U.S. Navy to Deploy Rail Guns by 2011 1172
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."
Why wait till 2011! (Score:5, Interesting)
Arms Race / EMF (Score:2, Interesting)
My other question is how well shielded are these things? What does it do to the gunners to be near one of these things when it discharges? How strong is that magnetic field? I know for instance that machinists can't get MRI scans of their head because the magnets will pull little metal fragments out of their faces in a painful / vision endangering manner.
The military doesn't have a stellar record when it comes to safety/health in deploying new weapons. Look at Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, and the atomic bomb.
Other issues at stake? (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah well I didn't read it too much, so I guess one of you guys can correct me
steel beams from space? (Score:4, Interesting)
did i dream this? i don't think so but i guess it's possible. then again i didn't think rail guns or private space flights were coming anytime soon either.
Re:FYI from a Navy employee... (Score:3, Interesting)
If it is anything like the Missile shield (Score:2, Interesting)
What will happen is the budget will be overrun, and all of bushes friends in the Carlyle Group will get that bit richer.
Re:An Interesting Technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:steel beams from space? (Score:5, Interesting)
For a fictional view of how devastating this could be, see Niven & Pournelles 'Footfall'.
The scary part is that we could do this with current technology. It would just be horribly expensive. But once launched, the owner would have the ability to destroy any selected square meter of the Earth's surface, and there's nothing anyone could do about it (aside from shooting down the satellite).
Railgun project link . Video also (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Could this gun be used to shoot stuff into orbi (Score:4, Interesting)
The lowest commonly-used orbits are in the 200-300 mile range, so this couldn't hit them. Even something in a 100-mile transfer orbit is iffy. However, with good enough targeting, it could hit a ballistic missile during boost or re-entry, and could probably hit any aircraft.
Re:I think you mean France (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to mention that France only has ONE active aircraft carrier (Charles de Gaulle) which is about 1/4th the size of a standard US carrier. How pathetic is that? At least they used Nuclear instead of Diesel.
Speaking of which, I don't understand why they don't simply fit these destroyers with Nuclear Power Plants instead of Gas Turbines. Sure, the turbines are powerful, but they won't provide the same amount of power draw that nuclear plants can. I'd hate to be the captain who has to choose between firing the Railgun, the Maser, or moving the ship. If he was captaining a Nuclear ship, he could order all three options at the same time!
Re:I think you mean France (Score:2, Interesting)
weight
cost
effiency
crew requirements
Yes - China (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Arms Race / EMF (Score:3, Interesting)
My other question is how well shielded are these things?
That's an interesting point. Unless they've got some really fancy shielding, as soon as they pull the trigger, anybody who can do triangulation with radios will know exactly where they are.
Perhaps their war plans all involve opponenets who can't shoot back.
Re:Tactical Flexibility (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it? All that energy has to come from somewhere. If you're charging your railgun with a few hundred gigajoules of energy, you're burning a LOT of fuel. For a Nuclear Vessel, this wouldn't be that big of a deal. It would simply need to carry a bit more material, or double its refueling stops. (e.g. Instead of every 10 years, they refuel every 5 years.) But these ships are Gas Turbine powered.
rate of fire
This one I definitely don't follow. Where's the energy coming from for a high rate of fire? Does the captain have to order a pre-charge cycle? Would that mean that he'd be able to fire 5-10 shells before having to wait for a 10-20 minute recharge cycle? That's going to have a serious impact on the ship's tactical ability.
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.
Fair enough. Magazine hits are always a big problem. But couldn't one argue that the magazine storage no longer matters when fighting battles with such powerful weapons? If you're hit by a nuke/railgun/maser/large missile, your ship is dead anyway.
What this effectively does is put the firepower & range of the battleships into the smaller ships.
This is definitely nice. But what I'd like to know is if military doctrine has swung back in the direction of Battleships? AFAIK, the invention of the Aircraft Carrier made Battleships obsolete. Since a carrier can launch planes at nearly any range (even outside the 250 miles of the Railgun), it has far better strike capability. In addition, pilots provide intelligence to both the offensive weapons and evasive maneuvers that not even a missile can achieve.
