US navy railgun in test

[Aquilifer]

(This is not really a question but other people have posted news in this section too)

As the title says, US navy is testing railguns (no, not railway guns).

http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,160195,00.html

Quite power hungry it is. I bet it is effective, but I fear it doesn't make as cool sound as firing a 16 inch naval gun (which have already been replaced by missiles anyway) :g:

[kregoron]

6 mil amps, thats a tad of power lols

[BigFatCat]

Oh, that is just so awesome... "Commence primary ignition"

Can you fit one on a Fiesta? There's two 106s round here I can use for testing purposes. One more of the little frickers ignores me at a roundabout, I'm going postal.

[kregoron]

well im affraid the battery would go dead on first shot m8 if you slapped it on your fiesta

[Sn00ks]

One shot would be enough though.

[DaRkLiGhTeR]

o feck imagine the americans shooting their own people now and anyway i thought youd have to put it up like the side of a mountain to gain anything like the speed you need to fire a railgun (yes im a sci-fi geek)

[Bastet]

a few of them things and the powergrid will finaly totaly short out. whats the point of a gun when you cant produce the juice to fire the bugger

[T-Bag]

If the only thing you need is power then the whole ship can be used to produce that. When you need to carry large amounts of explosives then the room for generators wouldn't be practical.
The ships will be able to power this gun by simply installing bigger generators in space which would have been used for ammo, and it will be far faster and potentially more accurate than any other weapon they can carry. It's a good step forward.
The downside is the guns fall apart after just a couple of shots, leaving the boat useless in combat.

Once they fix that I'm sure they'll be a hit.

[Aquilifer]

What bothers me a bit its that you might have to divert most of the power to the gun instead of the engine. This means you have to slow down when firing and in combat that could mean death. This isn't so big problem if you are just bombarding land targets which cannot shoot back.

[T-Bag]

What bothers me a bit its that you might have to divert most of the power to the gun instead of the engine. This means you have to slow down when firing and in combat that could mean death. This isn't so big problem if you are just bombarding land targets which cannot shoot back.

It's not ideal, but the decision to shoot something should be made long before slowing down is an issue...the only problem I can see would be submarines etc...I'm not sure if the "shell" with it's surrounding superheated plasma would get far into the water, or just disintergrate on impact. Bullets tend not to have a range of more than 1m underwater (more powerful guns tend to have less depth if mythbusters has taught me anything). So conventional antisub measures would still be required...but then again you wouldn't have to stop while using them...it's more will there be room?

[kregoron]

well i can actually see a point in the ship, the gun is supposed to have a effective range of 220miles, which makes it ideal as bombardment ship.
On the power issue, as the article mentions, when it needs to fired the ship will slow down, as power is being diverted, the ship isnt going to be dead in the water, but just slower, which on the positive side makes it more acurate, would take a immense amount of processing power alone to calculate trajectory and even more when moving.
The ship doesnt need to filled with generators, a pile of capacitors could do the job, tho making rate of fire slower.
but then again, its not anything we will be seeing in reality for the next decade, and by then capacitors and generators will be a lot more effective.

[Bastet]

Or they just stick a nuclear reactor or two on the boat to power the whole thing. :narnar: