Japan is Wayne E. Meyer'n Railguns

build a little, test a little, learn a lot

Let’s catch up to an old topic we had a pleasant return to back in July, thanks to our friends the Japanese.

Every little step gets you closer.

According to ATLA, the railgun, mounted on the JMSDF’s test ship Asuka, successfully carried out long-range firings and the shooting at a target ship during the trials. The tests of the gun were conducted with the cooperation of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF).

The photos show the moment of the target ship being aimed at, as well as that of the railgun firing, using the Asuka. The fire control system is also visible next to the railgun. ATLA said details of the tests will be reported at its “ATLA Technological Symposium 2025” to be held on November 11-12 in Tokyo.

The pic at the top of the post is just the test gun. Here’s a half-scale model of what they see as the operational weapon.

Here is what Mod-0 is expected to get you.

In previous trials conducted by ATLA, a projectile fired from a 6-meter-long, 40-millimeter-caliber barrel reached a hypersonic speed of 2,297 meters per second—nearly Mach 7—surpassing the roughly 1,750 meters per second achieved by a tank gun, the fastest conventional artillery system. Railguns can do rapid-fire and fire at lower cost compared to conventional interceptor missiles, making them a promising next-generation defense system against hypersonic weapons exceeding Mach 5 developed by China, North Korea, and Russia.

Yes, yes, yes…2025 has its limitations.

One major challenge, however, is their enormous power requirement. A high-capacity power supply is essential, and miniaturization remains a hurdle for deployment on ships and other platforms.

There are also concerns about barrel life, how do you change barrels, etc.

However, I want everyone to remember this little bit of history of what we know today as the torpedo. Wiki has a solid summary, so let’s grab from there.

The Whitehead torpedo was the first self-propelled or "locomotive" torpedo ever developed.^[a] It was perfected in 1866 by British engineer Robert Whitehead…In 1868, Whitehead offered two types of torpedoes to the world's navies: one was eleven feet seven inches (3.53 m) in length with a diameter of 14 inches (36 cm). It weighed 346 pounds (157 kg) and carried a 40-pound (18 kg) warhead. The other was 14 feet (4.3 m) long with a 16-inch (41 cm) diameter. It weighed 650 pounds (290 kg) and carried a 60-pound (27 kg) warhead. Both models could do 8–10 knots (15–19 km/h; 9.2–11.5 mph) with a range of 200 yards (180 m)…In 1871, the Royal Navy bought manufacturing rights, and started producing the torpedo at the Royal Laboratories at Woolwich, England. The Royal Navy fitted the Whitehead torpedo on its earliest submarines, from HMS Holland 1 onwards.^[4] The French, German, Italian, Russian navies soon followed suit and began acquiring the Whitehead torpedo. By 1877, the Whitehead torpedo was attaining speeds of 18 mph (29 km/h) with ranges of up to 830 yards (760 m).

By the 1880s, more of the world's navies acquired the Whitehead and began deploying torpedo boats to carry them into battle and engineers began to envision submarines armed with Whitehead torpedoes. In 1904, British Admiral Henry John May commented, "but for Whitehead, the submarine would remain an interesting toy and little more".^[2][4]

The last known operational use of a Whitehead torpedo was during the Battle of Drøbak Sound on 9 April 1940. Two torpedoes were fired from a torpedo battery in the Oslofjord at the German cruiser Blücher. This finished the ship off after it had been severely damaged by cannon fire from Oscarsborg.

The Whitehead torpedo answered a driving question of the day: “Mines (aka torpedoes) are an incredible weapon, but the targeted ship has to drive into them. How can we make a torpedo move to the targeted ship instead?”

Railguns answer a long-standing question as well: “How do we put more ordnance downrange further, cheaper, and faster?”

If railguns follow the Whitehead Torpedo path, then to make the math easy, let’s say the Japanese perfect it in 2026.

• In 16 years (2040), a whole host of navies will deploy with them.

• 12 years after that (2052) other nations will be building even better versions.

• 48 years after that (2100), it will be used for the last time in combat, saving a nation’s leadership from capture at the start of a war where both sides used the most modern development, still technically buggy, to devastating effect.

• 85 years after that (2185), it will still be considered one of the most deadly and hardest to defeat of any weapons a navy, or space force, could use in combat.

So…how is the US Navy planning to leverage what our friends in Japan are doing?

Hopefully as well as the Royal Navy was with the Austro-Hungarian Navy in their torpedo development.

NB: If you want to learn more about the last use of the Whitehead Torpedo as mentioned above, click here.