Don't forget ricochet.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen plain old ordinary machine gun rounds do some amazing and unexpected things. I expect that scales with velocity.
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.
How about that - the return of the battleship.
DG
Wrong on all counts (Score:3, Interesting)
America spends more than say Europe, but has declined quite a bit from the Cold War peak of the late 80's. Most notable is that the absolute size and war fighting capability of the Army has declined dramatically from the Gulf War 1 era, particularly sea lift. The US isn't capable of something like Gulf War 1 anymore. All we have left is strategic bombing or Nukes which is a poor choice.
Current defense spending seems focused on "stand off" capabilities where the US can inflict damage on adversaries while putting few of it's servicemen at risk. The model seems to be Serbia of the late Nineties where Clinton led a bombing campaign that helped bring Milosevic to the bargaining table.
Rail guns, long range missles, air superiority, and various precision munitions including cruise missles and bombs are all useful things to have with a military facing uncertain threats from unstable countries (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran all come to mind). But it's only part of the package and the ability of the US to decisively defeat an enemy by taking over their territory and more importantly destroying their military is not very high. [Hitler, North Korea, North Vietnam, Serbia, and Saddam all had their military forces intact despite extensive bombing]
Part of the problem is an unwillingness to face real conflict and the sacrifices on a society that War (which is *always* destructive) requires. The main reason I suspect however is that there's a lot more money in systems like the F 22 or Rail Guns than creating an army with sea lift capability that can destroy an adversary's military and therefore stop things which are contrary to US interests (like say, a dirty bomb in Chicago assembled with Pakistani help as a hypothetical).
Stand off bombing has not served to destroy any military, and it only serves to encourage adversaries to negotiate and isn't decisive. Milosevic like North Vietnam had his own reasons to bargain and the bombing campaign only helped wasn't decisive.
It's also time to get realistic. "Terrorists" are usually allied with significant elements in unstable countries that have factions in the military and elites. Significant elements of Pakistan's Army and Intelligence services for example are PART of the Taliban and Al Queda network. They can however be deterred from helping nuke a major American city if there is a realistic chance that doing so would remove them and their comfortable regime. And so far America's woeful war-fighting capability is very good at bombing specific targets and very bad at removing regimes to provide that deterrence.
Re:Arms Race / EMF (Score:1, Interesting)
But seriously, when the Navy deployed nuclear submarines they purposefully made reactor vessels that were stronger than anybody said we needed, provided more shielding than any of the "experts" anticipated, and implemented standards that most people thought were too harsh.
Fast forward to today, and we're thankful things happened that way. Zero nuclear accidents is something to be proud of.
Re:Leaving the term "Superpower" behind. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Counter (Score:5, Interesting)
Conservation of momentum. You cannot blow a projectile into "harmless" bits, because the total momentum of the pieces remains the same. Instead of getting hit by one big projectile, you get hit by a bunch of dust, or vapor, or droplets of liquid metal. The total impact impulse will remain the same.
You also can't just deflect the projectile, because the force applied to deflect the projectile would be equally applied to the deflector device. Even if you did this via a magnetic field, the deflector would suffer damage.
There's simply not much you can do to stop a projectile moving at such velocities.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example -- even the first generation railguns have a muzzle velocity (intentionally limited) of 2.5 km/s (which is Mach 7.5, presumably at sea-level pressure -- the article doesn't say). That's awesome for aiming, time-of-flight, and kinetic energy delivery so great you don't even need messy exposives.
But, what about the sonic boom? I mean, even a small thing crossing the speed barrier makes a noise (ref: a bullwhip) -- how loud will it be on deck with n of these things breaking the sound barrier every 10 seconds?
Will they enclose them in something, build a sound baffle of some kind, or just issue really good hearing protection devices for those working in the vicinity?
Sorry to be serious and all, but I'm just curious
Re:Leaving the term "Superpower" behind. (Score:2, Interesting)
What you hope is that side is yours, and they have the politics and doctrine to use that power as only as needed.
