Navy demonstrates Rail gun

[Ripsnort]

3700 mph when fully developed?!  What is that, like 1 mile per second?!

http://www.onr.navy.mil/newimage/railgunSM.wmv

DAHLGREN, Va. —  A futuristic weapon getting a trial run by the Navy demonstrated its destructive power at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren.

In the demonstration Thursday, engineers fired the electromagnetic railgun at what they said was a record power level: 10 megajoules.

The previous railgun power-use record was about 9 megajoules of muzzle energy.

• Click here to watch video of a railgun being fired.

Railguns use electromagnetic energy to launch projectiles long distances — more than 200 nautical miles.

Because the railgun uses electricity and not gunpowder to fire projectiles, it eliminates the possibility of explosions on ships.

The Navy hopes the railgun will eventually replace the standard 5-inch gun on its ships. The weapon isn't expected to be deployed until at least 2020.

[A joule is defined as the energy needed to produce one watt of electricity for one second.

The railgun tested Thursday actually has a capacity of 32 megajoules, but the Navy is slowly building up the energy level in a series of tests.

That's a lot of power, but with a new series of electrically-powered ships coming on line, the Navy figures generating capacity will not be a problem.

According to the Navy, the railgun, when fully developed, will be able to launch solid projectiles at Mach 5, or about 3,700 mph.]

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[Wolfala]

Just need to figure out how to work the barrel erosion down, and getting some fast discharging capicators in the mix, and shrinking the power requirements so that you don't need to mount them on a battleship just to generate enough power to fire the damn thing.

[Treize69]

BattleTech is coming...

[FrodeMk3]

Originally posted by Wolfala
Just need to figure out how to work the barrel erosion down, and getting some fast discharging capicators in the mix, and shrinking the power requirements so that you don't need to mount them on a battleship just to generate enough power to fire the damn thing.

The railgun does have a lot of potential, potentially exceeding chemical-energy powered slugthrowers'(read:conventional guns) in performane. However, the power supply will be the weak link to it. If a ship takes a powerplant hit, or for some reason can't supply power to ship's systems', the railgun is outta commision. At least the conventional gun can still fire, even if it has to be trained and layed by hand.

[Rino]

Be one heck of a conventional gun firing 200 miles to hit a moving target.  Another plus is that you don't have to store large amounts of explosive and you don't need resupply nearly as often.

     A friend of mine retired from Piccatiny Arsenal a few years back they do alot of artillery type R&D> and the last project he was working on
was a railgun mounted on a tank chassis.

    They were attempting to run an alternator off the turbine engine to
power the weapon.  The plus to this is that you don't have large amounts
of potential energy sitting around inside the tank as with battery power.

     I have no idea if the work panned out or not, but then I don't track
military hardware muc h anyway.

[CptTrips]

They just need to use a Flux Capacitor.

[Rino]

Originally posted by AKWabbit
They just need to use a Flux Capacitor.

88 miles an hour in a tank would be fascinating in it's own right

[Denholm]

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Denholm

Fixed.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by FrodeMk3
The railgun does have a lot of potential, potentially exceeding chemical-energy powered slugthrowers'(read:conventional guns) in performane. However, the power supply will be the weak link to it. If a ship takes a powerplant hit, or for some reason can't supply power to ship's systems', the railgun is outta commision. At least the conventional gun can still fire, even if it has to be trained and layed by hand.

If the ship takes a power plant hit, it won't be tracking anything anyway. Sensors require power also, and not a small amount.

[Chairboy]

And if a rifle gets hit in the trigger, it won't work.  Even if a spear is broken in half, it still remains a reliable weapon, so you'd be FOOLISH to take a rifle over a spear!

[Treize69]

Originally posted by Chairboy
Even if a spear is broken in half, it still remains a reliable weapon

So does a rifle, it just loses a lot of range.

[Sandman]

Well... once the ship loses power, the crew can go out and man up the bolt-action five inch gun.

[Reschke]

They need to work on the discombobulated knueter valve assembly in the thrust bearing block. Any half witted shade tree engineer/physicist knows that is what is wrong and why they can't get the power output where they want it to be.