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.
BOOM!
>>equivalent amount of destructive force as a Volkswagen Beetle traveling at 100 mph.<<
Which would be the first VW Bug to actually hit that speed.
(You owe me a keyboard)
That there’s funny.
I assume the mean for the driver of the Beetle.
Me like! Me like!!
Terrestrial “Rods from God”...or should I say Marine?
Cool!
>>equivalent amount of destructive force as a Volkswagen Beetle traveling at 100 mph.<<
I wouldn’t want to stand in front of one, but it doesn’t seem like that would do much damage to a hardened target.
Nonsense. I had one years ago that would do 100MPH no problem.
Good luck with that! No guidance system known to man can handle that acceleration and keep on functioning. Plenty of systems with far lower velocity/acceleration have proven impossible to function after being subjected to high g-forces.
The story said 32 TIMES the force of a beetle doing 100.
beetle traveling at 100 mph 32 times over
I wonder why the odd shape? Did anyone see any info about exactly how fast this thing really is moving? Is it more than 5000 ft/sec?
Railgun slugs are by definition simple chunks of metal. Even if the electronics could handle the acceleration, they’d be fried by the magnetic field. I think what they’re talking about is how the gun is aimed.
HA! My series 3 photon raygun makes that look like a puss.Isn’t that right Commander Spock?
I wonder how long before they start doing rapid fire? I’d like to see them rip off a couple hundred in under a minute.
Turbo drag bugs are pretty quick, very embarrassing to Mustangs and Cameros.
Except take that force and concentrate the impact into an area the size of the round. To put the 32 megajoules in comparison, a .45 only has about 600 joules of kinetic energy. That amount of concentrated energy is staggering.... and that is before the consideration of a rapid succession of these projectiles hitting the same point.
>> “Which would be the first VW Bug to actually hit that speed.” <<
.
Back in the ‘70s I used to do about 120 MPH in one on the sand between Guadalupe and Oceano for the midnight cruise. (engine was somewhat modified)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.