces involved and the trajectory of the projectile is flat. This is fine if your weapon is mounted high (so as to see over the horizon) or you can see your target. Conventional projectiles follow a more standard ballistic trajectory (sort of like a parabola that is "scrunched" as the projectile approaches the target (i.e. leaves the barrel and a lesser degree angle than the approach angle towards the target). This may make railguns a bit out of place for typical NGFS (Naval Gun Fire Support) applications.
If you're gonna use THAT much energy, and plan to (are able to) fire more than once, why not just nuke it from orbit?
:)
All funnies aside, seriously though, i love the idea of a rail gun, but all the energy needed to use it once would make it
only reasonably useful if it was MASSIVE, and in an extinction level event.
In my country, we have silos FILLED with conventional arms that are more efficient, and through their development, maintenance and storage,
have a significant bit of our economy locked up. (In the US we need everything more than we need more weapons imo, use it for science