The US Navy Wants More Railguns and Lasers, Less Gunpowder

coondoggie writes Speaking before nearly 3,000 attendees at the Naval Future Force Science and Technology EXPO in Washington, D.C., Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert charged his audience to reduce reliance on gunpowder in a wide-ranging speech on the future technological needs of the Navy. "Number one, you've got to get us off gunpowder," said Greenert, noting that Office of Naval Research-supported weapon programs like Laser Weapon System (LaWS) and the electromagnetic railgun are vital to the future force. “Probably the biggest vulnerability of a ship is its magazine—because that’s where all the explosives are." Weapons like LaWS have a virtually unlimited magazine, only constrained by power and cooling capabilities aboard the vessel carrying them. In addition, Greenert noted the added safety for Sailors and Marines that will come from reducing dependency on gunpowder-based munitions.

Comments

Or you could try more Diplomacy?

[miffo.swe]

Why not work on the diplomacy? No country in the world has so much trouble talking to others like the US. Always resorting to violence when someone do not follow their orders. Wars going on directly or by proxy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa and South America and it is just a matter of time until wars are instigated in Asia. Lighting the world on fire sure are a good way of seeing to it that you have to burn gunpowder like there is no tomorrow.

Re:Or you could try more Diplomacy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do not understand diplomacy. It is not about winning it is about balance of power. A trade agreement which is favor of, lets say, the US and the other side must pay, then this will result sooner or later in less respect for the US. In the end they hate the US for being rude and brutal even without weapons. However, this is the diplomacy the US normally does. And often it is not only not in the interest of the other nation, it is also not in the interest of the general population in the US.

All would be much better when the US would be able to learn to be less imperial. And yes, the Chinese try to be the same. That will also not help to have stable world politics.

Have you tried diplomacy with the Jihadists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all humans are created alike

Not all humans are reasonable

Not all humans are sane

Diplomacy works on humans who are (at least) sane. On the other hand, savages such as the Jihadists who recently burnt a Jordanian pilot to death are not interested in diplomacy

I understand that passifists / peace loving / tree hugging / hippie wannabe like you want peace, but let me tell you this one thing - you will only get your peace if others are afraid to mess with you

Re:Have you tried diplomacy with the Jihadists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. If others are afraid of you and feel helpless, they will radicalize themselves and start to terrorize you. This result in so called asymmetric war fare. Societies are normal reasonable and should not be confused with single individuals. However, if a group of people becomes desperate they might use extreme measures. Some of them become normal criminals which obviously do not follow common rules, as they position themselves outside of these rules. With terrorists it is very similar. We have had our share of such processes in Europe. Like ETA, RAF (not the royal air force, the red army fraction), and even the Nazis. And it is the same with IS. True, now you cannot stop them with talks. What you must do is talk to all people who are suppressed our without hope. And support them in being part of humanity again. This reduces the base for IS and it will collapse. The German politicians did so with the RAF in the 1980 resulting in the end of these terror organizations.

Force will not help you to solve conflicts in the long run. And this is the key mistake the US is making over and over again.

ISIS just burned a man alive

[Crashmarik]

Please explain to them your concept of diplomacy.

Re:Lasers are easy to stop

[CrimsonAvenger]

Keep in mind, anything you could hit with a navel gun is even easier to hit with a rail gun.

Apart from targets over the horizon.

Well, no. Railguns, like conventional cannon, fire a projectile that obeys the law of gravity. Which means the trajectory is parabolic for those who are exceptionally dense.

So, yes, railguns can hit targets over the horizon.

Re:Lasers are easy to stop

[Thanshin]

For steel walls 5km away you've got railguns.

The laser is for 1/2" of aluminum flying at mach 3 in your general direction..

Re:If only the UK navy could follow suit

[Xest]

Yep, the exact same arguments were being made about the F-22 and Eurofighter. "Why do we need these high tech planes when all we're doing is bombing mud huts in Afghanistan?".

Those planes look like kind of a good idea now we have Russia flying within miles and sometimes literally outright breaching sovereign NATO airspace again with it's probing patrols in the Baltic, the North Sea, and English channel and with transponders off and no response to communications. We're also finding those mud huts are right in the middle of a high tech Syrian air defence network too.

So it's kind of a good thing we didn't listen to the naysayers and did decide to keep up with our 4.5th gen and 5th gen fighter programs after all.

Some people don't understand that you have a military that's prepared for what might happen, not what is happening or has happened in the past.

Re:Lasers are easy to stop

[CrimsonAvenger]

You do know that the 16" guns on the battleships could fire 15-25 miles (38km max range)?

And that their projectiles were unpowered, right?

And that they still hit the ground/water at the end of their flight, right?

And that the math required to hit a target out of sight of the gun has been well known since before World War-ONE, right?

It was more of a tongue in cheek statement rather than saying it's impossible but cheers anyway.

It's not just not impossible, it's something that's been in use (hitting targets beyond the horizon) for more than a century.

Re:Lasers are easy to stop

[stealth_finger]

Well correct me if I'm wrong but railguns do damage by firing slugs at extremely high speed and using kinetic energy to inflict damage onto the target as opposed to the conventional explosives. If you're sending a railgun slug on the similar arc as a regular shell you're either going to have to shoot it into space so it carries enough energy coming back down or you'll have to send it on a lot flatter arc so it keeps it's energy at impact, but for small target just over the horizon that's going to be harder than a conventional shot. Which is what I said. I made no comment on the possibility or feasibility of it happening.

Re:Lasers are easy to stop

[CrimsonAvenger]

Conventional ships guns...and they have about as much range now as they are ever going to get, everyone is agreed there.

Note the Paris Gun. Used in WW1, effective range 130km (80+ miles), muzzle velocity 1640 m/s (comparable to modern DS rounds).

In other words, everyone doesn't agree. Yes, railguns are better for the purpose, for a lot of reasons. But it's not impossible to build conventional cannon that outrange anything currently in use - it can be done with WW1 technology, after all....

By the by, do you know what the primary advantage of a railgun is? No, it's not super-high muzzle velocity. it's elimination of the powder charge. Since the powder charge for a modern (defined as post-WW1) artillery piece is larger than the projectile, that more than doubles (more than triples for most artillery) your ammo capacity. And that's not even counting the space taken up by the fire-suppression system and armor protecting the powder magazines.