U.S. Navy Tests Railgun at Dahlgren...,

[Don Boose]

As it happens, the recent Dahlgren test was covered in today's Washington Post: Railgun, futuristic weapon, tested by Navy

Don

[Gil]

[B-Manic]

EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) is great because it was designed by Disney. How Disney Designed The Military's Electromagnetic Launch System

[lepercan]

If you think P.E.A.s are power hungry, try lasers!

[Art Deco]

I don't know anything about railguns, so please forgive the dumbness of this question: why mount the thing on a ship?

What is the theoretical or practical reason not to scale up the power source and install it in Nebraska?

[Zathros]

If that's what is being released now, I wonder what is on the drawing boards. Inertia dampening will be needed if this is going to launch anything other than solid projectiles. Then again, electronics, as in the case of solid state drives, may hold the answer. A computer system made up in a solid form would work, theoretically. People, not for a long time.

[DrLaser]

Originally Posted by Art Deco

I don't know anything about railguns, so please forgive the dumbness of this question: why mount the thing on a ship?

What is the theoretical or practical reason not to scale up the power source and install it in Nebraska?

Actually, there is no reason that "ultra-long range suborbital artillery" cannot be made, since the projectiles can now have GPS guidance and laser designated terminal homing as well. It is simply a matter of scale up and the "National Will" to do it (and fund it). I think it would be far cheaper than the cost of forward deployed forces. Imagine a small SOF team calling in heavy artillery support located safely in CONUS. Would take the projectile a few minutes to arrive though - so laser designation or GPS updates would be needed for moving targets.


Your idea was first proposed in ~1980 by a researcher at MIT at an electric propulsion conference (at the time I was working at the AF Rocket Propulsion Lab). The paper also proposed using EM launchers to propell nuclear waste to the sun by firing a carbon ablative telephone pole size projectile encasing the nuclear waste (a lot of engineering challenges for 1980).

For EM guns, a ship born system is a logical first step - the electric power is already available as well as a mobile platform. If it is demonstrated on a ship with a 200km range, then 1000's of km range may be not thought of as fantasy - and that will be an Army system (being ground based).

When it comes to building weapon systems of advanced technology, it has to be scaled up in doable increments. We're just now developing realistic laser weapon systems of 10's of KW to 100 KW, or so, power levels (when we really want Megawatts). And how long, and how much money has been spent just to get to this point?

[Art Deco]

John, thanks for that very informative response!

Seems like an "ultra-long range suborbital artillery" battery in Nebraska (or wherever) would have a lot of advantages over intercontinental missiles or long-range bombers, not the least of which would be cost.

[Lex]

it would take a battleship to carry all the gear required to fire the projectile.

Trouble is, our Iowa-class is NOT big enough to carry all those stuff... Which is probably why they're not thinking about it right now... :D [just a random thought

Though I agree such a gun, be it terrestrial or naval, could somewhat be cheaper than the ICBMs today... Or even as a tactical weapon, they have their own advantages

[goodduck]

The ship that fired the gun in Transformer movie is how compact the final product will be? I have no doubt American engineering can perfect the system. Juts when and if any power to be that want to slow it down or cancel it.

I would love to see if they bring Iowa back to service with the new guns ....... like space battleship Yamato, you know. :D

Now I wish somebody will design a space battleship Iowa. That would be way too cool!