Electromagnetic Rail Gun Is Now A Reality

[Gilbert]

Really cool weaponry.

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/02/06/the-pentagons-electromagnetic-rail-gun-makes-its-public-debut/

 

 

 

Projectile speed, approx. 7900 fps.

Edited March 5, 2015 by Gilbert

[Mallette]

NASA did a lot of work on this down here.  Easy way to get stuff back from the moon.

 

Dave

[derrickdj1]

That technology is awesome.  This will be a problem for bad guys far away, lol.

[wvu80]

I've seen rail guns for years, I guess they were prototypes.  They use a relatively small projectile and because of the ultra high speed they just obliterate anything they hit.

[tromprof]

NASA did a lot of work on this down here.  Easy way to get stuff back from the moon.

 

Dave

 

Robert Heinlein used then idea in his 1966 book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. 

[Guest Steven1963]

And in another 10 years they will have that technology small enough to mount in on aircraft and tanks. Until at last, the army is carrying them into battle like machine guns. The projectile could be a BB and still go through bullet proof vests, perhaps?

[Mallette]

Robert Heinlein used then idea in his 1966 book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

 

Yep.  There is a painting of a proposed US lunar base in the USRA HQ near here that shows one.  Linear motor isn't a new concept.  This iteration is probably mainly miniaturizing it and computer aiming.

 

Dave

Edited March 5, 2015 by Mallette

[mustang guy]

I think the laser they have a video on is pretty badass too. It exploded small ordinance on a boat that was moving fast. I wonder if a laser range is 110 miles because it moves at the speed of light which is 125,890 times faster than mach 7.

[Schu]

Kinetic kill... bfd. Wait till you get hold of the particle beam and laser weapons that are coming online.

[Mallette]

Wait till you get hold of the particle beam and laser weapons that are coming online.

 

It's been my hope they are already on line.  ACL was mounted and fired from a 747 after well over a decade of development about 2005.  Then the program went dark...  Said to be discontinued.  I doubt that. 

 

Ideally, they dumped the nasty, bulky chemicals and brought a Skunkworks stellerator in for power. 

 

Dave

Edited March 5, 2015 by Mallette

[JJkizak]

Thank you Quantum Mechanics.

JJK

[Dr Morbius]

I'd kill for Captain Kirk's phaser pistol.

[Mallette]

Time to dust off the crystal ball and change a prediction I made 20 years ago or so.  At that time the ACL was just being talked about and the development of laser and particle beam weapons in general.  My prediction was a return of the battleship, at least until orbital lasers were a reality.  This was based on the fact that a fully laser equipped ship would be invulnerable to air attack or any attack except from another laser.  Missiles or other projectiles are basically motionless targets to lightspeed and are irrelevant.  So, what you would have was battleships with lasers as main weapons.  They'd be firing line of sight, just as a century ago...except the first to fire would likely win. 

 

Now, I am thinking a combination of aircraft carrier/battleship.  Planes and marines on board to attack inland targets and mount landings.  But the planes would have no roll in protecting the ship as no plane could get close to it. 

 

End of fleets as well, except for an attack submarine or two to fend off any underwater attackers which would be invulnerable to the lasers. 

 

Actually, an argument could be made that these weapons may well end the danger of world war as we really don't have any defenses on the horizon that are practical.  Lasers at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, don't lend themselves to wide scale destruction as they are vulnerable to each other.  Interesting thoughts...love to hear others comments.

 

The linear motor gun is cool, but late to the party compared to the laser.  However, the technology will be very useful on the moon for launching cargo and people back to earth.  In fact, such a mass driver a couple of hundred miles long with the last 50 or so running up the side of a mountain could do most of the job of sending people to LEO safely, reliably, and at a fraction of the current cost.  That would be a big project, but the engineering is fully available and is not Buck Rogers stuff.  The painting below has hung in the USRA HQ a few minutes from my home for at least a decade.  This is easy.  Solar powered, as you can see from the panel farm, and able to launch cargo or passenger modules back to earth for nothing aside from the cost to build it. 

