U.S. Navy to Deploy Rail Guns by 2011

Walter Francis writes "The U.S. Navy has apparently been busy. They have been focusing heavily on the next generation of weapons and propulsion systems, including Microwave, Laser, and Electromagnetic-Kinetic weapons, more commonly known as railguns. What specifically surprised me was the fact that the Navy plans to deploy these systems as early as 2011, on their DD(X) frigates. The range of these rail guns is estimated to be over 250 miles."

Since it's a 200KB PDF file...

[tcopeland]

...and the server already seems to be having problems, it's mirrored here [cougaar.org].

Two things . . .

[Maradine]

1. Further useful information here [globalsecurity.org].

2. Nitpick: the term 'DD' generally denotes a Destroyer, not a Frigate ('FF').

Obligatory "build-your-own-railgun-link"

[Anonymous Coward]

check out voltsamps.com [voltsamps.com] on how to build your own railgun

China

[strictnein]

See subject if you're wondering why the Navy feels the need to develop/deploy such a weapon.

Much of the US military now focuses on China as their new "war game" adversary. China, of course, is focused on Taiwan with its war games [bbc.co.uk]. Of course, the rail guns might be a little late, since China wants to get Taiwan back by 2010 [google.com].

Re:Another source, details, not crashing yet

[richardbowers]

Doh! I looked at the second link, not the first.

Here are some actual other sources. DD(x) Frigate info [globalsecurity.org]

Cost of the DD(x) frigate, and rollout schedule [cbo.gov]

Re:Suggestion for their autoexec.cfg

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully, you're trolling, because this ain't true [snopes.com]

Re:Suggestion for their autoexec.cfg

[OverlordQ]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's False [snopes.com]

Would You Like to Know More???

[00Sovereign]

For those who have RTFA, and still thirst for more, a great summary of the DD(X) Destroyer program can be found at.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/s hi p/dd-x.htm

Re:Haven't you forgotten something, Captain Avatar

[gmhowell]

We're off to outer space
We're leaving Mother Earth
To save the human race
Our Star Blazers

Searching for a distant star
Heading off to Iscandar
Leaving all we love behind
Who knows what danger we'll find?

We must be strong and brave
Our home we've got to save
If we don't in just one year
Mother Earth will disappear

Fighting with the Gamilons
We won't stop until we've won
Then we'll return and when we arrive
The Earth will survive
With our Star Blazers

Back in my day, we had Star Blazers, Astro Boy, and Kimba the White Lion. We didn't have no 'Adult Swim' or fancy cable so we had to stand next to the TV doing the UHF stance and stare through a staticy mess to see our anime, and WE LIKED IT!

Re:So, um

[kylegordon]

I recall reading somewhere (I forget where) that new ships are now beginning to use electrical power for their propulsion systems. As a result of this, they are also going to be using nuclear power, or very large diesel-electric generators. In order to fire the railguns, they divert power from the propulsion systems temporarily to the firing system. Once the job is done, they can continue under power.
I wish I could remember where I read it :-/

It's about Artillery silly...

[JoeLinux]

Artillery is much lower cost, but typically limited to LOS (13-21 miles). 250 miles is a substantial increase in that. And cheaper per pound of explosive on target. None of that fussy electronics on the missile to get in the way.

Re:Tactical Flexibility

[Ashyukun]

Cost effectiveness, rate of fire and magazine capacity, judging by what I could gather from reading through the 'article'. Also a bit of safety thrown in- the rail gun rounds require no propellants (read: explosives), so there's no the problem of a hit to a turret sparking off a chain reaction of explosions. What this effectively does is put the firepower & range of the battleships into the smaller ships.

Re:Tactical Flexibility

[nosphalot]

If you'd read the article, you'd know that the railgun is better because:

• Its cheaper than missles, at least 3 times
• It delivers more energy to the target, and penetrates deeper into hardened targets
• The ammunition takes less room to store, and doesn't pose a risk of explosion like missles or artillery shells
• The shells have guidence, and are just as accurate as missles, but travel much much faster

In other words, it brings a lot to a Real World(TM) battle.

Range to horizon? Really?

[Theaetetus]

So theoretically, you can shoot these things farther than you can see on the horizon, if the velocity's high enough. Does this mean air support would be crucial in relaying information about targets below the horizon and that the naval ships can technically hit ships that have no way of retaliating.

Hmm... Well, let's ask Mr. Google. Hey, Google, how far is it to the horizon at sea level? In fact, say you're actually 100' up on the bridge of a cruiser. Google says: "11 miles" [boatsafe.com].

