When I was in highschool (1985) I designed a fairly crude rail gun for a science fair project--but once the Principal got wind of what I had in mind, they squashed it as way too dangerous. Mine was just a teensy one: two meters long; stainless steel rails set for a 0.5 inch slug of solid copper; silver soldered copper pipe for bus bars; and fifteen salvaged car batteries (in parallel) for intermittent 5,000 to 10,000 amp pulses. I figured it might have a muzzle velocity of about 1 km/s. I guess it scared the bejeezes out of them.I always wanted to build it though...
Later when I was in college studying undergraduate physics (1991), I had an interesting idea to build a three phase, 220vac electromagnetic coil gun that shot BB's. Again, something less than two meters long, firing BB's at a steady rate of 30-50 per second with a muzzle velocity close to 1 km/s. Using water cooled copper pipe for the windings and arcwelder triacs for switches triggered by photodiode / phototransistor arrays along the barrel to energize the coils sequentially, I figured the thing would dissipate just about 7kw when firing full auto.
Again never built the thing, but I always wanted too.
Naval rail guns will offer tremendous firepower in an economical package. Look for them in twenty years mounted on all electric tanks for the Army and Marine Corps. Small EM machine guns shooting almost solid streams of BB's would be an almost perfect close in weapons system--perfect for a replacement for aging Phalanx CIWS antimissile systems currently in use on US warships.
meiza - 18/1/2007 6:40 AMWhat I'm saying is, the projectile can't be cheap and accurate at the same time! If it has to maneuver with airfoils, it is going to be expensive. And a solid slug is just very inaccurate at those distances.And for the other things, ball ammo sucks for accuracy.
bhankiii - 18/1/2007 8:24 AMYou could put some fins on the back to get some spin - that would improve the accuracy. At $1000 a pop you can fire 1000 for the cost of a cruise missile. Surely you'll hit something.
PurduesUSAFguy - 17/1/2007 8:16 PMThis will change the way the navy goes about power projection and once again put the gun carrying surface ship as the most important ships in the fleet.
kevin-rf - 18/1/2007 8:35 AMQuotebhankiii - 18/1/2007 8:24 AMYou could put some fins on the back to get some spin - that would improve the accuracy. At $1000 a pop you can fire 1000 for the cost of a cruise missile. Surely you'll hit something.A fin will behave how at those speeds? You could groove the projectile body to cause it to spin. The sad part mentioned in the article is the acceleration is to high for current electronics. So no terminal guidance...There was some interesting news on ultra capacitors from eestore over at hobby space this morning. http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/HSblog.php?itemid=3186It would help with the energy storage for these devices.
stargazer777 - 18/1/2007 9:16 AMYes, but meanwhile other advanced weapons technologies are also advancing. Directed energy and laser weapons for sea based, land based, airborne and space based applications are also rapidly being developed. It will certainly make things interesting.
edkyle99 - 18/1/2007 9:27 AMSubmarines are today's capital ships. Surface ships are just targets.