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Railguns fire at a significantly higher velocity than missiles and the projectile much smaller.

inquisitive inquistor wrote:I would say it is near impossible to shoot down as it is travelling at 4,500 to 5,000 miles per hour compared to a Tomahawk that only has a top speed of 550 mph.
Though we can see in the video that Chowderhead kindly put up that the slug needs refinement as it starts to tumble near the end of the film.

The article I read today said something about them being designed to quickly loose velocity once they leave the barrel of the gun.

Catyrpelius wrote:

inquisitive inquistor wrote:I would say it is near impossible to shoot down as it is travelling at 4,500 to 5,000 miles per hour compared to a Tomahawk that only has a top speed of 550 mph.
Though we can see in the video that Chowderhead kindly put up that the slug needs refinement as it starts to tumble near the end of the film.

The article I read today said something about them being designed to quickly loose velocity once they leave the barrel of the gun.

I can confirm this also. They said the current test is using a bullet that is similar to the final product to be fired but designed to lose velocity after leaving the weapon system.

What advantage would there be in designing the slug to lose velocity? Decrease in speed, range and kinetic energy... increase possible success of detection and defense systems.

Someone with more physics enlighten me.

Gitsplitta wrote:What advantage would there be in designing the slug to lose velocity? Decrease in speed, range and kinetic energy... increase possible success of detection and defense systems.

Someone with more physics enlighten me.

Because its just a test shell. Its probably been modified to slow down to improve safety or to make it cheaper for testing.

AH.... missed that bit. Thanks LHats.

Fit'em to this baby

Isn't this really just a build up to Battletech style mechs?

Obviously this is step one in building a Gundum



Sorry Al-Qaeda, RPG's just aren't going to cut it anymore ;D

ShumaGorath wrote:

Laughing Man wrote:

RossDas wrote:

LordofHats wrote:The interest in railguns is not to bring back the age of the gunboat. The interest is monetary. The hope is that a Railgun will be able to supplement missiles as a means of striking targets at ranged at a drastically smaller cost (cause a slug of metal fired from a reusable platform will ultimately be cheaper than a 1 shot multi-million dollar smart bomb). Railguns have comparable range and lethality to missiles but will be much cheaper as a practical weapon allowing the navy to bring down costs without severely impacting combat capabilities.

Presumably a railgun shot would also be much much harder to shoot out of the sky than a missile - if even possible at all?

Not really. It moves about as quickly as modern missiles, and doesn't dodge. If anything, it's easier for a point defense system to knock out of the air.

A railgun round moves at a significantly higher velocity than a cruise missile. It would have to if it wanted to do any damage at all. The speeds of the rounds from this weapon were published last time they released a video and they were not missile speeds. If I remember right the round traveled at about 5,500 miles per hour.

Yet it moves at similar velocities to modern anti-shipping missiles like the RIM-67 or Kh-22, which is what point defense systems like Phalanx are meant to deal with. And again, the final design uses an explosive warhead and guidance package, meaning a decent hit will detonate the incoming shell.

What I want to know is when they are going to start work on a missle armed with its own railguns...that shoot missles...

Jihadnik wrote:What I want to know is when they are going to start work on a missle armed with its own railguns...that shoot missles...

They already did. See version with submunition dispenser.

purplefood wrote:

RossDas wrote:

Laughing Man wrote:

RossDas wrote:

LordofHats wrote:The interest in railguns is not to bring back the age of the gunboat. The interest is monetary. The hope is that a Railgun will be able to supplement missiles as a means of striking targets at ranged at a drastically smaller cost (cause a slug of metal fired from a reusable platform will ultimately be cheaper than a 1 shot multi-million dollar smart bomb). Railguns have comparable range and lethality to missiles but will be much cheaper as a practical weapon allowing the navy to bring down costs without severely impacting combat capabilities.

Presumably a railgun shot would also be much much harder to shoot out of the sky than a missile - if even possible at all?

Not really. It moves about as quickly as modern missiles, and doesn't dodge. If anything, it's easier for a point defense system to knock out of the air.

Ah, that's interesting - and raises the question of how detectable is an airborne railgun round to a point defense system, compared to a self-propelled missile?

Probably the same...
If anything it'd be easier to make a missile less detectable... stealth coatings and such.
A railgun round is a large piece of metal... i mean... that's it...
Basically a cannonball shot out of a space cannon...

