Railguns are nearly "war-ready": how does this change things?

They'res probably some way to vent heat into space.

If you could try to condense the heat into a small space, you could vent that super-hot air directly into space. You need some pressurized air on board so that you can do this without running out of air of course.

It really would'nt be too difficult, but it would take up some space.

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On hitting a target the round at speeds between Mach 7-9 the round will obliterate itself and really jack up whatever it hits.

The round is also faster then all of our currently fielded cruise missiles. Unless we get the Hypersonic cruise missile going that will continue to be the case.

Also they could hit targets that are non-line of sight. Howitzers are designed to fire in both direct and indirect fire modes. It is all about gun barrel angle of elevation. It will just reach higher altitudes then traditional artillery before reaching the apex point. That in itself can be an advantage. You could loft self guided and semi-self propelled rounds high up to give them a high angle of attack on enemy targets.

We already fit an array of simple guidance fins to even common arty shells to increase accuracy. Then we add on guidance packages to make them even more accurate.

Hell we have guided cluster munitions now.

Thinking on guns that have high angles of fire. The HARP project comes to mind. Check the muzzle blast on that bad boy

It fired a projectile 112 miles up into the air.

edited 31st Mar '12 2:23:56 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Railguns in space are generally not a great idea because they're too slow. Space is friggen huge, so you need something that's either as fast as possible (a laser) or can make course-corrections en route (a missile). Heat dissipation is also a huge issue in space (vacuum is a thermal insulator, after all), but that's true of any weapon.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Long-range (as in, millions of miles) space combat never made any sense to me. Direct energy weapons like lasers tend to lose coherency/effectiveness over long enough distances, and missiles are easy enough to stop.

@Tuefel Hunden IV: No you are not getting it...the advantage of railgun over conventional gun is not the ammunition, it's the power! You can't make a powder gun that fire over mach 7! Late response, but still...

^ IMO space combat will not go over few light seconds because of light lag alone...to fire a laser to a target 1 light second away you need to aim at the location the enemy will be at least 3 seconds in the future...

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There's a difference between solving the problems of wing bracing wires tearing out of their sockets or snapping and causing a biplane to crash, and solving the problems of enabling an aircraft to travel at 4519 miles per hour at the edge of space. But, ya know, both of those problems were solved within a space of less than sixty years. That was in the days of no digital computers. If there is a problem with a technology, any technology, someone is going to show up with the solution. Someone always does. It takes time, is all.

That is the kind of thinking that gets man from Earth to the Moon in under the time limit specified by JFK when he gave that "we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" speech.

When absolutely none of the technology needed to do that existed at the time he made that speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas on 12 September 1962. And I mean none. NASA rockets were still blowing up on their launchpads for hell's sake. No one who considered themselves smart and who heard that speech or read the transcript^ at the time it was given, gave any chance for what was said in it to actually happen.

Yet NASA managed it in seven years.

Railguns, now we know both how to build them and that the technology exists to do so, are a piece of p!"£ in comparison.

^ available here - http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_moon

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I still think these will primarily see use in anti-missile defense or kill sats...could they make a railgun kill sat with existing tech?

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Theoretically, yes. It'd be a piece of shit and only be good for a shot or 2 though, and would have nowhere near the power of the one's the navy's been testing. It could be built though.

Effective ones are at the very least 25 years off, and I think they'd be banned by some treaty or other. I think theres one that banns weapons in space.

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Or a railgun-launched missile that shoots laser. It stays cool and dark for the beginning of its course, then changes direction if necessary(though it'd lose speed), then expends all its power in the enemy's direction, possibly when it's too far to have been able to hurt it if it carried a more familiar warhead.

edited 1st Apr '12 11:50:16 AM by ManInGray

I think a normal missile would suffice then...

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Yes, however simple gravity bombs are considered more cost effective since you don't need much more tech than something that drops it from orbit.

The problem with rail guns and indirect fire is that there's a much larger gap if you try to fire over a hill compared to a missile which is self guided, or a relatively slow shell that delivers explosive payload. This is due to simple curvature of Earth and projectile drop rates. And eventually, the drop may eat the entire KE payload.

Also: gun barrel wear: the obvious answer is gatling rail guns. I see no possible objection to this plan.

Fight smart, not fair.

Never mind Gatling rail guns. I am a big fan of the Warzone 2100 rts game. And that had Gatling 105mm cannon! Could that be done with caseless ammunition?

Onyhow. Um yeah I do get it. You are missing the point. You can achieve the exact same amount of damage with current convetional weapons. The conventional weapons also have the advantage of being a lot more reliable. The rail gun hits about as hard as the largest caliber artillery or common cruise missiles. All of which are more reliable and robust.

