Gizmodo Wrote:The US Navy has just completed a 10-megajoule test fire of their huge rail gun. For the first time ever, they fired a projectile with a velocity of 8,270 feet per second. That's an amazing 5,640 mph, and the gun is only firing at a third of its potential power. The other video shows you what the projectile looks like when loaded.
The Navy is researching rail guns because they would weigh less than conventional ones, and since they rely on electromagnetics to fire rounds, you wouldn't need a big, dangerous pile of explosives stored in a magazine. All of that means a lighter ship, and a much more deadly ship: a combat-ready rail gun would be able to fire Mach 5 projectiles over 200 miles with pinpoint accuracy, hitting 5 meter targets.
Yesterday's test firing at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division used just some of the potential 32-megajoules the laboratory test gun is capable of, and that's only half the 64-megajoules the Navy is aiming at for the final weapon. Expect even more dramatic videos, sometime soon.
Well, Naval warfare just got a hell of a lot more interesting.
The cannon cannot take the stresses of the projectile being fired out of it so the muzzle disintegrates after firing, it's the only real issue left with this tech. They will still pursue this though because once they get it stabilised they don't have to lug around high explosives on there ships anymore.
UncertainGod Wrote:The cannon cannot take the stresses of the projectile being fired out of it so the muzzle disintegrates after firing, it's the only real issue left with this tech. They will still pursue this though because once they get it stabilised they don't have to lug around high explosives on there ships anymore.
If they do make it work, then there won't be the risk of carrying around tons of highly volatile fuel. So how exactly does one go about making a railgun not destroy itself?
UncertainGod Wrote:The cannon cannot take the stresses of the projectile being fired out of it so the muzzle disintegrates after firing, it's the only real issue left with this tech. They will still pursue this though because once they get it stabilised they don't have to lug around high explosives on there ships anymore.
hes right.. its all physics... for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.. im sure most of you have heard that... so if the gun fires at X amount of speed it also imparts that same amount of force on the gun... otherwise known as recoil... right now it destroys it self but they will figure out a way to fix it and kill lots more people... got to thin out the herd somehow.. (don't listen to me!!)
isn't a rail gun the weapon that launched metal gear rex's missiles? and wasn't fortune's weapon a rail gun in mgs2? interesting where the navy can get ideas