For all those thinking 250 miles is too short... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I think you mean France (Score:3, Interesting)
A fair enough answer. I have to mostly guess at the power requirements due to the exact design being classified, but there is a lower ceiling on how much power these things can use. The laws of physics don't allow you to obtain energy for free. It HAS to come from somewhere.
One gentlemen was kind enough to provide some numbers [slashdot.org] on energy delivered to a target. 16.9 MJ is tremendous in of itself, and would require the full output of a gas turbine to power. There is a trick however. The poster gave the figure in energy delivered to the target. The actual launch energy must be significantly higher for it to reach its destination. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if 10x the 16.9 MJ is actually a low figure.
Assuming that it takes 10x the energy for launch, you are now requiring 169 MJ of energy to launch a single projectile. That's one HELL of a lot of energy. Even if we assume that you have several Gas Turbines to cover the energy costs, you still have the issue of fuel. Given that kerosine has an energy density [berkeley.edu] of 36.8 MJ/liter, you'll easily burn through about 4.5 litres of fuel for every launch. (Probably a lot more due to inefficiencies.) That may not seem like much, but once the ship is out of fuel, it can't maneuver and it can't power its weapon systems. In other words, if these ships were nuclear powered, they could stay in a fight much longer (having MONTHS to YEARS worth of power with all systems at maximum draw) instead of bowing out after only an hour or so of fighting.
EM Rail Guns are so cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Interesting)
Cheap and easy! (Score:1, Interesting)
So for most any small-time deployment within 250 miles of the sea, you can just send a destroyer instead of a whole battle group. These things should pay for themselves in no-time.
aQazaQa
Re:Particularly true of the Navy. (Score:2, Interesting)
Navy still does battle site deployments but I was under the impression that most of the hauling is now private companies work.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
I stood about 100 yards away from the New Jersey when she fired all guns starboard. The heat & energy from those guns was incredible. Image an order of magnitude higher. Those little aluminum FFG's would melt their superstructure with one round.
Return of the big gun? (Score:5, Interesting)
The era of the big gun pretty much ended with the battle of Midway. After that, it became obvious that aircraft carriers could both defend themselves and attack enemy shipping without need for battleships and their guns. (Or, more to the point, without big guns and the battleships needed to haul 'em around.)
But I wonder what this development means? The railgun projectile is better in several respects than a missle: cheaper, higher rate of fire, harder to spoof or shoot down, apparently more hitting power. It seems to me that this railgun is closer to carrier based aircraft in relative performance than any guns have been since before WW2.
It's almost enough to make one think that the big gun could be effective again. Envision the "bad guys" having a submarine with railguns sneaking up to within 200 miles of a carrier battle group. It could surface to rapidly launch a few dozen hypersonic projectiles at the carrier. If it could launch a big salvo rapidly enough, the carrier would be in a world of hurt. The sub probably wouldn't survive the counterattack, but to disable a carrier that's probably a good trade.
Can an effective ASW umbrella be extended to beyond the range of these guns?
Hmmm.
Re:Counter (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you could pulverize the projectile into dust, each of those particles would have a much lower terminal velocity and lose a lot of their energy to friction with the atmosphere. Do this far enough back, and it could make a significant difference.
Re:Leaving the term "Superpower" behind. (Score:2, Interesting)
I personally believe that the very fact that the US is not content in being just a superpower, and it becoming a hyperpower--that likes to bully the world--that is one of the prime reasons the US was targeted by terrorists, and will (further) be targeted--perhaps just mostly in other countries, because its safer that way.
im no physics expert but wouldnt it be silent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am i right, or has high school physics failed again? (or rather did i fail physics...)
jeff
Re:Tactical Flexibility (Score:5, Interesting)
A cruise missle isn't really that small -- currently they are fired only from destroyers and cruisers, or large submarines. Each missile is large, having to carry both the fuel and the warhead. While the rail gun itself is larger than a cruise missle and launcher, each rail round is much smaller and much safer since it isn't a mix of high explosives and rocket fuel waiting to be hit by enemy ordinance. And if its speed you want, then the limiting factor is mass, and you can get a lot more rounds for less mass with a rail gun.
I don't see what the distance to the target has to do with its value... Why spend half a million destroying a warehouse when you can use a comparitively free lump of metal?