The problem with the rail gun weapon is that it breaks down really damn fast and eats up a shit load of power. The gun is literally ripping itself apart when it is fired. The rails are being forced apart along with the intense friction and heat damage from the projectile riding down the rails. Also Mach7 at the Muzzle. Mach 4-5 at impact point.

Also the HARP gun which was a lengthened 16" Naval Artillery gun using conventional means fired a round going 3,600 m/s. The rail gun has only managed 2,520 m/s. The conventional propellants fired a 180kg slug nearly 1,100 m/s faster then the rail gun. The largest projectile that we know the rail gun has fired 3.2kg. Now wrap your heads around this. We want the gun to compare directly to the rail gun. Reduce the round mass to the same as the rail gun with the same weapon using a sabot like the rail gun does. We have already made a simple system that can theoretically operate in the same role as the rail gun.

The railgun has a long ways to go still. We are closer to getting the hypersonic cruise missile ready.

Gatling rail guns that is funny. So instead of just worrying about the weapon eating barrels we have to hope it doesn't much up the mechanism that rotates the barrels too boot.

Speaking of Auto-cannons. During world war II folks were strapping 75mm Automatic and semi-automatic magazine fed cannons to airplanes. Starting in the cold war and moving onward Rapid fire naval guns raning in size from 57mm-130mm have been used. Rail guns are gong to have a problem firing as quickly and as many shells.

Rail guns need to overcome the serious wear and tear issues, time between shots, power issues, and what your going to put them in/on. We got these problems nailed with conventional weapons.

Who watches the watchmen?

The Hellstorm was an awesome gun.

Fight smart, not fair.

And the HARP was not designed for fighting...that thing is for space launch testing...

And your argument damn sounds like "why build a cannon when the trebuchet does the same job already and not need to worry about exploding barrel?"...

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I'd think it's more comparable to"Why move from a musket to a bolt action riffle?"

As of right now, the Rail gun isn't that much or an advantage, and needs more development to be really useful. But in the long run, it will be more powerful and opens the door to more advanced technologies, while chemical guns seem to be reaching their pinnacle.

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Onhow: You don't get it do you. We can already achieve the high velocity shots with conventional munitions that are by far more reliable. It is also not a large leap to go from that test platform to a militarized version. It is made from a wepaon of war in the first place.

It is not a large leap to go from firing 180kg projectile at greater speeds then we have achieved with a rail gun with simpler tech to firing a projectile equal in size to what rail guns fire now. Not only can we use off the shelf tech we already have a really damn good idea how the weapon is going to work.

Even better the gun is not going to rip itself apart or gut the barrel after a dozen or so shots and does not requir additional power supplies on the ships fire.

Your analogy is also horribly sloppy. The only difference between the rail gun and the conventional gun is how the round is propelled. Both fire a saboted round at high velocity. Only the conventional one fires a larger projectile faster then the rail gun firing a smaller one.

Who watches the watchmen?

Again yes I do...and HARP need to be put on a ground installation, how is that exactly useful for offensive fighting? You can't really scale it down for that...and remember that Gerald Bull only cared about gun spacelaunch, never for fighting...

Here's the thing: I know about how reliable it is on the tech we can achieve right now, I know about missiles, but Tomahawk cost half a million per shot and if a gunpowder cannon can be mde with same characeristic as railgun, then where is it??? Why didn't the army (who help funded HARP) or Navy (who would want it) tried to develop it further amd just let the projet rot (since 1970s) instead of trying to resurrecting it if the thing can be easily made and don't have same problem with railgun? And don't talk about novelty...Congress already tried to pull the plug on railgun project already with your reasons and the project still stands...

The HARP with 100(?) cal has 40m barrel...I just wanna say that railgun can have speed as much as it's about powder, it's also about length of the rail...

There's not much development to gun tech (in terms of power) anymore because the thing has limits to it...

Lastly: my analogy's not about difference in the populsion method, it's about not moving youself forward (even only for testing, if it fail we move back, but you advocate of not moving at all...)

edited 4th Apr '12 8:04:33 PM by onyhow

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Oh that I cannot let slide. Gerald Bull was all about the war thing. He invented the world's best iteration of the 155mm howitzer, the GC-45.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GC-45_howitzer

In fact Bull was so much all about the war thing it got him killed. Even money odds on whether or not it was an Israeli Kidonim team or their equivalent from the Iranian side that used him as a mobile Figure 11 target. Seems making friends with Saddam Hussein and designing the Super Gun wasn't high on the list of things that gives you a long life expectancy...

