Navy Tests Mach 8 Electromagnetic Railgun 440
hargrand writes "Wired magazine has a story and publicly released video of the Navy test firing of a 32 megajoule electromagnetic railgun: 'Reporters were invited to watch the test at the Dalghren Naval Surface Warfare Center. A tangle of two-inch thick coaxial cables hooked up to stacks of refrigerator-sized capacitors took five minutes to power juice into a gun the size of a schoolbus built in a warehouse. With a 1.5-million-ampere spark of light and a boom audible in a room 50 feet away, the bullet left the gun at a speed of Mach 8.'"
Re:I've heard that before (Score:5, Interesting)
We already have the largest aircraft carrier fleet on the entire planet, our most likely enemies are groups like NK and Iran that would be lucky to come at us with kamikaze speedboats, and THIS is what we add even more debt for?
BTW - When we did red vs blue naval wargames a few years back, those kamikaze speedboats kicked the blue team's ass.
It was so embarassing that... [nytimes.com]
When the Red Team sank much of the Blue navy despite the Blue navy's firing of guns and missiles, it illustrated a cheap way to beat a very expensive fleet. After the Blue force was sunk, the game was ordered to begin again, with the Blue Team eventually declared the victor.
The last few meaningful encounters the USA has had with low-tech asymmetric warfare have gone relatively poorly for them.
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)
China also has a fairly large surface fleet, rivaled by only a few countries.
The race never stops, it just has clear leaders at certain points in history.
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)
The USA worries me often. Or to be precise, the US government does. I'd like to believe that they'll use those guns for a good cause, such as against a rogue country who would suddenly decide to conquer the world. But we're in a time where enemy threats are most likely to come in the form of terrorism and nuclear standoffs. The way I see it, there are several reasons why the USA would want to build Railguns:
- They have info that aliens exist and can come to Earth.
- They have confirmation that someone (e.g. China, Iran, North Korea...) really plans to attack the Western World (or only the USA).
- They are planning to conquer the World in the next 10-20 years.
- Or they are really just being careful and making sure they can face the unexpected.
That last option seems to me to be the most reasonable explanation. But there are a few things that bother me:
1) A rogue president (yes, Bush Jr.) had no trouble hijacking the US government, making laws that brought the USA a lot closer to a tyranny*, and manipulating most of the Western World into following him in a criminal war. Bottom line, the US government is vulnerable to hijacking and if that happened again then the world would be in serious trouble if the USA has access to so powerful weapons. Bush did not attack Europe, fair enough. That does not mean the next US president who decides he can do whatever he wants won't attack Europe either.
*Patriot act, Guantano (jail without a trial), use of torture, use of secret evidence in criminal trials, illegal wiretaps and surveillance of citizens, etc. (Note that Obama has added a few more things to the list, like the right to kill people without a trial).
2) The recent leak of diplomatic cables offers more evidence that the USA does not seem to respect it's allies. Like what? You really think France or Germany would attack the USA? Not in 1000 years. Most of Europe is not the military, war-waging type. I have a hard time imagining how the USA can justify spying on these countries and their officials. If even the closest allies of the USA are treated with so little trust and respect, then I'm not certain any country can fully trust the USA.
3) Are the USA planning to share this technology (Railguns) with their allies? Again, I don't see France fighting against the USA in 1000 years unless the USA starts the war. So it would look very suspicious that the USA would not share with them. I also think, as a general principle, that no single country should have far more military power than all others. It's dangerous if a country is so powerful that no other country can stand up to it, even if that country is the USA. I would like to know that should the US government suddenly go rogue and turn against Europe and the rest of the world we stand a chance to fight back. It's too much power for only one country to have.
I think it's very likely that this technology is being developed just to stay on top and be ready in case China attacks. I don't think the USA plans to conquer the World. But there are still reasons to be concerned about the USA having so much power, especially if the rest of the world doesn't have that power. I wish the press would report on what Europe says about these railguns, I'm curious to know what they think over there.
Re:I've heard that before (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew I recognised that story - but it seemed to miss some fairly interesting points for whatever reason...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 [wikipedia.org]
At this point, the exercise was suspended and Blue's ships were "re-floated" and changes were made to the rules of engagement; later this was justified by General Peter Pace as: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?" In the new restarted exercise the different sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action, leading to allegations that the exercise was scripted and "$250 million was wasted". Due to his concerns about the scripted nature of the new exercise, Van Riper resigned his position in the midst of the war game. Van Riper later expressed concern that the wargame's purpose had shifted to reinforce existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serve as a learning experience.
The re-floating of blue teams boats was just the start of embarrassing behaviour.
Quite interesting how US media differs from other parts of the world when telling this story - obviously it might look insulting to you guys, but isn't this the sort of shit you would like to know about? - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/06/usa.iraq [guardian.co.uk]
Re:I've heard that before (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if education works optimally unless people have to earn the opportunity for an education, not just offering a way to earn a degree. You can give people tuition and they'll go, but if they don't have an appreciation for the cost of what they've been given, they're likely to spend as much of the time as possible partying, squandering the opportunity they've been given.
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)
Advantage of a rail gun (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote Fail (Score:4, Interesting)
It is difficult to understand how you could have pulled that BF quote so far out of context. It was referring to the devaluation of currency being effectively a tax and was not related to income tax whatsoever. If anything is would be similar to a tax on the value of savings and investments (not the numeric amount), due to inflation.
Even if it were referring to income tax (e.g. "the most equal of all taxes...is generally proportional to Men's income"), it is per the wording not a progressive tax. A Tax is a nominal value of money paid for some reason, not a rate. Progressive taxes are by definition defined by a tax RATE that is proportional to income/assets/whatever. In a progressive tax, not only does a person with more taxable assets pay more in taxes due to a fixed percentage of the larger value... the percentage itself rises. This is not what is referred to here. Fail.
(Now one could argue that a flat tax on paper assets integrated over time is a progressive tax, since wealthier people would potentially have more money "in the bank" being taxed in relation to total assets, which may be true... The interesting bit about that is it would punish those who saved paper assets, which would likely result in the wealthy moving away from that paper currency as a container of wealth. Franklin argued against use of Gold and metals as wealth containers since the prices were volatile at the time, and with paper effectively taxed, by deflation, other methods of escaping the deflation would likely be sought.)