 

 

Dave

[Daddy Dee]

impressive indeed. 

[OO1]

you can run but you cant hide - 110 miles away

[mustang guy]

Time to dust off the crystal ball and change a prediction I made 20 years ago or so.  At that time the ACL was just being talked about and the development of laser and particle beam weapons in general.  My prediction was a return of the battleship, at least until orbital lasers were a reality.  This was based on the fact that a fully laser equipped ship would be invulnerable to air attack or any attack except from another laser.  Missiles or other projectiles are basically motionless targets to lightspeed and are irrelevant.  So, what you would have was battleships with lasers as main weapons.  They'd be firing line of sight, just as a century ago...except the first to fire would likely win. 

 

Now, I am thinking a combination of aircraft carrier/battleship.  Planes and marines on board to attack inland targets and mount landings.  But the planes would have no roll in protecting the ship as no plane could get close to it. 

 

End of fleets as well, except for an attack submarine or two to fend off any underwater attackers which would be invulnerable to the lasers. 

 

Actually, an argument could be made that these weapons may well end the danger of world war as we really don't have any defenses on the horizon that are practical.  Lasers at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, don't lend themselves to wide scale destruction as they are vulnerable to each other.  Interesting thoughts...love to hear others comments.

 

The linear motor gun is cool, but late to the party compared to the laser.  However, the technology will be very useful on the moon for launching cargo and people back to earth.  In fact, such a mass driver a couple of hundred miles long with the last 50 or so running up the side of a mountain could do most of the job of sending people to LEO safely, reliably, and at a fraction of the current cost.  That would be a big project, but the engineering is fully available and is not Buck Rogers stuff.  The painting below has hung in the USRA HQ a few minutes from my home for at least a decade.  This is easy.  Solar powered, as you can see from the panel farm, and able to launch cargo or passenger modules back to earth for nothing aside from the cost to build it. 

 

Lunar_base_concept_drawing_s78_23252.jpg

 

Dave

Lasers are line of sight as you mentioned, and also depend on reasonably good weather. For a laser to be effective at 110 miles as the RG is, it would have to be fired from an elevation of 8,000 ft unless it is firing at something that is 8,000 ft high. A laser that was 100 ft high could aim directly at a target that is 12.3 miles away. For that reason, I speculate that in ground warfare, the RG would win unless it was within 12.3 miles of it's laser equipped enemy. The RG firing vessel would need air support to fire on something that is out of line of sight or line of radar.

 

Another thing that comes to mind is the use of reflective surfaces to abate some of the damage of the laser. No mirror is 100% effective outside a vacuum, but there are extremely thermally conductive materials like graphene TCPG, and there are heat shielding materials like those used on the space shuttle, and there are smoke screens, etc etc. Perhaps no one of those things would protect you against an extremely high energy laser, but used in conjunction and with air support, I don't think the laser vessel is necessarily the top of the food chain.

Edited March 8, 2015 by mustang guy

[Joseph Jove]

A modern day cannon. I wonder if its ability to fire can be compromised in any significant way by the electromagnetic burst of a EMP weapon.

[OO1]

A modern day cannon. I wonder if its ability to fire can be compromised in any significant way by the electromagnetic burst of a EMP weapon.

100% no -  the Electromagnetic Rail Gun is itself an EMP weapon - but a direct hit would of course destroy it -and this is why it is designed to be retractable

[mustang guy]

A modern day cannon. I wonder if its ability to fire can be compromised in any significant way by the electromagnetic burst of a EMP weapon.

Good point. I would think the military would shield the hell out of this thing. I would think that nesting Faraday shields tuned to the possible radiation frequencies would help, but I don't know enough about that stuff to speculate. 

[philly0116]

That's awesome. Thanks for the post!