U.S. Navy to test 32 megajoule EM Railgun in the coming weeks

This is an awesome new weapon. Transformers talked about a secret rail gun in the last movie and shot the alien on top of the pyramid. not even a year later they are releasing info on it. i would like to see a video of the live test fire after they finish installing it on a ship.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced today that they will begin testing an advanced Electromagnetic Railgun (EMR) within the next few weeks. The development and testing of this advanced EMR is the result of a $21 million contract awarded to BAE Systems by the Office of Naval Research roughly two years ago. For those that may not know, the ONR is the office within the United States Department of the Navy that facilitates all science and technology programs for the U.S Navy and Marine Corps through various institutions, such as universities and government laboratories.

Its pretty cool looking also and can fire a projectile 110 miles wonder how many rounds a minute it will be able to fire.

More info here

Thats 1 sweet looking weopon,I bet it is devestating to anything it hits and yes I would love to see video of this thing firing and hitting the poor unfortunate target

That's pretty nuts. I can't wait to see these new series of electric weapons come online. EMP nades!

I can sure see a new breed of Battleship being produced that are created around a couple batteries of these guns. What a thought. The ships would be a fraction of the size because this wouldn't blow the whole ship sideways every time a set of them fired. The range would make the old 'battle wagons' look like coastal patrol boats. 100+ Miles is just incredible to imagine if it carried tight accuracy. Wow....


Scale this up large enough and you could even launch small packages into space, I'll bet. It's been researched to death in conventional "gun" forms...but electro-magnetic guns could achieve speeds so far beyond what's been possible before, it could work I suppose. Hmm... What a fascinating technology to watch develop.

reply to post by Bilder


We'll see how much you like it when YOU are the poor unfortunate target. Seriously, do you even realize what these machines of death do? I can't stand it when civvies look at military equipment with googly eyes and oohs and ahs. They are tools that are used to kill or aid in the killing. I don't expect you to understand something that you haven't learned of with your own eyes, what with the state of the education system and all, but military groupies really piss me off. Do you not realize that the first casualty of war is truth? Just think of the people this will be used on as people just like you and I and I'm sure the picture will become clearer. Our enemies are only so because that is what we were told to believe. As far as I'm concerned, the whole MIC can go straight to hell.

Reporters were invited to watch the test at the Dalghren Naval Surface Warfare Center. A tangle of two-inch thick coaxial cables hooked up to stacks of refrigerator-sized capacitors took five minutes to power juice into a gun the size of a schoolbus built in a warehouse. With a 1.5-million-ampere spark of light and a boom audible in a room 50 feet away, the bullet left the gun at a speed of Mach 8.

All that energy was “dump[ed] in 10 milliseconds,” says Charles Garrett, project manager at Dahlgren for the railgun.

But since there no explosion powering the projectile, why should the railgun have made any noise at all? Answer: the bullet went so fast it released a sonic boom.

It can apparently be made to fire in automatic mode. Scary. Don't we have enough weapons developed for the express reason of killing en-masse?

So this is a new development in rail gun technology? Because I thought we have been testing it for years and it has been fired frequently during testing.

Originally posted by xXxinfidelxXx
reply to post by Bilder

 

We'll see how much you like it when YOU are the poor unfortunate target. Seriously, do you even realize what these machines of death do? I can't stand it when civvies look at military equipment with googly eyes and oohs and ahs. They are tools that are used to kill or aid in the killing. I don't expect you to understand something that you haven't learned of with your own eyes, what with the state of the education system and all, but military groupies really piss me off. Do you not realize that the first casualty of war is truth? Just think of the people this will be used on as people just like you and I and I'm sure the picture will become clearer. Our enemies are only so because that is what we were told to believe. As far as I'm concerned, the whole MIC can go straight to hell.

edit on 10/2/2012 by xXxinfidelxXx because: (no reason given)

Well excuse me for appreciating the science and engineering that has gone into this baby and yes i do understand the destructive potential of this thing,when i said i would like to see a vid of it hitting the unfortunate target i was thinking of a block of concrete,solid wall etc.
I also understand what a 7.62 155 grain round will do to a human skull that dosnt mean i want to see it happen I still appreciate the weopon so lighten up m8 I was replying to someones thread with appreciation for what they posted

Navy goes eco with a zero emission gun, one more step to a green war. Mother Nature will be happy.

Originally posted by Trueman
Navy goes eco with a zero emission gun, one more step to a green war. Mother Nature will be happy.

The big plus with this technology is that it is impossible to detonate a magazine full of highly volotile ammunition as there is none,some of the biggest maritime disasters during war are when the ammo goes up,it normally takes the ship out

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

Hmm love it. I wrote a paper in college about sending radioactive waste into space via electromagnetic rail guns. Before its time though. I can't wait to see demos!

Its a big version of the Metal Storm Electric guns.

www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...


Australian ingenuity at its best....then sold to the Americans.

reply to post by 3n3p5i9o5


I think this is the same test:

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

The ships would be a fraction of the size because this wouldn't blow the whole ship sideways every time a set of them fired.

Actually, this is not true.

Newtons laws of motion state that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Hence, the 32 megajoules of energy dumped into the projectile has to have a relative reaction from the accelerating mechanism.

