Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: StarOfAfrica2 on January 23, 2007, 12:51:25 AM
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The prototype is 8 MEGAjoules, whereas the functional gun they will have delivered for testing next will be 64 freakin megajoules. As a comparison, current navy guns deliver about the equivalent of a 9 megajoule gun in muzzle energy.
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/012007/01172007/251373
I'd imagine the thermal image on these badboys will make em glow like a beacon at night to anything with IR sensing capability, and it'd surely need a nuke powerplant to fire the dang thing. In return though there's not armor made that could stand up to one of these babys. It'd punch a hole in the most heavily armored battleship through and through with no prolem.
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Star, what's the ideal target for such a weapon, and what can it be used for on the less than ideal side?
hap
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Heck, with this bad-boy (the 65Mju) you could bombard targets 250 miles inland.
Looks like any target you would use a cruise missile against could be hit at a fraction of the cost and reduced response time as well.
Saw no mention of recovery time to fire another projectile. But I bet it would be low. Many projectiles in a short time could produce a withering rain of hyper-sonic projectiles.
I thought this quite astounding:
Quote:
"At the peak of its ballistic trajectory, the projectile will reach an altitude of 500,000 feet, or about 95 miles, actually exiting the Earth's atmosphere."
Whoah! Thats some hefty kinetic energy there, bucky! :eek:
Nice read, Star. :aok
Regards,
Sun
(Woot! Post 400!:rolleyes: )
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But wouldn't an entirely ballistic projectile be subject to winds and other things?
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A railgun.... Cool
Man this was the stuff of SCI FI when I was a kid
now all we need is for the USAF to build the aluminum falcon...
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hmm,,
I wonder if this technology will make it in the army to be used with howizters or maybe tanks....
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i bet if it wasn't half a mile long, they'd have shown a pix of it
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Here's something I wrote here two years ago on the same subject:
Another use of railguns that I anticipate is anti-aircraft.
Modern aircraft can detect missiles a few different ways. If the missile is radar homing, it's easy, but even infrared homing missiles can be detected because of the rocket plume.
Imagine this, put an infrared or image tracking seeker and warhead on a rail-gun launched projectile and fire it. A current day fighter would be defenseless against it because it doesn't know it's being fired on. There's no plume warning, no smoke trail for the pilot to see, nada.
I'm betting this technology will also show up in main battle tanks. 30 years from now, I predict that the MBT of the US military will mount a railgun, will perform both anti-armor AND artillery roles, and each tank will be part of a battlefield network that uses distributed sensors to also perform anti-aircraft roles.
Imagine you have fifty of these tanks in a battlefield. Any that are at the front are guns down, taking out armor and defensive positions with direct fire. They can fire hundreds of shots because they're using inert railgun rounds that are tiny compared to modern projectiles (which are huge because they carry their propellent). Any tanks that are more then a few miles behind the current front can be both artillery to hit targets that are out of reach (eg, behind a mountain) of direct fire. All other tanks can be part of an autonomous 'No fly zone' enforcement that fire guided anti-aircraft munitions at targets flying anywhere from NOE to tens of thousands of feet up.
Since this is a pretty straightforward extrapolation based on current trends, I think this is another reason why manned aircraft will be exiting the battlefield of the future. Your standard $50 million fighter will be replaced by 100 $500K fighter drones. Instead of mega planes that dominate everything from angels 30, you'll have hundreds of NOE drones that will dart around, over, and under landscape features and fight it out at 30 feet. Anything else will be easy pickings for the integrated fighting net.
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That thing does leave a smoke trail Chairboy but I've no idea if it's for the duration of the flight.
Exhibit A:
(http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/012007/01172007/missile2)
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Have they ever tested/developed any missile using stealth technolgy?
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I remember several months ago someone had a thread up about the navy investigating the use of railguns as the new weapon of choice, and how they didnt think it was feasible. I thought it was really cool that they've managed to push the technology this far. I mean, the basic gun itself has been possible for a long time, we've even had nuclear powered ships available that could run one. Getting a proper control system and making the package small enough to be do-able in the real world, as well as cooling the gun have been the biggest things holding it back. The army all but gave up on railgun research because they couldnt make it small enough. Ships though are the perfect platform for this. With the range of the higher powered gun, a ship could stand off the coast of a hostile landmass and reach 10 times the range of the old 16 inch Mk. 7 guns the Iowa class battleships and less collateral damage. Also figure that for most operations, they dont have to use even conventional explosive warheads, the kinetic energy of the "bullet" from the railgun is enough to do alot of damage. With good enough cooling, rate of fire would be limited only by how fast you could get the next projectile in place and build up the charge to fire the gun. Only limiting factor I can see is the power supply. Even a nuclear reactor cant put out infinite amounts of energy, and 64 megajoules is alot of umph. Even if size isnt a factor, how many such guns could say a destroyer pack and expect to fire? Then you have to figure nuclear powered navys armed with railguns become a new kind of danger. With a projectile that could pierce even the heaviest armor-clad ships through and through, how do you protect the reactor? That has to become the target of choice. Take out the reactor, take out the power for the weapons and take out every living thing on the ship.
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Originally posted by soda72
Have they ever tested/developed any missile using stealth technolgy?
If we tell ya we have to kill ya. ;)
There are passive seekers of course and missiles that are guided by remote active radar.
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Originally posted by soda72
Have they ever tested/developed any missile using stealth technolgy?
The Indian guy who was arrested on Maui last year for selling tech secrets to China was charged with (among other things) helping them develop missiles using B-2 stealth technology. Mainly in materials lists he sold them and low-impact radar design.