All in all, I think rail guns are a vastly positive improvement in weapon mobility. I don't see missles as having any advantage, outside of extra range.
GPS Guidance? (Score:4, Interesting)
Methinks "a lot"...
Re:In other news... (Score:1, Interesting)
Since when has weapon loudness been a priority for the military? On the contrary... loudness is a good thing on a weapon: it lowers the enemy morale.
Re:Tactical Flexibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Luckily this is the US (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Without the hot expanding gasses from conventional cannons the heat might not get out of hand. Right?
Re:Suggestion for their autoexec.cfg (Score:2, Interesting)
----
Your Boss A Muppet? [blogspot.com]
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Totally wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
The key issue isn't maneuverability, although that can be nice. It's speed of deployment. It took us over a month before we were ready to attack Afghanistan; according to Woodward's interview with Bush, he was furious over this fact (and with good cause!). Now, that wasn't a coastal situation, but the same issue applies: We really need to get away from this cold-war mentality heavy-armor massive-craft fighting style.
Sitting underwater isn't going to protect you from the unexpected. I'm sure many people laughed off the concept of something like the Cole happening before it did. Are we to keep preparing for the last attack again? What if the next "surprise" is, say, surfacable mines buried on the ocean bottom? What if the next attack is a rogue state's first low yield nuclear warhead? What if the next attack comes from a ship that looks like an oil tanker until it fires from 10 miles away? Etc. You can't be fighting the battle of yesterday: you need to fight the battle of tomorrow.
Both hydrofoils and lifting bodies do great in the open ocean (perhaps you're confusing them with SES - Surface Effect Ships? They do poorly in the open ocean). In fact, Australia has a hydrofoil troop transport that was sort of the envy of the US navy when they deployed it to Iraq - very fast, low radar cross section, etc.
VTOL carriers allow for tiny carriers - no need for a big runway.You have small, fast ships that can get within range of their targets in weeks instead of months
"The railgun is not designed to replace aircraft or missiles". That may sound nice and good, but it will. A lot of them. Having the sort of power generation/storage needed to fire projectiles with such incredible force doesn't come cheap. Neither does the space for such a gun. Nor its mass. Etc. It's a tradeoff, and a *major* one.
Oh, and one more thing:
"Given the air and sea power surrounding the modern aircraft carrier, it is virtually invulnerable to anything less than a nuclear attack."
Yes, the same thing was said before the Cole, too, about our naval ships in general.
Re:EM Rail Guns are so cool (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite using rails to cleverly complete the circuit to the next stage, if you are using coils to accelerate the projectile you have created a gauss gun or "coil gun" rather than a rail gun. You could have used photodetectors to fire the next stage too, but that requires more electronics.
-brandon
Re:Tactical Flexibility (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the major question that will have to be answered there, in the long run, will be effectiveness vs. cost. That's a very different equation now than it was during the cold war - will these weapons be necessary to our ships in future conflicts? Which ones?
I can see smaller versions of these weapons - like ship-mounted AA and CIWS systems being *very* worth the cost of development; but the larger (and currently envisioned) systems most likely only in land bombardment rather than surface actions, against likely naval deployments any potential enemy might make currently.
Here's another idea, tho: DD(X) that can shoot down satellites
Land-based anti-sat-EMK systems, would, of course, be even more effective. I'm kind of surprised that I've seen little on this particular application - it seems obvious (or maybe I'm missing something?)
SB
sheesh that's a high muzzle velocity (Score:1, Interesting)
OK, maybe I'm off here, but these things fire at a 2.5 km/s muzzle velocity, right? And the escape velocity for Earth is just over 11 km/s, right? So these things are capable of firing projectiles within an order of magnitude of the speed necessary for them to permanently leave Earth. (Disregarding friction and everything, of course.)
This means if they can increase the power of these guns by a factor of, say, 10 or 20, then they have a gun that's so powerful they can point it straight upwards (at the right time of day, etc.), fire the gun, and strike the surface of the moon. DAMN!
