Railguns on ships

[BrettMRC]

Following on from here: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Are they going to reach service is the question?

Known issues as far as I have seen are power generation & barrel life.

Discuss!

[FourWheelDrift]

As far as I know the Zumwalt class destroyers were designed to carry them, replacing current weapons when available.

Multiple salvo (2) demonstration - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO_zXuOQy6A

[Krikkit]

I think we'll definitely see them used - it's a question of money and time.

The power requirements aren't beyond the capabilities of a decently-powered nuclear reactor - the lead-cooled type of nuclear reactor is easily capable of 100MW of power in a very small space.

Barrel life is a question of material composition and design practice - new, specific alloys and better approaches to thermal management will inevitably sort the life out to acceptable levels.

[FourWheelDrift]

The Zumwalts I mention above can produce the power needed too.

[BrettMRC]

The energy transfer from getting hit by one of those projectiles is immense.

I wonder how much damage that would do through shock & spalling even if it failed to penetrate?

[Brigand]

FourWheelDrift said:

As far as I know the Zumwalt class destroyers were designed to carry them, replacing current weapons when available.

Multiple salvo (2) demonstration - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO_zXuOQy6A

Why is there lots of smoke coming out of the barrel? I thought the point of a railgun was you're firing a metal object using magnets, so you don't need the use of gunpowder. That video looks like the gun is firing a traditional shell.

[travel is dangerous]

Most likely ablation of projectile and rails, I guess?

[Gary C]

Why is the research favouring rail guns not Gauss guns ?

The rail wear will always be an issue which in theory a Gauss gun doesn't have, what's the technical problem with Gauss guns that mean rails are currently favourite ?

[Krikkit]

Brigand said:

FourWheelDrift said:

As far as I know the Zumwalt class destroyers were designed to carry them, replacing current weapons when available.

Multiple salvo (2) demonstration - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO_zXuOQy6A

Why is there lots of smoke coming out of the barrel? I thought the point of a railgun was you're firing a metal object using magnets, so you don't need the use of gunpowder. That video looks like the gun is firing a traditional shell.

That's what 32MJ of energy being forced through a series of ferro-magnetic materials does to it - some of the rail, and the projectile will be vaporised in the maelstrom of energy running through it. For a bit of scale that's the equivalent of 7 kg of TNT.

[Foliage]

Nanook said:

BrettMRC said:

The energy transfer from getting hit by one of those projectiles is immense.

I wonder how much damage that would do through shock & spalling even if it failed to penetrate?

That's assuming the energy can be transferred.

One potential issue with non-explosive, high energy rounds, is that if you hit the superstructure of a modern ship, there's a good chance one of these rounds will pop a hole through both sides, and keep on going. Splintering (spalling) may be an issue, but only really local to the impact. Shock, it depends how much of the energy is transferred. Underwater shock is an issue mostly because of how incompressible water is, air blast tends to be less of an issue.

I cant really see them being used as an anti-ship weapon, that's what fancy torps and missiles are for. Id imagine they are primarily going to be used as fire support against hard land targets.

[Krikkit]

Part of their design brief is to be used as point defence weapons too - a cruise missile tanking at Mach 3 is much easier to hit with something travelling > Mach 6, as opposed to Mach 3 for conventional autocannons.