U.S plans to equip carriers with RAILGUNS!

Hey guys im new to ats this is my 2nd post anyway...

Have you all heard about the U.S plans to equip carriers with RAILGUNS
when i found out i was shocked i thought this was sci/fi yet its right around the corner....
they will shoot tiny projectiles at very high speeds to intercept AA and AG missles and they could shoot over the horizon at other ships if they so whished to.

please try and post an external source to your thread. More information is always good to add. It sucks that u2u is not working. Would help you out with some pointers.

Hello fella! and welcome

Yhea rail guns are around the corner, they have popped up quite a few times round here, very interesting.

Here's a couple of you tubes on them.





Looks like a good idea really, the projectiles will be very very hard to spot, no heat signature from a big exhaust and they will travel at one hell of a speed.

Also they wont (necessarily) have a warhead on them, simple kinetic energy, once the tech is finalised it will be a very cost efficient weapon me thinks.

Did you know they are also planning rail 'launchers' to get equipment into orbit? It will be a circular track where the payload will wizz around up to incredible speed - then a section of the track will re route the launcher onto a rump and away it goes!! ready to be docked with in orbit! I would love to see that one

Edit: that second vid is not the one I was thinking of

[edit on 14/8/2008 by Now_Then]

reply to post by Now_Then


Rail guns generate tremendous amounts of heat when they fire, and its taken 20 years to get them to the point where they dont destroy themselves with every shot.

That whole cirular track thing went and is going nowhere, it was just a conceptual idea.
The real problem with the idea is that it would be very hard to build any systems that would withstand accelerations needed to put anything of appreciable size in orbit.
Rocketshave the advantage of being a soft launch, they gradually accelerate till the reach escape velocity, whereas something shot out of a gun would have to leave the launcher with all of its energy imparted to the object at the time of launch.

But such a launcher, say on the moon would have tremendous implications, ie, whom ever controls the high ground controls the battle field.

Thanks for the vids now_then and the reply and yea the idee of a space ramp has been around atleast in my mind due to anime and sci/fi for a while cool stuff


ps:whats up with the crazzy electricity show..lol

reply to post by Spike Spiegle


The project is called the DD-X which is a new type of destroyer.
Currently under construction.
The US Navy will be replacing the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates and Spruance class destroyers with these ship's.

Here is the link to the Navy web site.

www.navy.com...

Wing-Nut


[edit on 8/16/2008 by Wing-nut]

The DDX program was scrapped because its a waste of money.

They estimated we could produce something like 3 OZP frigates for the cost of a single DDX destroyer.

Nah, actually im pretty sure the DDX program turned into the DDG-1000 zummwalt program (sp?). But its extremely expensive. I think that they'll make a few then make a watered down version that suits the purposes of the newer brown water combat we could be facing. Kind of like the seawolf and the virginia classes. What im interested is the new class of carrier.

reply to post by truttseeker


As it stands now, the DDG-1000 program (formerly the DDX program) has dropped from a planned 30 ships to 7 ships to 2 ships.

The DDG-1000 cost ballooned hugely because of all the new technologies they wanted to put into the hull. The entire program is going to be a huge benefit to the CG(X) program though. A lot of the technologies that will be incorporated into the new cruiser will be from the DDG-1000 program.

reply to post by Zaphod58


That should actually cut the cost down to the cruisers.

Just think of the DDG-1000 as a platform for future Navy ships, since you don't need the R&D done for each specific class of ship, they become cheaper to make after a while.

Everything in the Navy and Military at that is becoming modular.

Pretty soon things will become "plug-and-play".

Shattered OUT...

I wanna see these new ships goin out ERASER style on those insurgents, some pretty deadly technology, been posted on here a zillion times already tho, lol

Originally posted by ShatteredSkies
reply to post by Zaphod58

 

That should actually cut the cost down to the cruisers.

Just think of the DDG-1000 as a platform for future Navy ships, since you don't need the R&D done for each specific class of ship, they become cheaper to make after a while

This is especially true if they end up using the DDG-1000 hullform for CG(X). It improves everything from training to logistics to strategic planning.

Wait a minute..... they intend to use railguns on CVNs as point defence weapons?! I don't think a railgun can sustain the rate of fire needed for a CIWS without blowing up. Navy researchers have only recently been able to produce a protoype that can last over ten shots without significant rail warping or errosion, unless they have made another break through I haven't heard about yet.

reply to post by DSC

AEDALUS


no they dont intend on using them as point defence wepaons, that task will fall to metal storm, million rounds a minute, and a new generation of energy weapons. One of which the department of defense obtained a patent for last year, some sort of proton beam weapon.
The rail gun will be for very long range engagment of surface targets, a much cheaper alternative to guided missles, and much longer ranges than with conventional naval artillery.
But I agree they are a long way off, still. I have been folowing the development of railguns since the early eighties, when I was told fantastical tales of a magnetic launcher that could hurl things great distances and at high velocities, by my roommates electrical physics proffesor , that had been built in the nevada deserts.Then again when one of my college proffesors worked on the first one at Larwence/Livermoore National Lab.
Its taken almost 30 years of contiuous work to get them to this level, and they are still a long way away.
At first the the rails would destroy themselves with every shot, just from the enormous magnetic forces oppossing each other.
There have been some material breakthroughs in the last few years that have helped move it along but 10 shots to a rail is not any where near where a combat weapon needs to be.

Its a very daunting task to get one of those things stuffed into a the hull of a ship, provide it with adequate power, carry all that current to the weapon, sheild all of the other stuff on the ship from the intense localized EMP.

One very interesting concept i read about was an adaptation of supercavitation to an underwater ballistic weapon.
Basically an auto cannon fitted in an underwater turret that fires a super cavitating projectile.
The projectile will be almost like an under water rocke fired from a gun and will contain a small amout a propellant that will burn and the gasses will escape through small holes in the tip of the round.
This gas will form an envelope around the bullet, isolating from the friction of the water. I think they used a 25mm round and achieved a muzzle velocity of around 2500-3000 feet/sec.
The gun will be be guided by sonar and blue-green lasers, to which sea water is transparent.
There is also work being done on an brilliant underwater powersource.One originally designed for a torpedo motor.
Seawater is injected a super high pressure into a reaction vessel, and it swilrs around, much like water down the drain, at the same time, finely powdered aluminum is injected in the chamber, and the engery of the flowing around the chamber is enough to start an exothermic reaction with the water and the aluminum. The oxygen from the water binds with the aluminum, making aluminum oxide, and heat(steam).
The steam drives a turbine and is exhausted like a jet engine.
It is an under water solid state jet engine.