So, yes, 250 miles is farther than the horizon. Theoretically.

And is this a new thing? Well, let's let Google tell us again...

• 5-inch deck gun? 13 miles [navy.mil]
• 3-inch gun? 10 miles [navy.mil]
• AGM-154? Low altitude launch - 15 nautical miles (27.78 kilometers), High altitude launch - 65 nautical miles (120.38 kilometers) [navy.mil]

So, in other words, nothing new here in terms of "targets that have no way of retaliating". That's been the case since WWII, when in nearly all of the carrier battles, the opposing forces would be over the horizon and everything was either via plane or via large guns with planes as spotters.

-T

Re:Tactical Flexibility

[The Only Druid]

It has a few obvious benefits, especially as compared to rockets/missiles:

1: It cannot be tracked in a meaningful amount of time. In other words, because of the comparatively high speed (6 minutes in the air, as compared to 60 minutes or 10 minutes for the ERGM and LRLAP), and significally smaller size (30 inches as compared to 60 inches for an ERGM or 88 inches for an LRLAP) and higher impact force (16.9 MJ as compared to 2.2MJ and 7.8 MJ for the ERGM and LRLAP respectively) the rail cannot be anticipated anywhere nearly as easily.
2: Because of this, it is almost impossible to deflect it/move out of the way.
3: Also, the cost of individual rails will be significantly less than the cost of an individual missile.

Re:Leaving the term "Superpower" behind.

[sexylicious]

Many new weapon systems currently deployed or being staged for deployment are many years advanced, even decades, compared to other nations that it begs to question.

Wrong. Look at the Chinese. They are putting things together that are designed to counter US stuff. The Russians and French are even better examples. They both design and manufacture weapon systems that are made specifically to counter US weapons and defenses. Then they sell those things to anyone that wants them.

It only makes sense to try and make your soldiers more likely to come home and fight again.

Re:Suggestion for their autoexec.cfg

[cynic10508]

name USS Abraham Lincoln

Well, Abraham Lincoln wouldn't be a name for a destroyer. President names are used for Nimitz-class super carriers. In fact, Lincoln is already taken by the CVN-72 [navy.mil]. I think destroyers take their names from famous Navy personnel.

Re:Range

[comedian23]

Your numbers are a little misleading. Here is a quote for my /. peeps(bold added for emphasis):

At least 5,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion of Iraq, an independent research group has claimed. As more evidence is collated, it says, the figure could reach 10,000.

We all get your point, but it makes more of an impact if you are honest with the numbers.

Re:Arms Race / EMF

[Sangui5]

After they've been hit with one of these, I do believe that "can't shoot back" will describe their opponents.

Re:Arms Race / EMF

[jamesshuang]

Magnetic fields don't bleed that much... They fall of by an inverse square of distance, in other words, really quickly. Basically, in under 100 m, the earth's magnetic field will be much stronger, drowning out the ship's signal.

Re:Particularly true of the Navy.

[Jerf]

What was the last major conflict in which the Navy played a significant role?

Err, how about all of them ? Or do you think men and equipment just teleport themselves to the theatre? (The Air Force can't move all that stuff, it's not cost effective and in some cases not possible; think heavy artillery.)

You obviously have no clue.

Re:Old News

[Jeremy Erwin]

So? Not all of us are into reading military porn [salon.com]. Besides, the Navy's plans were previously described in a fully buzzword compliant series called "Sea Power 21" in the Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine [usni.org] back in 2002--2003.

Re:Arms Race / EMF

[Anonymous Coward]

<sarcasm>
Yeah, that's a good point. Remember how at the battle of Midway, the Japanese navy were able to sneak-attack the American fleet by putting giant silencers on the battleship Yamato's 18" guns?
</sarcasm>

It is generally assumed that firing weapons announces your location, son. It's not like naval gunnery has ever been about sneaking around.

Re:Tactical Flexibility

[mal3]

The article mentions all this. Traditional gas powered navy ships have two sets of turbines, one for propulsion the other for electric. The ships that will be carrying the rails guns will have turbines that power electric motors, the guns, and the rest of the ship. Sounds like it couldn't fire while moving but I doubt they'd really need to.

Additionally, it's a lot cheaper and safer to drop shells on an enemy from 250 miles away than it is to send an aircraft. Even though these shells are ballistic the do have guidance systems that let them control their 'fall'. They should be just as accurate as a cruise missle.

The rate of fire is slower than with traditional artillery(6 per minute), but their time to target is faster. So they can drop the same amount of rounds in a 15 minute engagement.

