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Allen McDuffee writes the US Navy's latest weapon is an electromagnetic railgun launcher that can hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7 with a range of 100 miles turning a destroyer into super-long-range machine gun able to fire up to a dozen relatively inexpensive projectiles every minute. The Navy says the cost differential $25,000 for a railgun projectile versus $500,000 to $1.5 million for a missile will make potential enemies think twice about the economic viability of engaging U.S. forces. "[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: 'Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?'" says Rear Admiral Matt Klunder. "Because you are going to lose. You could throw anything at us, frankly, and the fact that we now can shoot a number of these rounds at a very affordable cost, it's my opinion that they don't win."
Engineers already have tested this futuristic weapon on land, and the Navy plans to begin sea trials aboard a Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket in 2016. Railguns use electromagnetic energy known as the Lorenz Force to launch a projectile between two conductive rails. The high-power electric pulse generates a magnetic field to fire the projectile with very little recoil, officials say. Weapons like the electromagnetic rail gun could help U.S. forces retain their edge and give them an asymmetric advantage over rivals, making it too expensive to use missiles to attack U.S. warships because of the cheap way to defeat them. "Your magazine never runs out, you just keep shooting, and that's compelling."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday April 11 2014, @12:01PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Friday April 11 2014, @12:05PM
The fact it costs $300k a minute to run, and most people that are trying to attack US warships earn $300 a year?
This move is aimed at the Chinese, who depend less on the international economy and the mythical value of "1 dollar", "1 euro", "1 kg of gold" than the west.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Friday April 11 2014, @12:11PM
Development time and cost. Other countries will catch up. Large countries like China and Russia will catch up first.
What a railgun does is counter swarms of small, missile-armed boats, the current low-cost tactic to overwhelm US naval ships. So adversaries now need to develop a new tactic, which means years of planning, acquisitions, training, and deployment. Then the US will look to counter whatever new tactic they come up with. Lather, rinse repeat. This is a conventional arms race, which has been going on since at least the nineteenth century, and probably since the start of the neolithic period.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Woods on Friday April 11 2014, @01:22PM
Not sure if Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (Webcomic) can be considered obligatory yet, but:
Oblig SMBC. [medium.com]
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday April 11 2014, @09:09PM
If not, it should be. The "oblig. " links wouldn't be so bad if people bothered linking to more than just xkcd and dilbert.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday April 11 2014, @09:12PM
That was supposed to be "oblig. <thing>" but I didn't expect a post as "Plain Old Text" to try making a tag out of it.
Would have taught it if I had bothered previewing, but it was a short comment and it didn't seem necessary...
(Score: 1) by Woods on Friday April 11 2014, @09:34PM
(Score: 2) by snick on Friday April 11 2014, @01:41PM
A high speed ballistic projectile (bullet on steroids) seems to be a poor choice to counter swarms of small , missile armed boats. The only guidance available is by pointing the barrel of the gun, and if the shot misses a boat by 1 inch, then all it does is make a pretty big splash.
I would think that guided weapons, or explosive warheads, or weapons with projectiles that break up into multiple projectiles that cover an area as they approach the target would be more effective.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday April 11 2014, @02:07PM
You're right that hitting the target is a challenge, but it's not an insurmountable one. As TFS points out, a guided missile costs half a million bucks or more, and their firing rate is limited by the number of launch tubes on the ship. A quick-firing, long-range, low-cost weapon can take out the swarm boats before they can get close enough to fire their own missiles -- if, as you say, the gun can hit. The US navy SPY-1 radar can track 100 targets at once [navy.mil]. TFA does not say how those $25,000 projectiles work but the high-speed video shows they have aerodynamic fins. Most artillery shells don't. It's quite possible, I'm just speculating, that those railgun "bullets" are radio controlled from the firing ship and can adjust course midflight to track a moving target.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mojo chan on Friday April 11 2014, @05:49PM
The problem for large ships is that it only takes one or two missiles to take them out, and missiles have a range of hundreds of kilometres. Of course not all enemies have such missiles, but many do these days. Missiles move around in flight, this thing can't easily shoot them down and in fact a spread from a conventional anti-missile weapon would be more effective. Ship based radar is not all that effective with very small targets, which is why they manage to get close enough to do damage in the first place.
