US Navy: Electromagnetic Railgun

[VirusType2]

test firing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bW0UWQh5Lk

* $35 US dollars per shot, compared to a Tomahawk cruise missile, which costs roughly $600,000

* 20-pound slug of aluminum.

* Projectile fired at Mach 8 (8 times the speed of sound).

* 32 megajoules of muzzle energy (this amount of energy is comparable to 32 tons (29,029 kilograms) traveling at 100 miles per hour); potentially capable of 64 megajoules.

* Maximum distance of 100 miles, potentially 200 miles.

* Expected to be deployed on Naval Warships by 2020 to 2025.


The gun has no moving parts or propellants — just a king-sized burst of energy that sends a projectile flying.

The Navy had been working toward a railgun that could fire a 64 megajoule shot, with a range of 200 miles. "I am not as focused on that number today," he said. "We're more interested in getting capability to the fleet sooner."

He said he would like to see a railgun demonstrated at sea by 2018 and deployed on ships in the early 2020s. After that, further research could make the gun even more powerful. He said the project so far has cost about $211 million.

The ultimate goal is to fire the gun at 64 megajoules, making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes. That’s 10 times farther than the Navy’s already-powerful guns can fire, keeping its ships far out of range of enemy anti-ship systems.

Articles:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/12/10/5626100-railgun-shot-heard-round-the-world
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121007437.html
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/10/navy-railgun-shoots-bullets-electromagnet/
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/12/video-navys-mach-8-railgun-obliterates-record/

 

[Remus]

Railguns, defense lasers, C&C Generals is close to becoming real. All they need to do is make an orbital particle cannon, and we're there.

 

[ríomhaire]

Video not available in your county

Obviously the US Navy needs to keep their military secret from Iranians who might look it up on Youtube.

 

[VirusType2]

Video not available in your county

Obviously the US Navy needs to keep their military secret from Iranians who might look it up on Youtube.

Nah, it's not classified. It's just because that video belongs to Fox News.

Shame you can't see the setup of the system, but I found an alternate that shows the firing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BfU-wMwL2U

It actually has no propellant or explosion, most of the noise is just from the sonic boom, and the fire is from the immense ****ing heat of friction, against the air, and against the target.

Also, I found a video of the impact, it seems

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1q_rRicAwI

 

[Darkside55]

$35 US dollars per shot

Mm-mm, now that's cost-effective killing!

 

[VirusType2]

Discovery Channel breaks it down, showing an earlier prototype:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OqlTXwLG40

 

[Remus]

And so... the debate whether an electromagnetic weapon has a muzzle flash or not, is over! The pulse rifle with it's huge muzzle flash was actually realistic!

 

[15357]

Of course it does; it literally ignites the air, like an object entering the atmosphere.


I wonder what happened to our electrochemical gun project for our tanks.

 

[Sulkdodds]

Hahahahah who the **** is this bald guy in the discovery channel vid.

Oh my god, he is hilarious.

That's right.

 

[VirusType2]

Lol'd

Does remind me of ... The Deadliest Warrior

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNZR3mwjkOw
WHO... IS... DEADLIEST?

 

[Remus]

I am disappointed in you two! That's Mac from the Future Weapons series. And yes, his overly dramatic style is hilarious.

 

[Escaep]

Mm-mm, now that's cost-effective killing!

Times are tough.

 

[MJ12]

Hahahahah who the **** is this bald guy in the discovery channel vid.

Oh my god, he is hilarious.

That's right.

Search "Red Faction Guerrilla" on Steam and watch all the Tools of Destruction videos, he's in them. Dude isn't even human

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKdDhLa4wwA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoPYUijNE0k

 

[DEATHMASTER]

And then it gets leaked/copied...then the rest of the world has it. Square one.

At least it's one step towards a MAC cannon.

 

[PvtRyan]

Hahahahah who the **** is this bald guy in the discovery channel vid.

Oh my god, he is hilarious.

That's right.

Whenever I hear him talking, I can't help but imagine him fondling himself.

