Rail Gun Delivered to US Navy

[MaxDepth]

Hmmm...checking with Google maps...dammit! I'm within the 220 mile range of Dahlgren, Va.


Time to beef up my tin foil defense shield!

 

[Kindjal]

Originally posted by: DanTMWTMP
I worked with a bunch of others on a technology trade study for a DD-X ship that will employ a rail gun. The main cool thing about these ships is that it will deploy a true all-electric warship. Power systems will all be rerouted to various functions of the ship. As in that wiki article, it's called the IPS (integrated power system). Think of x-wing vs tie-fighter where you would balance power to guns, propulsion, and shields. The new DDX will employ the same system (except shields lol). The entire ship will be using liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductors to route power throughout the ship, and use advanced flywheel-based capacitors to provide instantaneous power to the main rail gun.

For some reason, this paragraph made me think of the Wave Motion gun from Star Blazers.

 

[potato28]

Originally posted by: MaxDepth
Hmmm...checking with Google maps...dammit! I'm within the 220 mile range of Dahlgren, Va.


Time to beef up my tin foil defense shield!

:laugh:

 

[Fenixgoon]

i'd like to know whether the rail slugs contain any explosive charges or not. sure nailing a tank with a giant block of metal works well, but how well does it work for anti infantry fire support and area of effect?

 

[duragezic]

Wow.. someone at school was telling me about this thing a few months ago. I didn't realize it was that close to launch.

I'm starting at BAE after this semester, but not on this kind of cool stuff (hopefully other kinds of cool stuff though)!

 

[Modelworks]

I don't expect a railgun to be used for anything like moving targets or difficult to hit targets.
Its probably best for things like bunkers, stationary command post, etc.
I would think they would continue to use things like the tomahawk missles for targets that are harder to hit. When you consider what the tomahawk missles are now capable of and how stable the platform is, its very hard to beat.

I was in the navy back in 1990's and those missles then were very impressive, even more so now with DSMAC.
Basically a missle that can hit a target based on the photo of that target.
DSMAC can hit within 30 ft of a target 1500 miles away.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: Nyati13

Originally posted by: destrekor

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: ConstipatedVigilante
"What the fuck was that?! No explosion; everything just flew apart! Hey, where's Ahkmed?!"

Over here. And over here. And over there. And a little over there. A little more over that way.

the pure bullet-style projectile is going to limit the effectiveness I'd say, but then again I have no clue how large these projectiles are. Can they be used to bring down hell on troops on a mountain side? At maybe a couple rounds per minute from a single cannon, is it going to be simply hitting individual people? Or aiming for the vehicle, the tank, the building, etc etc? I guess not knowing the projectile size limits my understanding of the usage of this gun system.

Originally posted by: Nyati13

Originally posted by: ConstipatedVigilante
Awesome. I can just imagine the look on the terrorists' faces:

"What the fuck was that?! No explosion; everything just flew apart! Hey, where's Ahkmed?!"

The shell launched will still need an explosive charge to do it's work on the other end. This just replaces the propellant on the firing end, and allows much greater range.

For an equal diameter shell, the terminal velocity would be the same as a normally fired shell.

regular-fired shells can reach Mach 8? and they clearly state "nonexplosive projectiles", and no danger of carrying explosive shells on board the ship.

Yeah, they can claim that all they like, but to get a 200 mile range the shell must travel in a ballistic arc, not line of sight, and to get it to come back down where they want it, it's going to end up moving at about the same impacting velocity as a regular shell. So they will end up needing explosive filler in order to get the job done.
For targets that are within line of sight, solid shells can be used just like tank guns today.

200mi at Mach 7 will be covered in 2 minutes 13 seconds. I'm not sure how long it takes air resistance to bring a small object traveling at Mach 7 down to Mach 6 even, let along any slower. I'm not sure such an object would lose THAT much speed, not in 2 minutes. It might have a slight drop in it's trajectory, but nothing super significant. Well, significant enough to know it and mark it on the weapon's sight/optics, but I don't think it'd be enough to require an arced trajectory, not at 200 miles, that kind of trajectory would probably carry it further. Unless air resistance really kills the projectile's speed so short in flight.