Also, torpedoes. Other countries have some that travel at a few hundred kilometres an hour, and the US navy has no real defence against them. This is an interesting weapon but if the US decided to, say, take on Iran it wouldn't prevent quite a few ships being sunk.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Friday April 11 2014, @11:08PM
The CIWS (R2-D2 looking Vulcan cannons) on US navy ships are 1980s anti-missile that have the capability to track its own bullets, make corrections, and continue firing until the target can no longer be identified with its radar. It wouldn't be a far fetch to put an updated algorithm into the weapons system to account for the longer range of the rail gun. The problem with the CIWS is it can deplete its magazine in less than 2 minutes, and it is a 30 minute to 2-hour evolution to reload. Not the ideal scenario when being swarmed by small boats. You have to wait for them to get close, and hope to get them all before you run out of ammunition. Also the ammunition from the rail gun would put a little bit larger dent into the boat than the 25mm depleted uranium rounds used in the CWIS.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 11 2014, @06:23PM
The video seems to suggest the fins are used for spinning the projectile, (for stabilization), rather than aiming. (Not to suggest the fins can't do both, but at the speeds quoted its a lot more difficult).
There is also something odd about the video, in that there is a pronounced combustion cloud around the muzzle. This didn't occur in earlier videos of test guns on Dougway UT proving ground. In those prior videos there was a smallish water vapor cloud formation, but no combustion blast.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 11 2014, @07:18PM
By the way, here is a video describing the projectile. The fins are not for steering, simply stabilization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEmgSpJK9qQ [youtube.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Funny) by DECbot on Friday April 11 2014, @11:16PM
The admiral in charge of the testing was concerned that there was no fiery flash from the gun when being fired, unlike the traditional battleship guns. Pyrotechnics were later to the rail gun to ensure there was a fiery flash. Contracts where then awarded after the fiery flash was fixed.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JeanCroix on Friday April 11 2014, @02:24PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 11 2014, @03:49PM
I don't think that you appreciate what that big splash signifies. A near miss can be quite deadly. That boat that was coming at me at high speed? I missed him by about 20 feet - I shot right if front of him. There was a hell of a lot of energy in that shot. That energy went somewhere - like, right into the water. Have you ever felt an underwater explosion? Remember, sound, and shockwaves travel faster underwater than they do through the air. That boat is taking damage. How much? Probably a helluva lot.
The boat will take somewhat less damage if I miss by 20 feet to either side, but it's still going to hurt.
Probably can't miss by 20 feet behind him - but if that shot screams through the air 20 feet over his head, people on deck are still going to be hurting. Again, the question is, how bad? Hmmm - I know for a fact that being in the line of fire of a puny 5" 54 caliber main gun can bring you to your knees. These rail guns carry a LOT more energy than a 5" 54. I suspect that any unprotected personnel standing topside when a railgun projectile sails overhead are going to be deafened, hammered to their knees, and pretty useless for a minute or ten. The boat will remain seaworthy, but the personnel are going to suffer a little.
Personally, I don't want to stand downrange to find out. My imagination is more than sufficient, thank you.
(Score: 1) by MozeeToby on Friday April 11 2014, @05:20PM
Also important, how hard is it to hit a target when your computer stabilized, auto-tracking, auto-leading railgun fires it's slug at 2000 meters per second? It's not like you have to lead the target here... we're talking about taking out boats at a few hundred meters, aim for center mass and pull the trigger. Point-blank for this thing is effectively the horizon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @08:22PM
I thought one of the important features here was range. This railgun has a range of 100 miles, which is comparable to fairly high-tech missiles. At 100 miles, 2 km/s is almost a minute and a half of flight time. That is, if your enemy is in missile range, then flight time, even at mach 7, is significant, and you should expect to miss a lot. If you can fire 12 rounds/minute, you can fire a spread big enough to counter that, but you're basically trading 12 $25,000 projectiles, one of which is likely to hit for 1, $1M missile that will hit.
If your enemy is in range where mach 7 travel time is irrelevant, then they're also in range where standard guns, firing $100 or $1000 shells can hit them pretty well.
(Score: 1) by MozeeToby on Friday April 11 2014, @09:07PM
The use is two fold.
One is what you are talking about, what used to be called coastal bombardment (with a 100+ mile range that is no longer an accurate name IMO). The purpose wouldn't be to take out moving targets, rather to eliminate known hardened positions for a fraction the cost of a cruise missile. A tomahawk missile costs $600,000 for instance, compared to $25,000 for this. Put GPS and control fins on the shell and you've got comparable accuracy too, though I don't know if this is planned for this system.
The second use is to take out small, fast, cheap ships (usually equipped with small short ranged missiles) in an asymmetric war. Numerous naval war games have shown the US Navy to be susceptible to those kinds of attacks, fighting a war of attrition with relatively cheap boats taking potshots at our multibillion dollar warships. Again it comes down to cost, if it takes $20,000 to fire a round from this rail gun and you can take out a $500,000 gunship the math swings back the other way and the hit and run tactics are no longer economically feasible.
(Score: 3) by krishnoid on Friday April 11 2014, @11:40PM
Personally, I don't want to stand downrange to find out. My imagination is more than sufficient, thank you.
Mine is not. Mr. Hyneman and Mr. Savage, you're up.