Did you read the article at all? They still have a ways to go, especially with designing some manner of payload to deliver (HE, whatever) on top. Right now they are trying to get a better design out there.

LordofHats wrote:Obviously this is step one in building a Gundum



Sorry Al-Qaeda, RPG's just aren't going to cut it anymore ;D

The Japanese are already dancing for joy. Soon, they will take over the world

72" range, Str 10 Ap 1

I'd say the US just tabled the entire world!!

Matt Ward, what have you done?!

Tarot wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Laughing Man wrote:

RossDas wrote:

LordofHats wrote:The interest in railguns is not to bring back the age of the gunboat. The interest is monetary. The hope is that a Railgun will be able to supplement missiles as a means of striking targets at ranged at a drastically smaller cost (cause a slug of metal fired from a reusable platform will ultimately be cheaper than a 1 shot multi-million dollar smart bomb). Railguns have comparable range and lethality to missiles but will be much cheaper as a practical weapon allowing the navy to bring down costs without severely impacting combat capabilities.

Presumably a railgun shot would also be much much harder to shoot out of the sky than a missile - if even possible at all?

Not really. It moves about as quickly as modern missiles, and doesn't dodge. If anything, it's easier for a point defense system to knock out of the air.

A railgun round moves at a significantly higher velocity than a cruise missile. It would have to if it wanted to do any damage at all. The speeds of the rounds from this weapon were published last time they released a video and they were not missile speeds. If I remember right the round traveled at about 5,500 miles per hour.

Yet it moves at similar velocities to modern anti-shipping missiles like the RIM-67 or Kh-22, which is what point defense systems like Phalanx are meant to deal with. And again, the final design uses an explosive warhead and guidance package, meaning a decent hit will detonate the incoming shell.

The rim 67 moves at mach 3.5 which less than half what this round travels at.
The KH-22 moves at mach 4 which is about 60% the speed.

So no. They do not travel at "similar velocities".

Ouze wrote:

inquisitive inquistor wrote:So could the up grade and development of newer tech , be the way forward for a more cost effective armed forces?

No, and in my opinion, this program should be cut for now. We stopped making battleships for a reason.

I'd fund development until they were small enough to put on destroyers.

umm... it doesn't really matter what these weapons are on... they'd be better missile defense weapons. The speeds these objects can travel at if you make the projectile small enough would be enough to intercept regular missiles as if they were stationary...

I think investing in these weapons more for missile defense would be the best use of our money.

an object going 110miles in under 1 tenth of second is pretty terrifying for offense or defense




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umm... it doesn't really matter what these weapons are on... they'd be better missile defense weapons. The speeds these objects can travel at if you make the projectile small enough would be enough to intercept regular missiles as if they were stationary...

If by intercept you mean miss entirely. If we're going for speed we have lasers that would work better than this.

Lasers are horribly mechanically complex for a military weapon right now though. Tests have been done and keeping a laser operational under combat conditions has been shown to be nearly impossible (with current technology).

LordofHats wrote:Lasers are horribly mechanically complex for a military weapon right now though. Tests have been done and keeping a laser operational under combat conditions has been shown to be nearly impossible (with current technology).

And until like four months ago every rail gun we had destroyed itself every time it was fired. Anti missile lasers are significantly closer to production than railguns of any stripe right now. The laserplane got cancelled, but we've got a pretty significant amount of development put into the weapon system itself and ships are a much better platform for them anyway. Railguns are far from ideal antimissile systems. You need either something that can track and continuous fire (like the antimissile lasers or systems like the phalanx) or something that can track and explode (like anti missile missiles or the phalanx).

ShumaGorath wrote:And until like four months ago every rail gun we had destroyed itself every time it was fired. Anti missile lasers are significantly closer to production than railguns of any stripe right now. The laserplane got cancelled, but we've got a pretty significant amount of development put into the weapon system itself and ships are a much better platform for them anyway.

Can you imagine a nuclear powered ship with laser weapons? I think we just invented the infinite ammo cheat

SilverMK2 wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:And until like four months ago every rail gun we had destroyed itself every time it was fired. Anti missile lasers are significantly closer to production than railguns of any stripe right now. The laserplane got cancelled, but we've got a pretty significant amount of development put into the weapon system itself and ships are a much better platform for them anyway.

Can you imagine a nuclear powered ship with laser weapons? I think we just invented the infinite ammo cheat

Solid state lasers are the only ones that we can weaponize at range right now.