"Its 7.62mm, full-metal jacket.. mmm... is capable of reducing... mmmnngh... the enemies' head into mush over a distance of more than.. unnghh.. mmm.. 200 meters. And with its 40mm... ohgod... fully-automatic grenade launcher.. fnnghh.. it can deliver the firepower that is needed on the... mmmpphh... modern battlefield."

 

[Warped]

These will probably be installed on space fighters one day....and they will be awesome

 

[Raziaar]

These will probably be installed on space fighters one day....and they will be awesome

We'll probably go the laser route. Instant reach to the target and pretty much no missing.

 

[VirusType2]

And then it gets leaked/copied...then the rest of the world has it. Square one.

At least it's one step towards a MAC cannon.

I've always said we need to be more secretive... robots powered by eating dead bodies, lasers from the heavens that melt faces, robot leg attachments etc.

But any ship that gets anywhere near the US with a capability like that is going to get swarmed on. The only countries that we would end up using it against don't really have anything to mount it on, nor the kind of budget where this would be something worth pursuing. What we need to worry about is the old fashioned nuke and dirty shit like mustard gas.

 

[StarBob]

That probably couldn't look more awesome. I mean from the beginning it just looks like a bunch of boxes and then it ****ing blasts out pure destruction.

I think we keep the functionality of our military weapons more secure than anything else we attempt to keep secret. Regardless, the technology isn't really complicated or difficult to create, it's just that it's not easy to implement. They have to have incredible magnetic forces perfectly syncronized and then making that something that could fit on even a large platform like a ship... isn't an easy task. Luckily we've been working on this for a while so it shouldn't be too long.

I think that's the same idea with other American military technology. Even if someone like North Korea gets the technology for modern hardware, they don't have the means to create something similar.

 

[Tagaziel]

I think that's the same idea with other American military technology. Even if someone like North Korea gets the technology for modern hardware, they don't have the means to create something similar.

Just like the Land Warrior is unique on a global scale, amirite?

 

[Higlac]

These will probably be installed on space fighters one day....and they will be awesome

We'll probably go the laser route. Instant reach to the target and pretty much no missing.

You both need to play Eve Online.

Also, when will this get antimatter charges for the best application of dps?

 

[VirusType2]

Just like the Land Warrior is unique on a global scale, amirite?

You don't fully make sense half the time. This is one of those times.

Although the vast majority of railgun applications are military based, there are researchers who look at the basic technology as a new way of launching air or spacecraft. There are also railgun proponents who believe that modified devices could be instrumental in powering fusion reactors. Although these are still theoretical, the military’s advancements in the field could further these concepts.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/intern...cords-with-ship-splintering-railgun/?news=123

It also means that a ship wouldn't itself have to carry explosives, which potentially means that it would no longer be considered a potential keg of powder.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20025376-71.html

 

[Warped]

You both need to play Eve Online.

Also, when will this get antimatter charges for the best application of dps?

I was thinking, the best way to take out a planet would be load up a freighter with your best time diffused weapons. launch them towards a star...then detonate them inside that star at FTL speed.

 

[Solaris]

Oh good, another way to kill a lot of people without even having to look at them.

 

[Escaep]

Oh good, another way to kill a lot of people without even having to look at them.

And its cheaper!

 

[VirusType2]

Oh good, another way to kill a lot of people without even having to look at them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUXBCdt5IPg

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

**** it, let's take out north korea

 

[unozero]

glorious

 

[Viperidae]

Let's give the most powerful navy in the world a weapon that outranges every other warship!

Because, you know, the US has been in so many sea battles in the past 30 years.

Just more money-wasting technology that will never be used for its intended purpose.

 

[Krynn72]

Let's give the most powerful navy in the world a weapon that outranges every other warship!

Because, you know, the US has been in so many sea battles in the past 30 years.

Just more money-wasting technology that will never be used for its intended purpose.

What do you mean? This will completely fulfill its intended purpose... making everyone gasp in shock at the enormity of our collective cock. I mean, damn. Our cock can go from flaccid to 200 mile long boner at Mach 8 speeds.