The Babylon project is him want to do space gun and no one except Saddam want to fund him...HARP and Babylon is all about space launch...can't comment on other projects(although his company after HARP did work on weapons)...one of the reasons Bull was killed is because one of the condition for Babylon funding is that he need to improve Saddam's SCUD...

Just tro to aim a 150m long gun...it's hard...

edited 4th Apr '12 8:18:50 PM by onyhow

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Your still missing it. They needed the longer barrel to help get the velocity for the larger projectile. To fire a projectile on par with the rail gun you can scale it down. We are talking 180 kg vs 3.2. Tell me again which system can likely fire it faster then the other? It sure isn't the rail gun. It is also a Naval cannon with some extra barrel length.

Also the rail gun is bolted down to the ground last time I checked and is only a test bed device right now. Also there is almost no difference in function between the HARP and other artillery. They work exactly the same.

Slap a cut down version into a turret and put on one of our still floating battle ships there you go. Never mind the battleship turrets are designed to handle the type of cannon the HARP was built from in the first place.

The scientist who designed the HARP also designed weaponized super guns. Mossad killed him for it. Like I said it is not a long leap from HARP to weapon. All you have to do is make it aimable and fire weaponized projectiles.

We also have had other long range naval gun projects that achieved over the horizon rapid weapons fire. The Advanced Gun System They fire so far out they need to use guidance to improve accuracy. Oh and they only use a 155mm gun.

Yeah I know there is more to gun development. The rail gun is effectively useless until they solve heat/friction and rail warping issues. Having to repair or replace parts after only a handful of shots like that your cost to operate it is gong to go up. To make the gun reach their hoped for goal it is going to use more power which will just compound the problem. Oh and they will likely have to lengthen the gun barrel to do that.

Guess what huge advantages the Tomahawk has. Guidance, reliability, and accuracy. Oh and it can carry cluster munitions or be fitted with its 1000lb explosive warhead. Oh and you can mount the Tomahawk on Aircraft. It can cost as little as $569,000 per missile up to $1.45 million for the most advanced variant.

Here let me put to you another way. The rail gun is disgustingly ineffecient compared to any current weapon system. The amount of energy it needs to draw is absurd. I have already pointed out we can likely achieve what it wants to do or better with our current tech. Oh and they are not using black powder in those guns. Black powder got replaced over century ago. They prefer substances like Cordite and other more advanced propellants instead.

He was killed because Babylon was easily militarized.

edited 4th Apr '12 8:26:14 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

And you're still not answering why would they choose to develop an untested technology instead of working with the damn thing that works and should have better performance characteristics than the "shitty" new toy...you could blame military logic, but I still think it makes no sense...and the AGS doesn't count...it only has half the projected range of the railgun...going by your argument we should have a conventional gun that performs like the railgun already...

And yes it's a fucking test bed device, do you think a New tech can just roll out working 100%?

And black powder? What? I never said anything about black powder...the cannon thing is just supposed to be analogy...

In the end I'm not saying that the old things are useless...fat from it... but you seems to oppose to any kind of new experimentation whatsoever...as I said, if it's really too problematic, fall back...the whole argument really feels like why would we want to move away from silicon chip? Why are you even trying to develop DNA / Quantum computing when the old thing works? (should be a better analogy really)

Ps. Where did you get the info that the final gun will only use 3.2 kg shell?

edited 4th Apr '12 9:00:45 PM by onyhow

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That is what it is firing now. The final projectile size for the rail gun is not going to be much larger. The larger the projectle the more power your going to need to propel it. They are already having issues providing enough juice.

We already use tech similar what the rail gun does on a smaller scale. Our Abrams tanks fire a DU Saboted Kinetic Penetrator. The Abrams is firing a fixed charge out of a 122mm smooth bore cannon 4.8" for english measurement. Up that what a 16" Inch Naval cannon can fire. It is a already proven and tested tech. It would be quicker and more effecient to adapt the tech to our current gun systems.

If you can make the HARP hurl 180 kg projectile faster then the best velocity of our current rail gun what happens if we fire a smaller saboted projectile? You get an effect similar to what happens when you fire a Kinetic Penetrator out of a tank.

You said black powder cannon. There is a huge difference between a black powder cannon and a modern artillery piece.

They are thinking/hoping the earliest we will have a working militarized rail gun is 2020. Til then our current array of already proven tech out performs it in any number of ways.

Who watches the watchmen?

And it was supposed to be a freaking analogy for technological development! I already know that black powder was replaced for a long while already! Seriously, listen!

And no, you still didn't answer about the development plan thing...I'm not gonna argue on the performance of other guns...don't know enough of that, but the logic behind that decision is still not being provided...yes the HARP can do that, but why aren't the military develop guns that used that tech?

edited 4th Apr '12 9:11:36 PM by onyhow

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