Posted on 02/28/2012 8:40:36 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Navy fires up fully-weaponized railgun prototype
At the end of last month, the Navy got an early Valentine's Day present in the form of a prototype fully-weaponized naval railgun. And on Tuesday, it released a video of its first shot, which we're officially filing under "things not to get in the way of."
This prototype weapon, developed by BAE Systems, fires inert aluminum slugs out of a 40-foot barrel using nothing but megajoules of raw electricity. The giant gout of flame you see in the picture (below) comes from a combination of about a million amps of energy, the hypersonic speed of the round, and the aluminum in the bullet reacting with the atmosphere.
The ultimate goal here is to fire 10 rounds per minute with 32 megajoules of energy each, sending them between 50 and 100 miles downrange with flawless GPS-guided accuracy, at a speed that's so high that when the rounds hit their target, they'll be carrying the equivalent amount of destructive force as a Volkswagen Beetle traveling at 100 mph.
32 times over.
In the video of the test (YouTube link posted below), you'll notice that the payload (the "bullet") is decidedly not streamlined. We know that Boeing has been developing some mean-looking streamlined railgun rounds, but apparently the Navy doesn't want to use them in these tests for fear of accidentally losing control of one and hitting the White House or something, instead opting for brick-like rounds that don't go nearly as far.
In April, General Atomics will deliver a prototype of their railgun design, "Blitzer," to the Navy so that it'll have two of these monsters to play around with. And by 2017, which is another way of saying a quarter of a billion dollars from now, the Navy might actually be ready to start thinking about deployment.
I would bet the guided accuracy would be based on initial firing, not on continual in flight adjustment like on a missile system. In other words, they would use GPS calculations of the target to feed into the targeting computer. If they could find a way to have continual in-flight adjustments, DARPA has some s*** way beyond anything I could imagine. Calling it GPS-Guided is probably some reporter’s interpretation by not understanding what some technical description meant.
There’s no way you’d be able to manage the heat from that rate of fire.
no kidding. They should call this think the “Atom Gun” because after the real rounds hit something, I think that’s about the biggest piece that will be left.
A nice option til the photon torpedo is available.
It's perfectly technically feasible to have a GPS guided round, and potentially an active seeker for attacking moving targets - was some work during the SDI days on this.
There have been a lot of advancements in solid-state electronics that can survive high-G and magnetic environments.
Never say never. These things will be mounted on ships right? Ships sit on top of a pretty big heat sink if I’m not mistaken.
The gun and all related power systems need to be EMP hardened.
They already make guided rounds for very large guns...as in the gun on an A10 warthog. The nose of the bullet has a ball on it that will swivel to act like a nose mounted rudder. It swivels fast to keep up with the spin of the bullet.
No, the intention is to actually guide the round in flight.
See this Boeing patent on the projectile:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=_1HGAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
Some old work on a BMD railgun projectile from SDI:
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA345781
A-10 Warthogs are beautiful.
Well it’s a trade-off; if the rounds are much smaller and your dumpinng in less power, you can get a higher rate of fire.
But themal management is a huge problem; you won’t be pumping out 32MJ shots to 100 nm at hundreds of rounds a minute, even on a ship.
Key thing is the barrel erosion problems preventing any refiring at all seem to have largely been solved.
We also have the slight problem that we really don’t have a ship to put it on; the DDG 51 Flt III design is horribly cramped and basically filled just by putting the new AMDR radar on; you can get a small railgun on if you delete the 5” and lose a bunch of VLS cells.
Umm, 32 times over. In an area of 25 square inches or so.
Why does it need a special ship? stick it on a barge for now.
I think that if you look at the history of the 5-inch gun, you will find many references to ill-functioning GPS systems.
Eh, a lot of that plasma in that is actually a sign that in that old test the railgun wasn’t quite perfected yet; it comes from rail erosion, arc transition between the barrel and armature, and severe arcing at the muzzle, all of which damge the gun.
Not exactly your average pocket pistol;)
I’m fully aware of the long development saga of the Army Copperhead and Excalibur rounds, and the failure of the Navy’s ERGM and BTERM.
Sometimes things do get figured out eventually. The USN had a UAV ASW helicopter program in the 1960s called DASH - it was a complete falure, 50% crashed within a year or two, and they were replaced with manned helicopters.
Doesn’t mean the Navy shouldn’t be giving it another try today with improved enabling technology.
On the other hand, stuff like the Airborne Laser didn’t work, and there is zero evidence that anything like it will ever work.
” .. for fear of accidentally losing control of one and hitting the White House”
Naval Research Lab?
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