They won't replace carriers, but may lighten the load for the pilots. If we can take out the radar sites with these before sending in the planes it will save some lives.

Re:Range?

[AlecC]

Old news. Artillerymen refer to "direct fire" - shooting at things you can see - and "indirect fire" - shooting over the horizon. Been going on since the 19th century. Originally you needed spotters, who would signal back how you were doing and correct your aim. That is why the British Army had a Balloon Corps before any radar existed. The original function of the Royal Flying Corps was artillery observation - and the fighters only developed to attack/defend the artillery observation planes.

Now radar does it for you. You can have on-ship radar, land or carrier based radar aircraft. The arcraft, provided they are high enough, can be well away from the target - but need defence.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFPDF. The rounds will likely be guided (by GPS).

Re:Arms Race / EMF

[AndersM]

Who cares about the electromagnetic emission for tracking? As soon as an artillery projectile comes above the horizon, it can be tracked with microwave anti-artillery radar, and its origin determined by analyzing the ballistic trajectory. The technology is already here [northgrum.com].

Re:Bigger carrier = bigger target = bigger coral r

[colinrichardday]

Last time carriers were used in war? I'm sure the crews of The General Belgrano and HMS Sheffield will disagree.

Re:Range

[comedian23]

Well, here is a quote from the link you gave:

Iraq Body Count (IBC), a volunteer group of British and US academics and researchers, compiled statistics on civilian casualties from media reports and estimated that between 5,000 and 7,000 civilians died in the conflict.

Most people would probably consider it fair if you said 6,000. OTOH, I was looking at the other site you included, which puts the number at over 7,000. Either one would be fair.

It should be noted that both of those estimates include people killed by either side in the war too. Since you were replying to a post regarding acceptable losses by American mistakes(such as errant bombs) that's worth mentioning too. I'm not saying you are wrong, just saying that people need the complete story to make their own decisions.

BTW, I checked out your site. You need to either make the url link "www.costasandsandra.com" instead of "costasandsandra.com" or change your DNS a little. Congrats on your wedding. I'm getting married soon too, on Oct 30th.

Re:Another source, details, not crashing yet

[Ian Peon]

Frigates are smaller than Destroyers, which are in turn smaller than Cruisers. Each has a different role - frigates are traditionally for convoy defense whereas destroyers are an attack platform.

Frigate != Destroyer
DD, DDG, DD(x) = Destroyer
FF, FFG = Frigate

Sorry to jump on this, but having lived aboard DDG-56 for 3 years, this mistake is akin to me referring to Linux as a program for Windows. Irritating.

Facts not supported

[ryantate]

Well I know the story is already two hours old (gasp), but it appears to be ill-supported. The linked article [navyleague.org] plainly states ...

1. That this warship class will enter service in 2011:
"When the U.S. Navy's first integrated power system (IPS)/electric drive warship arrives in 2011 as the DD(X), the service will mark a technological breakthrough ..."

2. That this warship class will debut without a rail gun or any other advanced weapon system:
" When the new ship arrives in service it will be armed with very advanced, but conventional weaponry, including two United Defense 155mm Advanced Gun System cannons and an 80-cell vertical launch system for various guided missiles. But these systems are stepping stones to greater capabilities ..."

3. The Navy won't even decide whether to fund a rail gun for years:
"Whatever investment decisions are made for weapons the next several years, the Navy already is engineering the potential these technologies require, according to Collins and his IPS/electric drive team for DD(X)."

The speculative linked white paper goes no further, advocating that a rail gun *proof of concept test* *could* happen by 2008:

"A focused technology development program that leads to a series of experiments that culminate in a full-scale extended-range naval rail gun proof-of-concept demonstration in fiscal year 2008
is a sensible approach."

For a sense of how little this means, consider there was a successful "proof of concept" demonstartion for airborne anti-laser systems -- "Star Wars" SDI technology -- in 1984 [af.mil].

Re:Curve of the earth

[PitaBred]

Speed of light: 186,000 miles per second
Speed of railgun: 6km/second, or 3.73 miles per second
3.37/186,000 = 0.00002
Which, as anyone can see, is nowhere near 1/4th, or .25 It's over 10,000 times less, as a matter of fact.
Please, use some math and common sense next time. Better yet, do more than just skim when reading... actually understand what you're looking at.

Re:Holy crap..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this rather amusing list describes France's military victories over the centuries:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/france.html

Try googling for "French military victories".

