Rail Gun
The folks at NavSea have shut down a pet project- the electro-magnetic rail gun (EMRG). For our nautically challenged members, the EMRG is a weapon that uses electricity instead of gunpowder to send projectiles downrange. They use magnetic fields created by high electrical currents to accelerate a projectile to Mach 6, or about 5,400 miles an hour. The velocity is sufficient to give the EMRG an effective range of 110 nautical miles, or 126 miles on land.
And range is part of the problem. The other issues, besides the $500,000,000 in sunk costs, is there are hardly any ships capable of employing the system. To drive the final nail home, the service is adapting the system’s projectile- the hypervelocity projectile (HVP)- to fire from a traditional gunpowder-based gun. These Mk-45 5″54 caliber naval guns are already in the Fleet on Arleigh Burke DDGs and Ticonderoga CGs.
Usual Suspects send.
The Navy’s Railgun Is Finally Dead
Kyle Mizokami
The U.S. Navy is finally canceling its electromagnetic railgun development program.
The railgun appears to be the victim of the service’s new emphasis on great power competition.
Although impressive, the railgun has been overshadowed by other weapons, particularly hypersonics.
The U.S. Navy’s push to create a $500 million electromagnetic railgun weapon—capable of slinging projectiles at hypersonic speeds—appears to have come to an end. The service is ending funding for the railgun without having sent a single weapon to sea, while pushing technology derived from the program into existing weapons.
The weapon is a victim of a change in the Navy’s direction toward faster, longer-range weapons that are capable of striking ships and land targets in a major war.
Advances in hypersonic technology are continuing in conjunction with the Army, with work on a Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) even now under test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii.
And Yahoo.com
Thanks to some Usual Suspects for the links.
The thing needs a dedicated reactor to run it and the magnetic rails apparently have a “barrel life,” as it were, of one whole shot before they need to be rebuilt. These things probably are the distant future of artillery, but we clearly ain’t there yet.
Maybe they shoulda been working on a flux capacitor system to give them the needed giga watts to run this train gunz? Was the taxpayer railroaded when this whole idea jumped the track?
Shouldn’t the Navy be working on some type of photon torpedo system? Could put them on an Enterprise Class Ship. When will the Marines get some plasma rifles?
If Big Navy needs a place to store the proto type of this Big Gun, the North Wall still needs to be shored up at Firebase Magnolia. With the published range of that thing, I could take out Atlanta from here.
Been there, done that…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_gun
To soon
If the range is true
This would be a amazing way to reach out
And touch someone
Sounds like us taxpayers got railed over this one.
So, it would need a more powerful power plant and stronger building materials?
Then not everything is a loss, since when those two issues become solvable in the near future we can restart this project.
True. As long as the lessons learned are put to good use down the road.
playing with magnetic fields can be bad. look what happened during the philadelphia experiment aboard the navy ship back in the 1940’s when the ship was wound with wire and electricity was sent through it while some crew members were aboard.
Emmm, well if the USN isn’t going to do any further research with it and doesn’t really want it anymore – I’ll happily put a sign on it ‘Donated by the United States Navy’ and put it up in our front lawn…
As for placating our local law-enforcement – “No worries folks – it’s not-the-green-laser and I promise I won’t point it at any helicopters or planes.”
Now, while I’d really love to have this on our front lawn,
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Ward_4_inch_gun_Minnesota_Capitol.jpg
really think the Rail gun would have a lot more…presence.
At least it’s not the first “Future Weapon” to get massive funding and no deployment. See SDI.
But it WORKs!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUusHbKEji4
Maybe needs to be adapted for use from orbit? On a satellite with its own dedicated nuke power plant.