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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: 4, Informative) by dotdotdot on Friday April 11 2014, @01:28PM
The railgun itself does not cost $3 billion per ship. I think you might be getting that figure from here [ibtimes.com] which is for a completely new stealth destroyer.
The development cost which is usually the biggest cost of new weapon technology has been only about $240 million over the past 7 years.
(Score: 0) by Dunbal on Friday April 11 2014, @01:43PM
Actually [foxnews.com] no [bangordailynews.com]. One site has it at $3 billion, another at $4 billion. Where did you get YOUR number from?
(Score: 3, Informative) by dotdotdot on Friday April 11 2014, @01:55PM
From you first link ...
Your second link is also about a completely new ship and not just the cost to put a rail gun on an existing ship.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 11 2014, @01:46PM
Another advantage will be cost effective live fire training. Better trained crews make fewer mistakes, and remain more level headed when shtf.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek