Posted on 02/23/2009 6:46:55 PM PST by Reaganesque
Electromagnetic Railgun: An Innovative Naval Program
What is the electromagnetic railgun? In a word, innovation. This weapons system will bypass the traditional use of chemical propellants or rocket motors for firing projectiles or missiles. Instead, electromagnetic railguns mounted on U.S. naval vessels will use electricity to launch projectiles farther and faster than any ship in today's fleet. When fully operational, the electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) will:
Because of its design, EMRG uses electrical energy to deliver a time-critical strike rather than the chemical agents in warheads and propellants that can place crews and ships in jeopardy. EMRG represents significant advances in Navy and Marine Corps capabilities, extends the range of Marine Corps combat capability and distributed operations, and improves safety aboard sea vessels. The electromagnetic railgun is just one more leap-ahead technology catapulted by scientists at the Office of Naval Research.
A Historic Railgun Moment
The Office of Naval Research made history Jan. 31, 2008, with the muzzle velocity of its electromagnetic railgun at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. Fired at 2,520 meters per second, the shot generated 10.64mj of muzzle energy.
See How It Works
Watch a demonstration and hear from the scientists and military officials behind electromagnetic railgun technology:
Get the FAQ’s: All you need to know about electromagnetic railgun technology
The problems with this are heat, power required, and recharge. It is not ready yet.
A lot of potential in that weapon system if the can get it developed to use on a ship.
Its a wonder the rounds dont burn up from heat at those speeds.
The future? This is an old ongoing project and the article is likely a pitch to make it current to keep Hussein from cutting it from the budget.
You need to watch discover TV more, the work on these things has been going on for years. The discovery demosrtations a couple of years back were something.
the videos links up to free republic, they dont work!
I WANT one!
It would require atleast 1.21 Gigawatts and a flux capacitor.
bttt
and to think I was once impressed by “Dora” the German 800mm
railway gun which had a range of about 23 miles.
Whether or not a rail gun was actually mounted in this aircraft or not, it is a fact that such a weapon was under development by the Germans in this time frame.
Hilter was working on it:http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/DOSTHRA.htm
There’s also reliability - being able to do multiple shots. There’s enormous pressure on the gun to break apart.
It’s a viable technology but it’s not going to be in the field for a long time.
LOL,
Click on the link below the Headline. Then go to the bottom of the page.
Got it, impressive display
The SR-71 spy plane(Also known as the blackbird)officially flew at Mach 3.5, but I've heard people speculate that they flew as fast as Mach 5, and it heated up to it was red hot and even expanded a few feet while doing this in the air and it was made of Titanium. So if they made the projectile out of Titanium or something harder I can see them going that fast.
As far as hitting something that far away and being on target I can't see that being done, but who knows with computers, and the right elevation at that speed who knows you just might hit the target. And I doubt if wind is much of a factor.
Would anybody know how fast the fastest rifle bullet goes in terms of Mach speed.
As far as I know, the fastest production rifle bullet is the .220 Swift, which reaches 4000 feet/second.
Experimental "rifles" (some are smoothbore to reduce friction from the rifling), have reached 5000 fps, sometimes a bit more.
The absolute limit is sonic velocity in the propellant gas.
A light gas gun typically uses hydrogen as the propellant gas and can reach mach 16. The hydrogen is compressed by firing a piston in a traditional naval rifle, and then using the piston to compress the hydrogen. These are laboratory items, and are not suitable for field use.
Because they do not use propellant gases, light rail guns do not have this limitation and can reach much greater velocity.
There’s another big problem: shooting at anything with anything from 200 miles away is only good against motionless targets. The Iowa class ships never had that problem for some reason....
Pull the Iowa class battleships out of mothballs, refit them with nuclear reactors, replace the 16” guns with EMRG’s and GO TO TOWN! By using large banks of capacitors to store energy that can be discharged quickly, the power plant can be run at near max capacity to recharge them quickly.
I believe the material of choice is tungsten.