In this case, the armature (Rails) interacts with the electromagnetic field, and as the projectile is sped down the rails, the same energy is imparted to the rails themselves in the opposite direction.

Recoil, ya know...

and 32 megajoules of recoil, to be exact.... is quite a bit.

The Navy rail-gun only fires a 3.7 kilogram slug (equivalent to a 60 calibre projectile), but the projectiles velocity is at least 5 times greater than an equivalent shell fired by chemical propellant, which means that your recoil is going to be 5 times greater than a normal velocity weapon.

I mean, this is nowhere near the muzzle energy of the 16" guns on an iowa battleship, but then again, those shells weighed over a ton each.


Actually, the 16" guns have a muzzle energy of only 10 times that of the railgun, at 355 megajoules.

But, yeah, if they are going to scale this up to equal the muzzle energy of the 16" iowa battleship guns, then you will get the exact same recoil.

This new weapon is designed for penetration through speed, it probably won't carry any warhead.... because it won't need to.


Interestingly enough, Rick Robinson's First Law of Space Combat states that "An object impacting at 3 km/sec delivers kinetic energy equal to its mass in TNT."
www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com...
www.projectrho.com...

So, in the future, Railgun projectiles wouldn't be explosive, because that would be superfluous.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
I can sure see a new breed of Battleship being produced that are created around a couple batteries of these guns. What a thought. The ships would be a fraction of the size because this wouldn't blow the whole ship sideways every time a set of them fired. The range would make the old 'battle wagons' look like coastal patrol boats. 100+ Miles is just incredible to imagine if it carried tight accuracy. Wow....

I'm raising the "Deny Ignorance" flag at this point.
Contrary to popular myth, battleships were not "blown sideways" by the firing of their main battery guns. For reference, I'll include a link to the 'classic' photo of the USS New Jersey firing to starboard.

USS New Jersey firing 16"

Most people seem to think that all that disturbed water to starboard is from the ship being 'pushed sideways' by the recoil of the main guns...but look closely. The ship's wake (visible at the right edge of the photo) is straight. If the ship were shoved sideways, there would be a corresponding kink in it. Also note that the areas of disturbed water are centered around the gun muzzles, and don't extend to the bow or the stern...which they should, if they're produced by the motion of the ship. What you're actually seeing is the muzzle blast from those 16" guns hitting the water. For those who want engineering proof that the ships don't move, see this essay, complete with all the math and physics you want: Battleship recoil analysis .

Rants about recoil pushing ships around aside, a "modern battleship" equipped with rail guns might be smaller than its WWII ancestors, but if so, it won't be because of a lack of recoil. Rail guns will have recoil just like any other projectile weapon, and lots of it, due to the incredible muzzle velocity of the rounds. You also have to have room aboard for a fairly massive engineering plant, since rail guns take immense amounts of electrical power. The closest thing you're ever likely to see to a 'rail gun battleship' would probably look like a somewhat stretched Arleigh Burke class DDG, with the extra length devoted to replacing the forward 5" gun with a rail gun, and extra spaces aft used to fit in the enlarged engineering plant.

Scale this up large enough and you could even launch small packages into space, I'll bet. It's been researched to death in conventional "gun" forms...but electro-magnetic guns could achieve speeds so far beyond what's been possible before, it could work I suppose. Hmm... What a fascinating technology to watch develop.

You could, indeed, use rail guns as orbital launchers. In fact, there was serious research done into using conventional (well, sort of conventional) guns as orbital launchers. It was called "Project HARP", not to be confused with HAARP . It would work for some payloads, but there would probably be serious issues with the acceleration loading at firing, and with electromagnetic effects.

Originally posted by ErtaiNaGia

Interestingly enough, Rick Robinson's First Law of Space Combat states that "An object impacting at 3 km/sec delivers kinetic energy equal to its mass in TNT."
www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com...
www.projectrho.com...

So, in the future, Railgun projectiles wouldn't be explosive, because that would be superfluous.

Not exactly on topic for this thread, and for that, I apologize....but methinks I detect another fan of the Atomic Rockets / Project Rho site. *flashes rocket geek gang signs*

Originally posted by gort51
Its a big version of the Metal Storm Electric guns.

www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...


Australian ingenuity at its best....then sold to the Americans.

edit on 10-2-2012 by gort51 because: added extra link

Sorry, but no it's not. Metal Storm guns use caseless propellant ammunition with electrically-fired primers. A rail gun uses electromagnetic effects to accelerate the projectile down the "barrel". It's a totally different principle at work.

Metal Storm is impressive, but I'm still trying to find a real use for that "million rounds per minute" device they seem so proud of. I could see using it as an anti-missile system, but it takes far too long to reload, and also seems lacking in range, compared to a conventional cannon-based or missile based system. It's definitely overkill against infantry (you can only kill a man so dead...after that, you're just showing off). Worst of all (at least from a soldier's point of view), while it might be 'cool' to fire a million rounds per minute, somebody (and it probably won't be an 'officer' somebody) is going to have to carry all that ammo.

We better be careful nobody gets this info. Dangerous (sweet!) weapon to have. Does anybody else think it's weird that since Obama took office all our secrets (weapon, unit team names, etc.) have been told to the world?

There is an existing thread on this topic:
www.abovetopsecret.com...



Please add further comments, queries or concerns to the ongoing discussion.



Thank you



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