In a lot of press releases and demonstration demos of the new railguns... They go on about how they can hit targets 150 miles away, at high speed, etc...
Why?
It shoots a metal dart. At the speed it is going at, won't it just pass right through its target? Like an enemy ship or plane... Won't it just pass through their hull/interior walls/and then the opposite side of the hull leaving a little hole?
I mean a bullet hitting paper doesn't make the paper explode. Why would this be any physically different?
I would get its use as like a point defense weapon to shoot down incoming munitions, but the current model they are going to deploy in the next few years is huge and meant to be used as artillery more or less...
If you could build one in space you could destroy a small country like Israel in one shot
Robert Martin
Not needing any explosive material is a huge deal, its what sinks ships or ruins tanks when they are hit
Cheaper to shoot Higher muzzle velocity = higher range
Charles Wilson
Yeah but that's what I am asking.
The projectile is traveling so fast and has so much energy that it will tear through the ship with no effort and never even have a chance to transfer its energy to the target. It will just put two little holes on the ship, one entrance and one exit.
Like a bullet has a small entrance and a large exit wound... But that's because the bullet is traveling slow enough and our bodies are strong enough that the slow the bullet and transfer the energy from the bullet to our flesh which tears it apart.
Won't it never get a chance to do that here because it is moving at like Mach 7 or something... It will be in and out in milliseconds without having transferred any energy.
Parker Powell
i think you need to read up on material sciece
you can't compare a sheet of paper to hitting a hard metal ship
the railgun projectile has so much kinetic energy that it would cause massive fragmentation and spalling of metal
Robert Wood
>no explosive propellant is needed >no jams >if it charges up fast enough it could shoot softball sized metals like an uzi
Lucas Martin
It depends on the material of the projectile; and you're forgetting that naval ships aren't just empty shells. Long story short, I'd imagine the projectile will be made of a material which will penetrate and then promptly fragment, much like current armor piercing rounds for firearms do.
Jayden Foster
Lots of kinetic energy
Alexander Sanders
this It wouldn't go right through. It would fragment. Think hollow-point ammunition, but at that velocity, everything might as well be a hollow-point.
The only exception would be something like jetting liquid metal from a shaped charge, but that's specifically designed to pass through material like a dart.
For comparison, I'm in physics/planetary science. For earth impacts, its not uncommon to have a piece of iron a few dozen meters across slam into the earth at 10-20 kilometers PER SECOND. And in every case, upwards of 75% of the projectile is turned into straight vapor the moment it hits the denser layer of the atmosphere in a tremendous airburst that releases several hundred megatons of TNT worth of energy.
How would a metal shell, traveling at most a couple km/second fair slamming into a giant metal boat? It would tear off half of it.
Bentley Scott
>It shoots a metal dart. At the speed it is going at, won't it just pass right through its target? Like an enemy ship or plane... Won't it just pass through their hull/interior walls/and then the opposite side of the hull leaving a little hole?
normal artillery shells do this without modern fuses
>Why?
cheaper and more space efficient than rockets
Parker Hernandez
look at this babby railgun
Joseph Clark
Do you think a ship is just an empty hull or what?
Colton Young
a bullet that pierces right through a body is the worst kind of bullet. You want that shit to splinter into the body and make a whole lot of mess.
Tell me why this railgun is a good idea.
Josiah Wilson
>using railguns against a single human target
If you think this is the most effective way of using a railgun then back around to the thinking chair you go. Let us know when you work it out.
Andrew Mitchell
is MG REX scenario even possible?
Jack Turner
protip: you can load various types of projectiles
Charles Johnson
>time to target reduced considerably >can fire projectiles further >is much safer to use; doesn't use powder or chemical charges >with enough power railguns can be configured to fire plasma rounds >imagine blasting your enemies with plasma bolts >leaves a collasal "fuck-you-asshole" sized crater in your target >no military force would ever fuck with yours ever again >which enables you to bring forth a new 1000 year Reich
Cameron Powell
you are so fucking stupid it is unbelievable, you don't know shit and act like you have logic behind you when you critise.
Kys literally.
Austin Lopez
The kinetic energy from a railgun bullet would blow off your torso and make your organs explode before you can even react.
Bentley Barnes
body == human target
stop projecting your stupidity.
Landon Sanders
In the case where it doesn't fragment (which would happen as everyone has pointed out), consider what would happen if that bullet went through the ship right through a mission-critical portion of the other ship. Like say, the engine.
Tyler Collins
it's almost like that's a testing device meant to iron out the kinks of turning railguns into usable weapons, and not a literal example of a field-ready weapon
Connor Diaz
>worst kind of bullet
I didn't realize there was a distinction
>why are we testing a rail gun
To prevent foreign powers from acquiring dominant blue water navies.
>wait till you see railguns and Free Electron lasers firing on enemy ships powered by 400 kw Generation 4 reactors
Benjamin Morris
You could either carry 50 cruise missiles worth 1 million+ each, or 2000 railgun shells worth 10000 each, plus a few hundred for each shot for the electricity. One hit doesn't do it? You can fire 40 more, quite cheaply.
This isn't a videogame, not everything is le maximum damage xDD OP. Besides, technology development such as this has routinely resulted in the said technologies being applied to civilan scenarios which generated trillions' worth of GDP growth.
Finally, the Chinese Mach 10 nukes would destroy any navy regardless of AEGIS or anything anyway when fired en masse, so the utility in surface warfare is obviously not the only point.
-t. aero engineer
Justin Evans
It's designed for anti air purposes and at that speed it can rip a plane apart fairly accurately and easily.
As for ships, I can see it being used for precision targeting at far away rangers. You disable ships engines, navigation towers and so on.
Ryan Hill
/k/ is that way friend --->
Oliver Wood
>implying the Chinese have Mach 10 nukes
Lincoln Collins
It's primary mission is surface bombardment and ship-ship combat.
Not sure where you possibly got the idea it would be used as an anti aircraft gun.
Levi Gomez
I remember it from a doc. Guess I'm remembering wrong.
Daniel Adams
The weapons offensive capabilities are the primary focus in its development. That's not to say that defensive capabilities aren't off the drawing board, however every document I've seen speaks of its surface warfare mission.
Dylan Thomas
It's harder to track with infrared sensors I assume. And its muzzle velocity is not the velocity it will be hitting ships at. Drag force is proportional to velocity squared so it probably loses quite a bit of speed.
Robert Green
You could also put explosives on the end lol. It doesn't HAVE to be a pure metal rod.
Brayden Price
No you couldn't, the shock of launching it would explode it.
>bullets leave small entrance and large exit wound because they are going slow enough
You cant be serious. You realize different types of ammunition do different things right? Armor piercing rounds tend not to fragment in flesh. The rounds which you seem to be describing are hollow points, and slower bullets arent reponsible. In fact its the opposite, high velocity hollow points tend to explode upon impact. Where as slower velocity hollow points like 44 mags, tend to just mushroom out and expand while still exiting on the other side. Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about so i cant take anything ou have said in this thread seriously.
Brandon Brooks
>wont it just pass through
Railgun shots can't even pass through air without setting it on fire.
Andrew Hughes
Railgun is multi-mission. Air and missile defense has been a part since the early stages of development. Pic related is from 2004.