Mach 5 for a railgun is relatively slow. I have heard of Mach 18 in a proof of principle gun. At those speeds, you can shoot things into orbit. Think how much cheaper space flight will be when we can shoot building materials, fuel, water, and food into orbit at a few dollars per pound.
On a warship there is sufficient power. Problem is the projectile leaves a carbon coat in the gun. After five or more firings, the barrel has to be cleaned.
With railguns, they could probably remove the triple guns from the turrets, put a single railgun set in each turret, with the concomitant array of capacitors, and run the whole thing off of a bunch of 688-class sub reactors. Such ships wouldn’t have to be able to maneuver like a corvette or destroyer, since they’re essentially floating gun emplacements. Put in the latest generation of CIWS, some surface-to-air missile systems, and keep all the BOFORS emplacements for close-in suicide boat interdiction.
The only problem I can see with this system is that it will be expected to work in a saltwater-heavy environment, and saltwater is a great way to let electricity go lots of places you don’t want it to be. It won’t be like an electric propulsion system either; the firing path has exposed electrical components just by the nature of the device.
See great movie lines from “Back to the Future”
Click the link.
Correct. Good idea and very promising...but research has been going on since 70's.
Article sort of like the global warming science crowd's strategy for securing or continuing funding.
WWII one turret (gun mount) COULD keep fighting after damage.
Now? ONE hit will put a destroyer-size ship out of action. In EVERY combat action since Korea, EVERY destroyer or cruiser size ship that has been hit by ANY weapon has lost either: propulsion, weapon guidance, power, or hull integrity after the FIRST explosion.
NONE has been able to continue in action.
Which is why I think directed-energy weapons for defense (and viable anti-torpedo defense) is a higher priority than the railgun.
Well that's nothing really new, I think in the Civil War they cleaned the cannon barrels after each shot except maybe when the enemy was really to close. And most good teams could get off about 4 shots per minute. Of course a cannon in the Civil War is a hell of a lot smaller then a modern day warship cannon I would image they would take a while to clean.
ONR = Office of No Results
Seriously, the technology has a long way to go. The projectile has serious heating issues that make it a materials problem...
Was it sopposed to be a wallpaper of Docs? LOL
Yeah, if you’ve got your speakers turned on it also loops Doc screaming “I.21 Gigawatts? 1.21 Gigawatts?” and Marty saying “What the h*ll is a gigawatt?”
The Navy appears to be looking for some sort of a yuppie thing to replace all of the battleships and LSR’s which used to cover invasions in WW-II. God help us if we ever have to take an island again.
Nice!
thanks, bfl
Maybe we can get some help from the Asgard ;).
ping!
Interesting. Although, I will say, the preferred defense, currently, against go-fast is NLOS-LS.
One nice thing about having a two hundred-mile range is that you can sit one hundred miles off the enemy coast and hit targets one hundred miles inland. If the bad guys manage to launch a shore-based anti-ship missile at you, it will take almost five minutes for a Mach 2 cruise missile to reach you, giving your defensive systems plenty of time to blow them out of the sky.
Yup, an old rice bowl trick.
Count on this being cut, along with a couple 2 or 3 carrier battle groups.
More if Bwarny Fwank gets his digs.
I agree, they were playing around with this idea when I was in...
Still, it is a neat concept...
Sometimes I wish I could just get pinpoint accuracy myself at just 200 meters...;-)
I do pretty good anyway...hehehe
My dental hygenist, she asks me everytime if I have been fluxing...
I kinda wink, because she is pretty cute...
“Yeah, sure I have.”
They are designing the DDX, next generation of destroyer, with rail guns in mind.
“It would require atleast 1.21 Gigawatts and a flux capacitor.”
Ahh a flux capacitor. Depending on the model, typical leftovers from the chow hall could be used to power it.
This would save on food and packaging disposal costs, hence bring down the deficit.
At altitude and speed, the lead sled’s length expanded
by eleven inches. Plus, all the fuel tanks leaked until
they expanded from the heat. You could burn your hand
if placed on the wind screen.
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