(Score: 1) by Hawkwind on Friday April 11 2014, @06:41PM
The Pop Sci article suggests there will be targeting.
"The projectile leaves the barrel at hypersonic velocity—Mach 7-plus—exits the Earth’s atmosphere, re-enters under satellite guidance, and lands on the building less than six minutes later; its incredible velocity vaporizes the target with kinetic energy alone."
But knowing government time it's also not clear if everything has truly been figured out.
"...estimates the U.S. version won’t be “deliverable†until 2015 at the earliest."
(Score: 2) by snick on Friday April 11 2014, @08:46PM
That sounds like a wicked weapon to use against stationary (or very slowly moving) targets. But it doesn't sound like an effective counter measure to a swarm of boats that are attacking a ship as the GP suggested.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @09:05PM
velocityâ€â€Mach 7-plusâ€â€exits the Earth’s [...]won’t be “deliverableâ€
As Slashcode has yet to be fixed such that it handles Unicode properly, the proper way to cut and paste remains dragging and dropping into an ASCII-only text editor.
This will expose all characters that Slashcode will not display correctly.
(It is even likely that it will convert them for you.)
Leafpad, as an example, converts an em dash into a double-hyphen and converts a "smart" quote[1] into a regular quotation mark.
As I recall, Notepad does the same.
Look for anything that hasn't been auto-converted and tweak that by hand.
Only then should you drag and drop your blockquoted text from the text editor into the posting page.
As an alternate strategy, you could PREVIEW YOUR POSTS (especially when you do copy pasta).
Either way, you should look for weird stuff in your text before you hit Submit.
Thank you for your attention to detail in the future.
[1] I call those dumb quotes.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Friday April 11 2014, @12:34PM
just guessing, but in this case i'd say it's the 22 pound projectile at mach 7. i'll freely admit i don't know much about physics, but my gut says that getting something to move at those kind of speeds will take some pretty heavy engineering. or am i wrong? can you just wrap the butt of a 50mm gun in copper wire, plug in a nuclear reactor from a sub and fire away?
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday April 11 2014, @12:48PM
Given the range and impact energy of these projectiles, it's pretty safe to say that if it were easy, it would have been done decades ago.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 11 2014, @01:12PM
Seems OK until now. Except that... there's only one Zumwalt-class destroyer [wikipedia.org] built so far, with another two in the pipeline... and that's about it (and, yes, I realize they aren't built for an art show but, God, are they ugly [wikimedia.org] or what?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @02:52PM
Yikes. That thing looks like Steve Jobs's yacht.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday April 11 2014, @03:11PM
They're ugly because of the radar-scattering stealth [wikipedia.org] design. The first-generation stealth fighter [wikipedia.org] didn't win any beauty contests, either. But yeah ... that blocky profile is even uglier in Navy grey than in black.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by TK on Friday April 11 2014, @03:16PM
I did a bit of the math here [soylentnews.org]. Long story short, this gun required 6 MW to fire at the quoted rate, assuming no losses. IANAEE, but as I understand it, magnetic acceleration is very efficient.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday April 11 2014, @03:57PM
Not only ugly, but everything that I've read suggests that they are going to be unseaworthy. They aren't exactly built to run the North Sea in winter. Life might be better aboard a round bottomed Gator Navy hull. France hasn't been a major sea power for a long, long time. God only knows why the Navy is using an old discarded French idea to build a hull.
As you say, there is one afloat, and two on the way. Let's hope that there aren't any more! We already have a dozen different destroyer hull designs that are quite adequate to any proposed missions for the Zumwalt class. A seventy year old Adam's class design would be great.
(Score: 1) by iwoloschin on Friday April 11 2014, @05:33PM
They're that shape for the reduce radar cross section. Supposedly, they've done testing to "validate" the seaworthiness of the design, so they kept the "ugly" design. If it works, awesome, if not, well, it's not the most expensive boondoggle our government has thrown money at. It's a great catch 22. If it works, everyone goes, "Well sure, it makes sense!" but if it fails and sinks, everyone goes, "It's your fault for using a crappy design and we told you so."
My concern would be more about damage control. I think this thing is supposed to be "optimally crewed" which means less busy bodies, but also fewer damage control teams when you're in a fight.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 11 2014, @06:41PM
This isn't the boat that will initially have the Rail Gun.
The first deployment will be on the Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket [janes.com], which is a transport ship. That boat has a catamaran hull.
As for your assessment of seaworthiness, I suggest you leave that to people with actual degrees in naval architecture.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 11 2014, @07:25PM
They expect eventual deployment on the DDG 51 class destroyer [wikipedia.org], of which there are 62 in active service, an 13 more planned that Obama is trying furiously to cut.
See the later part of this Video [youtube.com] and the above linked page where indications that this railgun is planned for that ship.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @05:36PM
I've only taken a year of physics so I'm not expert but I wonder how it reduces recoil.
