SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Navy plans to fire 5-inch diameter non-explosive projectiles from deck-mounted railguns:
The Navy plans to fire a high-speed, long-range rail-gun Hypervelocity Projectile from its deck-mounted 5-inch guns to destroy enemy drones, ships, incoming missiles and even submarines, service officials said.
The effort is led by a special Future Naval Capability program.
Navy officials say the program is leveraging commercial electronics miniaturization and computational performance increases to develop a common guided projectile for use in current 5 inch guns and future high velocity gun systems. The HVP effort will seek to increase range and accuracy of the 5-Inch Gun Weapon System in support of multiple mission areas, service developers told Warrior.
Developed initially for an Electromagnetic Rail Gun next-generation weapon, The Hyper Velocity Projectile, or HVP, can travel at speeds up to 2,000 meters per second when fired from a Rail Gun, a speed which is about three times that of most existing weapons.
BAE Systems Hyper Velocity Projectile. 5-inch gun. Found at NBF.
Related: U.S. Military Increasing Development of Directed Energy Weapons
U.S. Navy's New Mach 6 Electro-Magnetic Railgun Almost Ready for Prime Time
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday October 25 2017, @11:20PM (2 children)
Also glossed over is the "guided projectile" bit. Steerable after firing, either with its own microwave radar or return echo from the ship's radars.
There are sabot rounds, the actual warhead is sub-caliber (smaller than 5 inch), and carried in a discarding sabot. It then flicks out its own fins for stabilization spin and steering.
See this 2015 article about what this round can do
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/watch-the-navys-hyper-velocity-projectile-rip-through-t-1705064652 [jalopnik.com]
Also this round effectively triples the range of a 5 inch gun.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/10/us-navy-hypervelocity-projectiles-tests-tripled-range-of-5-inch-guns-and-with-superaccuracy.html [nextbigfuture.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday October 25 2017, @11:27PM (1 child)
Yeah, but can it really shoot stuff under the water accurately? The TFA mentions submarines and that just sounds plain fanciful.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:31AM
Yeah, I don't know, seems a corner case at best.
I suppose if you can steer it in flight, you could fire it over a shallow sub that your sonar has detected, and then dive them into the water at the steepest angle you could muster.
I doubt the sub would be at much risk if it was a couple hundred feet down.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.