Given that, I'd say yes, someone has developed missiles using stealth technology.
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Originally posted by soda72
Have they ever tested/developed any missile using stealth technolgy?
With modern advances in terrain following and no pilot on board to risk, I wonder how much that would actually be necessary for cruise missiles?
btw, here's a 36 megajoule railgun firing. (9 megajoules of KE)
(http://www.powerlabs.org/images/mrailgun.jpg)
The engineering challenges are amazing. Capacitors able to dump that much electricity that fast. Being able to recharge them fast enough... keeping the rails from welding to the projectile. Powerlabs.org has a great section on it.
Powerlabs v2.0 gun, completed
(http://www.powerlabs.org/images/railgunclosed.jpg)
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Originally posted by lukster
That thing does leave a smoke trail Chairboy but I've no idea if it's for the duration of the flight.
Hi Lukster,
Looks like either atmospheric vapor or some ablation because it's traveling so fast. It's nothing compared to the big smoke plume of a modern anti-aircraft missile launching, and I'm pretty sure it'd be essentially invisible at altitude. Also, the missiles might take 20-30 seconds to get up to the flight levels, while a railgun projectile, leaving the barrel at high mach, might take a couple seconds.
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I've also read the the rate of fire on these things can be unbelievably high, restricted only by the limitations of the mechanics of loading the projectiles.
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Originally posted by Chairboy
Hi Lukster,
Looks like either atmospheric vapor or some ablation because it's traveling so fast. It's nothing compared to the big smoke plume of a modern anti-aircraft missile launching, and I'm pretty sure it'd be essentially invisible at altitude. Also, the missiles might take 20-30 seconds to get up to the flight levels, while a railgun projectile, leaving the barrel at high mach, might take a couple seconds.
You may be right but it looks like it has a trailing flame in that pic. Wouldn't be surprising considering it's speed.
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No self respecting military would buy any weapon that doesn't emit flames, it's all about style. :D
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Originally posted by Chairboy
No self respecting military would buy any weapon that doesn't emit flames, it's all about style. :D
:aok
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hear is teh other pix.
(http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/012007/01172007/missile1)
OMG that d00d thinx he gonna catch teh projectile:rofl :rofl :rofl :O :O
usually a boffin that confident aint crazy:noid :noid
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Originally posted by soda72
Have they ever tested/developed any missile using stealth technolgy?
We (Lockheed) have been incorporated stealth features into missiles for years. It's done both to reduce detection ranges, and to minimize the effectiveness of any defensive systems. (ex. Phalanx can't hit what it can't see)
Also, one of the biggest advantages of rail guns over conventional "chemical" guns is the ability to have lower peak accelerations while still having HUGE muzzle velocities. This is a big plus, because conventional guns can produce accelerations over 50,000g's, which is hell on the sensitive electronics which are essential to terminally guided munitions.
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you can make your own rail gun using a yard ruler, some magnets and ball bearings.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by StarOfAfrica2
The prototype is 8 MEGAjoules, whereas the functional gun they will have delivered for testing next will be 64 freakin megajoules. As a comparison, current navy guns deliver about the equivalent of a 9 megajoule gun in muzzle energy.
According to someone on that site a 16 inch naval gun produces 495 Megajoules at the muzzle. 64 don't sound like all that much.
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Instead of volt counting, look at the calculated performance. Any of those guns fire a hypersonic combat slug 200 miles?
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What good is a hypersonic slug at 200 miles? You'd actually have to directly hit the target to do any damage, and I highly doubt the projectile will still be traveling at hypersonic speeds at that range.
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When I was younger the military was experimenting with rail gun tech for use in space against satellites (or anything in the vacuum of space that was a target) & they had a brilliant write up about the challenges the weapon would have to overcome to be effective in the atmosphere. I wish I could recall the source for the article, I want to say it was in Naval proceedings magazine, but I read that often & it may be stuck in my memory as the source when it wasn't.
An electromagnetic gun firing a metal puck is neato & all, but I'm not sure what function it's going to serve that would make it worth more than experimentation. It would be a basis for some future weapon systems when nano-technology catches up I would imagine. A backpack on a soldier full of projectiles, no cases or firing charge to take up space, just the projectiles themselves & a near unlimited rate of fire would be the target destination if I were in charge; good thing I'm not or I'd use unobtainium for everything & the military would end up with nothing probably lol
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if you could get targeting sorted out it would be quite effective.
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What do you mean? The idea is for these rounds to have GPS guidance, what targeting needs to be worked out? It's tried and true tech in artillery, and the plan is to use it here too.
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Originally posted by Chairboy
What do you mean? The idea is for these rounds to have GPS guidance, what targeting needs to be worked out? It's tried and true tech in artillery, and the plan is to use it here too.
Iirc the artillery round that has the GPS guidance is the Excalibur round. Last I heard Excalibur wasn't going to combat units for a while yet. The tests so far have been very positive though. So not exactly tried and true tech just yet, but it's getting close :)
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You need a rapid way of timely communication of targeting info to the round. If you get GPS working or better yet.. a dynamic designator to hit moving targets you have a powerful tool. This is especially true if you can get the ord on target within a few mins instead of hours.
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A buddy of mine's father used to work at Piccatinny Arsenal in NJ. They
specialize in artillery/missile research and development for the US Army.
He told me that they were attempting to mount a railgun system on a
tank chassis before he retired. The interesting thing was that the system
used an alternator powered off the turbine instead of batteries.
The primary advantage of this system is that you didn't have alot of
dangerous potential energy sitting inside the vehicle as you would with
batteries, but the alternator would spool up extremely quickly taking power
off the jet.
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That's facinating stuff.
-Sik