 

[Uriel]

Let's give the most powerful navy in the world a weapon that outranges every other warship!

Because, you know, the US has been in so many sea battles in the past 30 years.

Just more money-wasting technology that will never be used for its intended purpose.

Use it on a super-carrier to knock out anti-air capabilities....... the rest is obvious.

But what the heck does the US military know when their knowledge is compared to amazing ranks of the PEOPLE OF THE INTERWEBS!!!

 

[Bad^Hat]

They should really spend more of their budget arming/training terrorists so they have someone worth blowing up. :>

 

[ríomhaire]

Let's give the most powerful navy in the world a weapon that outranges every other warship!

Because, you know, the US has been in so many sea battles in the past 30 years.

Just more money-wasting technology that will never be used for its intended purpose.

I believe part of the intended purpose is making sure attacking the US is not a viable option for any other country.

 

[15357]

We'll probably go the laser route. Instant reach to the target and pretty much no missing.

Lasers are too inefficient, imo. We'll prolly go with the cheap multi-barrel autocannons and missiles.

Let's give the most powerful navy in the world a weapon that outranges every other warship!

Because, you know, the US has been in so many sea battles in the past 30 years.

Just more money-wasting technology that will never be used for its intended purpose.

Well, you understand that the military-industrial complex put the Hubble Space Telescope up there, right?

Technologies are always used for something more than their intended purpose. Heck, the entire space program from the rockets to the lenses on the telescopes all come from technologies originally developed for military purposes.

 

[bbson john]

Well, you understand that the military-industrial complex put the Hubble Space Telescope up there, right?

Technologies are always used for something more than their intended purpose. Heck, the entire space program from the rockets to the lenses on the telescopes all come from technologies originally developed for military purposes.

Ya. Unfortunately, military purposes are so far the only reason for a government to fund research.

 

[15357]

Ya. Un fortunately, military purposes are so far the only reason for a government to fund research.

Yeah, we should try thinking up ways in which space travel could be used to kill lots of enemy troops, human or otherwise. And we'll have a working interstellar spaceship prototype within the decade.

 

[Sulkdodds]

It's for off-shore artillery support, isn't it? I mean, that's something you can see being useful to them.

Search "Red Faction Guerrilla" on Steam and watch all the Tools of Destruction videos, he's in them. Dude isn't even human

Oh my god, I knew I'd seen him before. Oh my god. Oh my god.

Whenever I hear him talking, I can't help but imagine him fondling himself.

"Its 7.62mm, full-metal jacket.. mmm... is capable of reducing... mmmnngh... the enemies' head into mush over a distance of more than.. unnghh.. mmm.. 200 meters. And with its 40mm... ohgod... fully-automatic grenade launcher.. fnnghh.. it can deliver the firepower that is needed on the... mmmpphh... modern battlefield."

Yeah, it's kind of amazing the libidinous purpose these videos serve. I mean never mind that the 'discovery channel' (which I assumed was for documentaries) is showing what's basically a three minute long arms company commercial. Does anyone remember those 'VANGUARDS' recruitment videos which were basically ten minute action movies of all the USA's most powerful technology working exactly as intended on the battlefield against an enemy who conveniently walk into every possible trap?

When I was a kid, I poached these huge hardback A3-size books from my dad's book shop. They were 'profile' books of various fighter planes - the Tornado, the F/A-18, the F-111, the B1 bomber, the various Migs, and, my favourite, the F-14 Tomcat. I wasn't that interested in their killing power, more in love with the sheer technical detail.

One thing I remember is that the Tomcat was built with the capacity to track multiple targets and co-ordinate missiles aimed at all of them at once, so that a few planes could destroy an entire fleet of bombers. Imagine it - the twin-tailed aircraft seeming to hang in the sky, great banks of storm cloud before it, and inside the cockpit red and green lights reflected on the smooth black plastic of the pilot's visor as his instruments pick up the oncoming bomber group. The plane's radar cone narrows to a spotlight, leaping from target to target, designating each one in turn for calculated annihilation. On its wings, the missiles shiver free from their moorings one after another. Then a symphony of power as each one hits home, drawing a chain of fire across the sky, and the plane flashes along an easy, nonchalant curve through the spreading debris as it scans for further prey, and finds nothing left alive.

