US Navy Tests Supersonic Heavy Gun Firing Magnetically-Propelled Shells @ Mach 7

Reaganite Republican ^ | March 2, 2012 | Reaganite Republican

[Reaganite Republican]

'a game-changer'

British multinational BAE Systems has developed a functioning prototype of a new artillery piece for the US Navy's testing purposes, and what it does is propel a specially-designed shell to high supersonic velocities (cca 5600 mph) via powerful magnetic rails. At Mach 7, the projectile arrives almost three times as fast as the Navy's current big guns can deliver one, and at an astonishing range of 50-100 nautical miles (!) The new technology is now undergoing testing in Virginia.

Considering that today's naval artillery can reach only about
15 mi -and that long-range cruise missiles poke-along at a leisurely 550mph- it's easy to see how the daunting new weapon is already being called 'a game-changer'. Other uses quickly come to mind, such as the land, air, of sea based missile-defense systems for which it seems manifestly suited: paired to real-time drone/satellite intelligence and laser-guidance, there's not much a handful of these couldn't stop.

Some experts feel the new gun wouldn't even need to employ explosive shells, as a 40' chunk of metal arriving at over five thousand miles per hour should obliterate pretty much anything that happens to be sitting on Point B:

The USN has already spent seven years and $200M+ on development, with further funding still at the whim of the current US administration, be it a new Republican WH or -heaven forbid- another 4 years of steep decline under the Obammunists. 

A second variation on the theme is about to be delivered to the Navy by competing contractor General Atomics. , and while the (first) BAE gun seems to be performing well as a weapon, residual engineering challenges mostly concern building practical durability into such a mind-bogglingly powerful device... a task that is likely to take a few more years. Various cooling systems are being experimented with at this point in the development cycle, the goal being a capability of 10 rounds/min without melting the hyper-stressed barrel... at a range of up to 

200 nautical miles (!)

This of course comes at a perfect time for the US, as China seems determined to build a blue-water navy to challenge American naval supremacy, missile proliferation continues to run rampant, and the Iranian Navy -as always- could use a sinkin.

Yet hard to believe Obama hasn't tried to cancel this thing yet-

so noisy, unpleasant, polluting, and just mean... who needs that

Video/graphics/more at Reaganite Republican

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British Forces News   The Telegraph   LiveLeak    Fellowship of the Minds

[GingisK]

I am probably wrong, but I didn’t think rail guns had any recoil.

Yep, you are wrong. The laws of motion are not changed just because you choose a different motive force.

[agere_contra]

Because of the length of the weapon I guess it would be a spinal-mounted rail-gun (it wouldn’t be turreted, you would turn the whole ship to aim it).

The whole ship would basically be engineered as a single piece of ocean-going artillery to absorb the humongous recoil.

Sucks for the crew with quarters near the muzzle. Every six seconds you get woken up by a sound like Mt Pinatubo erupting.

[Erasmus]

Could you imagine a version that would splinter into hundreds of thousands of shards at about a half mile above a group of ships?

Unfortunately, a shard with, say, only a KG of mass would lose much of its kinetic energy in a half mile through low altitude atmosphere. (How much is difficult to say.) You need big chunks so that the wind resistance doesn't dissipate their energy quickly.

Still, a round could be developed along the lines you propose if the lower total kinetic energy is more than offset by the area coverage. And it wouldn't necessarily have to fragment at a half mile; maybe much closer, thus losing less total kinetic energy.

And the aiming of a single, small, hypervelocity projectile at large distances (> 100 mi) is problematic, which argues further for a fragmentation round for certain target situations.

[lurk]

Newton’s law is still in effect, whether for rail or gunpowder tube. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, the whole platform would absorb the energy.

[bt_dooftlook]

Not exactly; the path of the shell would be a ballistic trajectory, affected by gravity, drag, launch velocity, and launch angle, probably somewhere between 1.5 and 1.9 times the straight line distance between the launcher and the target.

Seems closer to a two-minute flight time...

[MichaelP]

It doesn't matter what force it is... kinetic energy in one direction results in kinetic energy in the opposite direction!

Mike

[Smokin' Joe]

Yet hard to believe Obama hasn't tried to cancel this thing yet-

Why? When he can sell the design to our enemies and then shut down the program here. I'm not sure why he'd need the additional billions it would likely be worth, though, the rake on the current scams the administration is running should be upwards of ten billion--unless he is just an idealogue and working cheap.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“I think he really meant 40 lb projectiles, not 40 foot projectiles. “

I think 40’ is correct. Good pics, etc., at link.

[HamiltonJay]

Ignore my roller coaster analogy, that’s a different technology... but still recoil will be far far less a standard gun would be for equivalent velocities.. of course gunpowder could never reach the full velocities of a rail gun anyway.

[Erasmus]

Because of the length of the weapon I guess it would be a spinal-mounted rail-gun (it wouldn’t be turreted, you would turn the whole ship to aim it).

In that case, they could have a barrel much longer than 10 meters, thus diminishing the peak G's and the peak recoil force, although no decrease in the total recoil impulse.

But the gun would still need to be adjustable in elevation.

[ctdonath2]

1kg to .99c takes 152 billion kilowatt-hours.

[skeeter]

I’ll take your word for it:)

[HamiltonJay]

Hmm an entire ship built around an insanely powerful gun... seems like I've been on this trip before...

[HamiltonJay]

Mike,

The bullet in a standard gun only absorbs so much of energy of the gunpowder, You are right that for the bullet to move at a velocity of so much one direction, at least that much energy must return the other direction, but because with gunpowder, the bullet get all the energy exerted by the gunpowder, the “kick” is greater than simply the kinetic energy by some factor.

In a rail gun, you don’t have the additional forces fo the exploding gunpowder to deal with, so while its still going to have a nice kick, it should be less relatively speaking than a standard gun for equivalent performance.

of course Rail Guns vastly outperform standard guns, so the overall kick is going to be huge, but if you were to stage the rail gun to fire an equivalent projectile at standard cannon velocities its kick would be less.

[HamiltonJay]

That should read the bullet doesn’t get all the energy from the gunpowder.

[Yo-Yo]

1kg to .99c takes 152 billion kilowatt-hours

Hmm. Seems a tad high. It'd take forever to charge the caps. How about to just .98C?

[agere_contra]

Hmm good point about the elevation.

Unlike land-based arty, the ship is bobbing around on water. A keel-mounted weapon would have to be ‘floating’ to a certain extent to deal with roll and pitch. Mobile tank weapons obviously deal with these kinds of problems: but not artillery: and not with the added stress of a 100 or 200 nm range.

I wonder if they could micro-manage liquid ballast (or something) to give the desired slant of firing platform every six seconds.

[Slambat]

“I am probably wrong, but I didn’t think rail guns had any recoil.”

There is recoil. Unless it has it’s own propulsion.

[cpdiii]

How do you “aim” at something that is 200 nautical miles away?Inertial nav or GPS, but the electronics would take a beating by the G forces.

[BerryDingle]

One of it’s original design theories was for the ability to launch from low gravity areas both cargo and space vehicles, such as, from the surface of the moon. In order to test the launch rail on earth, much more power is needed. Another spin-off of this concept is the mag-lift train in Japan.