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Navy’s Mach 8 Railgun Obliterates Record

32 megajoules?

Holy crap.
 
This is awesome, I'm as technophillic as anyone else, but I gotta be the wet blanket....why do we need a weapon system like this?
 
Hoplite said:
This is awesome, I'm as technophillic as anyone else, but I gotta be the wet blanket....why do we need a weapon system like this?
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To blow **** up! (OK...not blow stuff up...punch holes through them.)

If they could make this efficient it could have countless applications militarily. Starting with this "The ultimate goal is to fire the gun at 64 megajoules, making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes. That’s 10 times farther than the Navy’s already-powerful guns can fire, keeping its ships far out of range of enemy anti-ship systems."
 
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VanceMack said:
To blow **** up! (OK...not blow stuff up...punch holes through them.)

If they could make this efficient it could have countless applications militarily. Starting with this "The ultimate goal is to fire the gun at 64 megajoules, making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes. That’s 10 times farther than the Navy’s already-powerful guns can fire, keeping its ships far out of range of enemy anti-ship systems."
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Is there big demand for anti-ship weapon systems?
 
VanceMack said:
To blow **** up! (OK...not blow stuff up...punch holes through them.)

If they could make this efficient it could have countless applications militarily. Starting with this "The ultimate goal is to fire the gun at 64 megajoules, making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes. That’s 10 times farther than the Navy’s already-powerful guns can fire, keeping its ships far out of range of enemy anti-ship systems."
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Pretty much this. It seems to be a great tool for sticking it to an enemy with remarkable accuracy, little collateral damage and greatly decreased risk to our own men and women in uniform. All good objectives, in my book. ;)

Hoplite said:
Is there big demand for anti-ship weapon systems?
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My understanding is that it can be used against any sort of target, not just as an anti-ship weapon.
 
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Hoplite said:
Why is something like this preferable to a 16'' gun?
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Because a 16" gun does not have a range of 200 miles with a flight time of six seconds... ;)

Also, a ship armed with a rail gun will not be carrying a magazine full of high explosives like what is fired from coventional ship weaponry. A rail gun will also allow a much wider array of projectiles to be fired to meet the needs of various circumstances.

...and it's just friggin' cool.
 
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Hoplite said:
Is there big demand for anti-ship weapon systems?
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Demand...for global military dominance, you stay on top, or you don't. The demand always exists. The big boys play ship to ship. China, Russia. Most ships have a lot of anti-ship,sub, missile, and air defenses. They don't have a railgun defense..(although see below)

theangryamerican said:
Because a 16" gun does not have a range of 200 miles with a flight time of six seconds... ;)
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From the text: making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes minutes not seconds eh?

We have confirmation the U.S.S. Enterprise fired its railgun at us. OK, we have 6 minutes to move position, and they will be charging for another 2 hours to build up to another shot...did they think this through? :)
 
Hoplite said:
Again, why do we NEED this?
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1) No explosives to store for ammunition/launch
2) More compact ammunition
3) Rounds can have guidance systems or other special payloads
4) Higher velocity for longer effective range and lower time to target
5) It's a rail gun.
 
Mach said:
Demand...for global military dominance, you stay on top, or you don't. The demand always exists. The big boys play ship to ship. China, Russia. Most ships have a lot of anti-ship,sub, missile, and air defenses. They don't have a railgun defense..(although see below)
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Point taken, but are we ever really going to need that kind of artillery? We have a multitude of different ways to hit other sea targets at long-range already and I'm not completely convinced we should be plunking down billions to develop a new one that doesnt really do much that we cant already do.

From the text: making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes minutes not seconds eh?

We have confirmation the U.S.S. Enterprise fired its railgun at us. OK, we have 6 minutes to move position, and they will be charging for another 2 hours to build up to another shot...did they think this through? :)
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Can this kind of weapon do enough damage to a battle ship to be worth it? I dont know the size or mass of these projectiles off the top of my head, but the reason ships have huge ****-off guns is it TAKES a huge ****-off projectile to damage a battleship.

Deuce said:
1) No explosives to store for ammunition/launch
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Instead you have MASSIVE power requirements and a power infrastructure that has to be kept intact to fire.

Do modern ships have the power generation capacity to use these weapons effectively?

2) More compact ammunition
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You're on a battleship, that isnt really a huge concern.

3) Rounds can have guidance systems or other special payloads
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We can already do that.

4) Higher velocity for longer effective range and lower time to target
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This is possibly the biggest benefit I can see, but again I dont see it as enough justification for such a massive project.

5) It's a rail gun.
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With you 100% there. I love sci-fi stuff and the idea of a railgun is AWESOME, but we need to deal with the reality of it being an extremely expensive project that doesnt give us much.
 
I like it just for itself, and advancing technology is generally a good thing.


We have no idea what kind of spin-off tech could result from this research. It has been postulated for a long time that it might be possible to send payloads into orbit some day using railgun-like tech. A cheap way into orbit...
 
I demand my 2nd Amendment rights to bear arms!!!!!!:cool::mrgreen:
 
theangryamerican said:
Pretty much this. It seems to be a great tool for sticking it to an enemy with remarkable accuracy, little collateral damage and greatly decreased risk to our own men and women in uniform. All good objectives, in my book. ;)

My understanding is that it can be used against any sort of target, not just as an anti-ship weapon.
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If they can make this thing energy efficient...imagine the uses...a space mounted weapon...far less energy required as the projectile already increases due to inertia...or a ground to space anti-satellite weapon...
 
Mach said:
Demand...for global military dominance, you stay on top, or you don't. The demand always exists. The big boys play ship to ship. China, Russia. Most ships have a lot of anti-ship,sub, missile, and air defenses. They don't have a railgun defense..(although see below)


From the text: making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes minutes not seconds eh?

We have confirmation the U.S.S. Enterprise fired its railgun at us. OK, we have 6 minutes to move position, and they will be charging for another 2 hours to build up to another shot...did they think this through? :)
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Caught me on the bolded part. I meant to say minutes. Still, that kind of range in that amount of time is unprecedented with any other form of weaponry. However, how you think that six minutes is enough advance warning to evacuate or relocate a target, when you can't even really be sure the enemy has fired at you?


...and apparently it only takes about 5 minutes to build up the charge used for that shot.
 
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theangryamerican said:
Caught me on the bolded part. I meant to say minutes. Still, that kind of range in that amount of time is unprecedented with any other form of weaponry. However, how you think that six minutes is enough advance warning to evacuate or relocate a target, when you can't even really be sure the enemy has fired at you?


...and apparently it only takes about 5 minutes to build up the charge used for that shot.
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Here's another more descriptive article:
Navy's sci-fi railgun breaks record for most powerful gun on the planet (VIDEO)
 
That is cool as hell. I love the fact that our military is developing sci-fi weapons.
 
Did you see the motto on the project seal?

"Velocitas Eradico"


:lamo :lamo
 
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