One thing that I don't get... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Totally wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry to interject, but 80MW is NOT sufficient power to run both the weapons systems and the propulsion. Keep in mind that 80MW is *maximum* power output. Maximum power output will drain the fuel stores extremely fast. Presumably, some of that power will be automatically assigned to defensive and communication systems such as RADAR, GPS, Radio, Satellite Uplink, Targeting, and simply keeping the lights on. With the remaining power, the ship can either move under military power or charge the rail gun. It simply doesn't have enough power to do both.
Even more interesting is that the article spoke of adding Masers to the inventory of high energy weapons. Now the commander will have one MORE decision to make: Does he move the ship, charge the railguns, or fire the Masers? He'd better make the right decision, because the boat will be sunk if he makes the wrong one. Not to mention that his ship wouldn't be able to sustain battle for more than a few hours. At 80MW, the ship will be running about 130 liters of fuel through the turbines each minute. He simply can't stay in a firefight for very long that way.
No, unless they start equiping these ships with Gigawatt nuclear reactors, they won't be able to help very much in a surface engagement. What they WILL be able to do (and thanks to the posters who pointed this out to me) is bombard stationary installations like RADAR stations, Airfields, and beach defenses. The Marines will love them, and they'll cost less than pulling the battleships out of reserve.
Re:Hyperpower my ass - give it 50 years (Score:3, Interesting)
What might happen is that the dangerously high growth rate will make Chinese wake up to the possibility of democracy, but it will take an economic implosion (provided probably by the failure of the state-run bank system and bizarrely pegged Yuan) to push the people over the edge to revolution.
With nukes at risk, this ought to be at least as "interesting" as the end of the Soviet Union. The question is when pushed to the edge, what will the Chinese Communist Party do? Wag the Dog and invade Taiwan?
Railgun tidbits (Score:5, Interesting)
How prophetic of me [slashdot.org]...
_Practical_ military purposes (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a look at the UK for an example. They opted for a small fleet of SMALL aircraft carriers that are designed to rush in and handle local skirmishes and cost a helluvalot cheaper than their American leviathan counterparts and their trailing battlegroups (which are there just in case the Soviet Block comes back together and stops being poor all of a sudden, Marxism is revived, all western culture as we know it is abolished there and the Japanese decide to attack Pearl Harbor. Again.)
Yes, I know (;-)), A real live railgun will give any fps gamer who can pronounce "quake" a hard-on, but guys (I'm talking to the americans among us
Get you more IT jobs? Encourage tech-oriented businesses with tax levys? Hell, give it to NASA and have them build a space elevator before China does, that'll be a sure way of giving all us geeks an even bigger erection...
All you have to do is look at [modern, developed, not-dirt-poor] self-oriented countries such as Australia or Germany to see how useful a taxdollar can be when put on the right track.
Re:Hyperpower my ass - give it 50 years (Score:2, Interesting)
EU has lots of problems:
1 population in Europe is actually declining and previous economic growth is unsustanable given the dismal population growth in Europe
2 Cultural and language differences between EU nations limit labour mobility which restricts the efficency of labour market
3 excessive laws and regulations, socialist ideals, extremely ridgid labor laws, too much burocracy etc....
4 Uniting different regions economically and militarily was alredy tried in Europe (Yugoslavia) and we all know how well that went...
CHINA:
1 it is a communist system that forecfully is holding its grip on power. As standard of living increases in that country there will be inevitable drive for democracy that could turn out to be very bloody given the diverse population of China. Current system is unstable and is poised to fail and fall.
I would have loved to elaborate more and add more issues but this french keyboard is pissing me off...
Flawed Idea (Score:1, Interesting)
Now instead of air resistance on one object you have air resistance on all the smaller object (that are most likely not aerodynamic at all). The friction from the air would burn them up.
It is much like those silly people say they if you blow up an falling meteor that the damage will just be the same.... well if just calculate how much dust falls from space in a given year and put that into one ball and see how much that it.... it is a killer meteor weight.
Something to be said about the power of friction over the surface area of an object. More Surface area = more resistance and hence more friction hence greater chance the smaller object will be 'burnt' up. It is good to have atmosphere!
Re:Isn't this childish beyond mercy ? (Score:2, Interesting)