"The high-power electric pulse generates a magnetic field to fire the projectile with very little recoil"
Unless the thing is producing forward motion in flight against the air/wind being pushed backwards the conservation of momentum would say that the ship would have to be pushed in the opposite direction with equal momentum that the object is being pushed forward. Is the advantage that the ammunition is less massive and so the recoil isn't as strong? Or is there electromagnetic propulsion against the air in flight or something (not sure if that makes sense)? Also, as others have noted, Wikipedia seems to indicate that the power supplies necessary are big and expensive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 11 2014, @07:10PM
Big and expensive is what the navy does well. So no worries there.
The projectile weighs 22 pounds. Yes, it will induce recoil, but that is a tiny projectile, compared to what the Navy is used to firing from large bore guns.
It is progressively accelerated down the barrel (rails), and as such the recoil is time-dispersed compared to a chemically fired gun where force is much more instantaneously applied.
(Traditional guns propellants are progressive burning solids (to be distinguished from explosives), and add SOME momentum (by ever expanding gas) as the projectile moves down the barrel, but the highest pressure is achieved within a couple liner feet of the breech within 12 milliseconds. [dtic.mil] Force on the projectile decreases as the projectile moved down the barrel. )
Rails are timed to add relatively constant, or even increasing force as the projectile moved down the rail. This spreads the recoil out over a small amount of time. The weapon structure needs no recoil management for the sizes being deployed in this General Atomics test.
When the larger BAE rail gun (the next phase of the program) comes on line, it has built in Recoil handlers.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday April 11 2014, @09:58PM
The characterization of railguns as "low recoil" arises from a comparison based on equal projectile kinetic energy. The validity of this comparison is just a bit dubious; there's no end of argument over whether momentum, energy, or something else is the correct metric for characterizing guns. IMO, the answer for simple kinetic impactors (no explosives, no expand-on-impact hollowpoint/softpoint designs, etc.) against simple homogeneous targets is generally momentum for projectile velocities << the speed of sound in the target, energy for projectile velocities >> the speed of sound in the target, and something in the middle for velocities on the order of the speed of sound in the target. Considering the speed of sound in water (about 1500m/s, or M~=4 in air) as representing the target, conventional guns range from much slower to slightly faster, and railguns are much faster. Naval guns are on the upper end for conventional guns, so at least energy isn't very wrong...
Anyway, taking as given that equal kinetic energy is the correct baseline, kinetic energy scales as m*v^2, so twice the velocity = 1/4 the mass. Momentum scales as m*v, so twice the velocity means 1/4*2 = 1/2 the momentum, thus 1/2 the recoil. So a (very) high velocity gun has a (very very) very light projectile, and thus has "(very) little recoil", QED.
Practically, there's no real competition to conventional guns at the velocities they're suited to; as you say. the powerplant and high-current capacitor bank (or flywheel+homopolar generator, or other ultra-low-impedance energy storage) required are just silly compared to storing that energy in chemical form as gunpowder. But any pressure gun is theoretically limited to a projectile Mach number of 1 w/r/t the propellant (practically, the velocity must be substantially lower) -- due to the high temperature of combustion gases, this is much greater than the speed of sound in air, but still presents a practical limit of around 2km/s for conventional guns (with crazy stuff like HARP going as far as 3.6km/s). Light-gas guns can improve on this by using propellant gases chosen for high speed of sound, but magnetic guns avoid the limitation altogether. We'd love a 7km/s conventional gun, but since that's not an option, we deal with the downsides of magnetic guns.
Now to quibble over the implicit assumption that projectile mass and velocity are the only recoil-related parameters: At the same momentum, magnetic guns do have a slight recoil advantage over non-muzzle-braked pressure guns (both light-gas guns and conventional guns*) in that they only expel the projectile**, while conventional guns also expel a comparable mass of propellant gas (and frequently unburnt particles) at comparable velocity. Muzzle brakes (which aren't generally used on naval guns) redirect some fraction of this gas backward; as momentum is a vector quantity, this subtracts from the recoil, and if the fraction is great enough, actually reverses the magnetic guns' advantage. But this difference is hardly enough to make magnetic guns attractive at comparable velocities -- as I said, we presently only put up with them because they're one of the only options for hyper-velocity.
*with some exceptions, such as pistols firing intrinsically-silenced ammo [world.guns.ru]
**and the armature, if that's not part of the projectile. Even if it is, some part of the armature is typically converted to plasma, and leaves at ludicrous velocity, but it's ordinarily a small mass.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Friday April 11 2014, @10:18PM
of course. we'd love a "7km/s" gun of whatever sort, too, but I got the 5.5 km/s (planned for the final version) with Mach 7 (for the current prototype). Oops.
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