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
i'd like to know whether the rail slugs contain any explosive charges or not. sure nailing a tank with a giant block of metal works well, but how well does it work for anti infantry fire support and area of effect?

imagine a cannonball round (non-explosive) slamming into the side of a hill. That shakes the earth and knocks things around. Now, take on of these things, at the max stated Mach 7 (the nearest to production was what, 2? 4? 3? Which is still quite an impact. Depending on the environment, that could do some devastation to a city street, or knock the enemy off their feet for a moment while nearby troops rush in for the surprise kill?

 

[MegaVovaN]

Railgun is a nice thing (hell I want to build one) but MATERIALS are the problem. Rails need to be replaced every few shots

Come on material engineers, give us material that can withstand huge stress!

 

[everman]

Originally posted by: Nyati13

Originally posted by: ConstipatedVigilante
Awesome. I can just imagine the look on the terrorists' faces:

"What the fuck was that?! No explosion; everything just flew apart! Hey, where's Ahkmed?!"

The shell launched will still need an explosive charge to do it's work on the other end. This just replaces the propellant on the firing end, and allows much greater range.

For an equal diameter shell, the terminal velocity would be the same as a normally fired shell.

Not necessarily. A purely kinetic weapon can be highly destructive, no need for explosives. Think bullets but thousands of times bigger and much faster, obliterates pretty much anything it hits. They've even talked about shooting stuff like big tungsten rods (like a telephone pole size) from orbit.

 

[adairusmc]

Originally posted by: eaj0010
No BFG = Fail

We have had BFG's for a long time.

 

[Exterous]

Originally posted by: adairusmc

Originally posted by: eaj0010
No BFG = Fail

We have had BFG's for a long time.

That would result in quite the impressive kill streak

 

[Imaginer]

This news is great! It also means that possibly in the hopefully near future this railgun concept can be applied to other things such as a space launch catapult mechanism. Or at least to help it alleviate the expenditures in rocket propellant.

 

[TheVrolok]

So cool. 220 mile artillery support. Yikes. What kind of recoil is there?

 

[Pocatello]

Originally posted by: Imaginer
This news is great! It also means that possibly in the hopefully near future this railgun concept can be applied to other things such as a space launch catapult mechanism. Or at least to help it alleviate the expenditures in rocket propellant.

If the idea is used to launch satellites, the satellites will have to withstand extremely high G due to rapid acceleration.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

Originally posted by: djheater
Making This one step closer.

Sweet.

holy crap, i haven't seen a rifts book in 15 years!

 

[narcotic]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
"More to the point, they're cool-sounding, just like lasers. "

maybe they can make a small one, to mount on sharks or bears

Dolphins FTW!

 

[Homerboy]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327205,00.html

updated
BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

 

[TheFirm]

video
here

 

[FoBoT]

i think someone has a rail gun on a dolphin and is destroying the undersea internet cables

 

[Wag]

This is like an episode of Justice League I saw where the villians built a operating rail gun mounted on a satellite in orbit and started launching metors at the Earth.

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: Wag
This is like an episode of Justice League I saw where the villians built a operating rail gun mounted on a satellite in orbit and started launching metors at the Earth.

That will be China's next satellite endeavor.

 

[Jahee]

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction".

What do you think will happen when you accelerate even a 1 gram projectile to Mach 7 in the length of the barrel..?

Besides, theres nothing "cool" about these weapons. Sure the technologies are impressive, but their implementations are very not cool.

 

[Indolent]

Originally posted by: Jahee
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction".

What do you think will happen when you accelerate a projectile to Mach 7 in the length of the barrel..?

Well, if you know the mass of the projectile, you would be able to calculate the reaction forces and design the gun and it's supports to withstand these forces.

Is there something else you're trying to point out with your comment?

 

[BeauJangles]

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon
i'd like to know whether the rail slugs contain any explosive charges or not. sure nailing a tank with a giant block of metal works well, but how well does it work for anti infantry fire support and area of effect?

I'm pretty sure that to hit soft targets, the round will have a small explosive charge in it, which will cause the round to explode into thousands of pieces before impact... think birdshot in a shotgun.

 

[Kelvrick]

Wonder what it'd be like replace the fuse for one of those.