Looking it up the other day I discovered that of course this capacity was never used by US forces. I didn't understand when I was young that outside of proper wars most of the technology never gets used, and that the Tomcat has had maybe 3 or 4 inconclusive combat encounters in its entire lifetime. It's now been pretty much phased out, and that potential for destruction was never fulfilled.

Or was it? Among military analysists and defence academics there's an ongoing debate about whether Iran ever used any of the Tomcats sold to them by the US just before the Iran-Iraq war. One party contends they were never employed. Another claims they got heavy combat. And I'd suggest this is really a debate between those who are willing to let Iran be the only people who ever used the Tomcat properly (because god, please, let somebody have gotten to!) and those who hate Iran so much that they’d rather nobody ever got to use the Tomcat properly. This latter faction are strong-willed, because let me tell you –as a confessed and repentant military fetishist, there is very little worse than an amazing weapon system that is never used.

I still get the twinges sometimes. I was reading Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve, neither a book nor an author at all concerned about the kind of techniacl realism (or any realism at all) that might preoccupy (say) Cormac McCarthy, let alone on the level it'd haunt Matt Reilly or Tom Clancy. And yet I took a petty pleasure in noticing that she didn't seem to understand how a certain kind of pistol worked, or that she forgot (in one scene) whether a character was handling an SMG or a shotgun.

No wonder there's a whole industry covering this gap, with military sci-fi authors like John Ringo proposing whole new weapons systems and force arrangements to salivate over and then providing morally convenient conflicts for them to be used to their full in. It's a cover for the sense of loss and frustration experienced by the military fetishist when he realises that all that technology, all that capability, was never used, and never will be. And there is a host of media that commodifies the tools of war in exactly the way the military-industrial complex and weapon system advertisements do – demonstrating the power and potential of new technology in a world where the guns never jam, the enemy never comes up with some cheap fix, and the money is never wasted.

Because of course what's being denied in all this strenuous activity is that the money spent on this shit was money wasted where it could have gone to health or welfare or whatever else. That's why the advertising is so pervasive: we are buying these weapons with our tax money and like all adverts these adverts occlude the product itself, and instead of selling an item, they sell a lifestyle, an illusion of a kind of living, an idea of what it would be like to have these things, a romantic idea of their capability and position – and one that, as in all advertising, plays on fears and neuroses and our libidinal hiccups.

As a person quite aware of the drawbacks and problems inherent in my masturbatory attitude to the planning stages of early Rainbow Six games, I know that it would be a terrible thing if all the world's weapons were ever used in the way some part of me dearly wants them to be. For me it's a slightly shameful thing, something to hide, like a lust for feet or penchant for cross-dressing. But all this considered, you have to wonder - just what goes through the heads of the people whos right-wing politics are allowed to justify and legitimise their fetish? Or does their fetish - exploited and inflamed by the great pornographers - define their politics?

 

[Viperidae]

I believe part of the intended purpose is making sure attacking the US is not a viable option for any other country.

You seriously think the US still has this issue? Do you actually think any country has seriously considered engaging the US since 1987? The US's military dick is so huge only the likes of peabrained dictators are stupid enough to even consider a direct conflict.

Military engagement between SK/NK has hung for years because of the US's potential involvement alone.

 

[Escaep]

Let's give the most powerful navy in the world a weapon that outranges every other warship!

Because, you know, the US has been in so many sea battles in the past 30 years.

Just more money-wasting technology that will never be used for its intended purpose.

Its because we can.

 

[Viperidae]

Its because we can.

Which would be fine in principle, if the US didn't have massive economic problems, partly caused by their ridiculous military spending; economic problems that affect my own country. If the head is bashing itself against a brick wall, the hat gets hurt too.