There's even a name for it -- the de Gaul syndrone -- taking credit for military victories when in fact France had very little to do with many (e.g., WWI and WWII.) Vichy France was in fact very happy to heil Hitler and send Jews and other apparent undesirables east to their deaths. For the past 50 years France has attempted to rewrite history and have us believe that in fact the "Free France" movement was widespread, when in fact it only made progress against the Vichy government when the Allies had already pushed back the Germans and it was nigh time to switch allegiances anew.

Re:Don't forget ricochet....

[sense_net]

Interesting point from the article - the author sees this system fitting into existing 5" gun mounts, and sees one gun as being able to deliver equivelent fire as a squadron of F18s. That means destroyers become as powerful as aircraft carriers. True, but only out to the range of the projectile. So inside of 250miles in this case, you are correct. A 'real' aircraft carrier can project force out to the range of its planes, which is always signifigantly greater then 250 miles.

Re:Luckily this is the US

[Archibald Buttle]

:-) I was right - I did get modded as a troll too.

Anyway, this amused me:
Because the US does not use their military might to colonize and subjugate other countries.

The US has a long track record of using their military, political, and economic might not to colonize but subjugate other countries. Take for example South Korea.

A few years back South Korea were looking to upgrade their air force, so they put out tenders to potential suppliers. They ended up with out-dated F-15s. This is widely considered by many Koreans to have been a very bad thing, especially when much better planes were on offer from elsewhere for similar amounts of money. However the Korean government was basically cajouled by the US government into going for the F-15 with threats of decreased investment in Korea and "reconsidered" their original decision to opt for a superior plane.

Now when I was told about this I thought "nah, the F-15's a good plane, they've even flown back home with wings blown off", so I investigated further. Sure enough the version of the F-15 that the Korean Air Force bought is quite a bit inferior to the current models, and it was originally their second choice.

Your points though about European imperialism are well taken.

I would say though that asserting that France duped the US into Vietnam doesn't ring true to me. The US jumped into Vietnam, same as it did in Korea, because of the paranoia about the spread of communism.

The Palestine fiasco can of course be directly linked to WWII and imperialism, however it was imperialistic actions of Britain and the USA that lead to the creation of Israel. It's currently the imperialistic attitude of the Israeli government and the virtually unconditional backing of them by the US government that is the root of the current problems. Given their history you would have thought that Israel would treat people better, however they have created a ghetto in their own country, which is eerily similar to what happened to them in Germany.

You are right that many of the problems in the Middle East come from European Imperialism, but they also come from US interference. Remember that Saddam was an ally of the US only a couple of decades ago.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

DDX will probably be OK, though. Although the submitter calls it a frigate, she's slated to be around 15,500 tons - deep in heavy cruiser territory if you ask me (about 47% heavier than a Ticonderoga, about in line with a Salem-class CA, which carried either 9 or 12 rapid-cycle 203mm cannon)

And, with guided rounds, putting a mass-driver slug up the butt of an attacking MiG shouldn't be much harder than plinking it with an SM2-ER (which DDX will also carry, you know, just in case one needs to blow a hole the size of a Chevy in a Kirov-class ;-)

Re:In other news...

[sense_net]

Lots of experiments have been conducted proving that electronics can survive extreme forces as produced by a gun-launch of some sort: see this http://www.astronautix.com/articles/abroject.htm for details about the HAARP project which launched electronics with a 5-inch gun to 50 miles up.

Re:In other news...

[dlmarti]

The g forces aren't of the same magnitude, from HAARP. With a railgun we are in the neighborhood of
200,000,000 g's.

http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/classes/2001 Fa ll/Phyx135-2/19/railgun.htm

funny looking plane

[Anonymous Coward]

The tooltip text has a blurb about it, although nothing too detailed:
"Arguably the true star of 'Stealth,' the makeshift-aircraft of the same name sits under the softlights of Hangar Bay Two, June 15. Despite its size, Lincoln and embarked Sailors continued business as usual while underway. (Photo by JSN David Poe)"

There is an article [navy.mil] linked on the bottom of the page that explains it. It's for a movie by the name of 'Stealth.'

Re:Range

[mnemonic_]

Though actually about $300-400 billion is spent on defense for the U.S.

Re:In other news...

[Tsar Ivan IV]

For an idea of the power of these old-tech guns, check out this photo of the USS Iowa (New Jersey's sister ship) firing a full broadside. Note the water displacement. USS Iowa [navy.mil]

Re:Recoil

[rush22]

As far as Newton is concerned, yep. It would have to bolted to the deck pretty tightly.

Here's a very short description: Railgun recoil and relativity [iop.org]