A reliable railgun barrel which deals successfully with the rail erosion issue might contain multiple sets of redundant rails. Lets assume four sets of four rails per barrel. The first round uses the first set of rails, the next round the next set, etc. etc.
Another problem is that embarking just one railgun barrel isn't enough. Three or more barrels would be necessary if reliable combat sustainment performance is to be maintained.
Each of the three railgun barrels must be replaceable at sea. Combine that requirement with employing four sets of four rails per barrel -- plus the power generation systems and energy discharge control systems needed to feed each barrel -- and the shipbboard footprint of the entire railgun system as a whole becomes quite large.
More than a decade ago, I came to the conclusion that a practical railgun system -- emphasis on the terms 'practical' and 'system' -- would be of such a physical size, and would have such a large shipboard footprint in terms of energy power generation capacity and discharge control that a platform of possibly 20,000 tons displacement or larger would be required to carry a truly useful railgun system.
Nuclear power is the obvious choice for that kind of platform embarking those kinds of railgun mission support requirements.
Which means an entirely new platform designed from the keel up to carry a practical three-barrel railgun system, a platform which is large enough in physical size and displacement to deliver the levels of rapid and reliable volume fire required for the assigned missions.
Sounds like the annual fam fire drill for the ship's SAT team. Hand out a pistol, rifle or shotgun and have them point it aft off the fantail and fire at the ocean. Score a hit and you qualify. Kind of cheesy that they wouldn't spring for a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophy.
^ Probably a twidgit like an ETC or DSC. I was an EW but by the grace of God we were folded into Deck Group as our origin was from RD's. Heck, the FTG3 (twidgit) who handed out guns to the SAT team put one into the linoleum from an unloaded 1911 that ricocheted into a stateroom. Was an EMO/ERO twice. Once as an EWC and once as a CWO2-LTjg. I have twidgit stories. Oh my, do I. But it'd probably strain the CDR's patience to post them here.
But yeah, there's twidget stories!!! A fav, if only coincidental, is when ET1 was doing quarterdeck turnover, he let go of the 1911 slide and it promptly flew off, and over the side!! There were actually divers sent to retrieve it a few days later!!!
Those 45s were the ones originally issued to the ship in '64, so to say they were worn out is an understatement!! When I did quals, I was in S-2, and went shopping LOL...found all the pieces to put together a brand new gun, and a GM buddy put it together and 'tuned' it. The day that Chief shot the flight deck, I shot some nice tight groups, unmatched by anyone else that day by far!!
Outré twidgitry seems to manifest itself at the ETC level in my experience, X-Jr Sailor. Most of my stories would have been about three ETC's I served with who's first sea duty tours were at their 18, 20 and 26 year points in their careers to my 9 and 17 year points. And, of course, in any comparison & contrast between them and me would have made them look twidgitier. 18 months after EW"A" I became a Chief and was encouraged to never turn one of those tiny Craftsman screwdrivers we kept in our pocket protectors again but rather to embrace my many, many new collateral duties with gusto. Getting tossed into that brier patch of standing CICWO watches suited me fine even if it didn't for the OS's. I can also dish it out on Postal Clerks, Tradevmen, GURL's, PAO's, CTM's and a few SUPPO's I have known. All of that would spotlight my bias' and a propensity to wield the tar brush heavy-handedly. No offense meant.
Sal, don't be too hard on yourself. Yeah, sure... Lucy... Football... Again & again. Drat! And like many other things, rail guns don't work... until they work. Cf: Edison's light bulb, which achieved success after 999 failed experiments, per legend. In this sense, USN ought to keep line-fill in the R&D pipes; with an open mind towards plus-ups for testing whenever new developments offer promise. Indeed, considering how much $$ goes to other Navy boondoggles (okay; a low bar), rail gun research is cheap at twice the price.
Concur with the idea of keeping it in the R&D pipeline, but unless we want just another money pit, the PM needs a set of quantitative test achievements. My understanding it that the USN’s last shot at railguns kept melting the rails.
Melting the rails? Yes, another technical challenge. Look at tungsten and carbon fiber, if not graphene. More material science! Reshape the magnetic field! The truth is out there.
Sounds like a plan! Ceramics can handle the heat, but brittleness will be an issue. Perhaps replaceable liners? Naval guns are commonly refurbished by replacing the liner. That is done thru differential heating to separate the liner from the exterior barrel, and so was a gun factory job. I can envision that as a possible shipboard job for EMRG, or perhaps one done over a weekend pierside.
When Steampunk jumps from fiction to reality, I am going to start PT-ing again, lose 50 lbs, lie about my age and go see the recruiter to enlist for blimp duty. I want to be a GMR3(AW) some day.
Well, if you use the usual DoD acquisition approach, the old MINS \ ORD or newer JCIDS process, hand it over to the usual major defense contractors, you'll get what you got (spend a lot for little return). If we can make a steerable artillery round (sort of, see Excalibur) and hypersonics once out of the plasma bloom, then the ability to correct to target in flight after launch issue seems solvable. But, JCIDS, major defense contractors, etc. (where's DARPA?), you got what you got. Perhaps hire Elon Musk for some out of the box thinking and actual design \ create prototypes? Heresy!!
Problem is that lasers have an extremely hard time against hypersonic targets. These are going to be fairly robust vehicles with a plasma cloud in front of them closing at multiple km/sec. It's going to take an enormously power laser to destroy an RV as it goes from 50km to zero.
If we are using lasers as part of a multi-layer defense against hypersonics, megawatt class lasers possibly combined with multi-spectral beam capability will be required.
IMHO, just as it is with multi-mission railguns, a new class of warship must be designed from the keel up to handle a combination of multi-mission railguns, megawatt-class lasers, and high power microwave arrays.
Oh, it gets even better than that. This new class of surface combatant would need to support anti-submarine operations as well as to support the rapid deployment of an ad-hoc in-theater communications network after the Chinese shoot down all our satellites. And it will have to do so unsupplied for extended periods of time because there won't be enough of a fleet logistics train available in a big dust-up with China to keep it in fuel and ordnance.
Im not a fan of multimission ships. I think its past time we separate AAW, ASuW and ASW. IMHO, ships optimized to do their particular mission are a better tact than what weve been doing. What would it cost to build a Burkes AAW capability into a hull without ASW components, helo facilities, etc?? It could be far smaller and cheaper. Same for the ASW component!! How simple could a ship be when its built around a sonar, a towed array, helo facilities, and some quieted engineering spaces? I think we really need to look at abandoning the multimission ship concept and start building ships exquisitely tailored to their specific mission...
We looked at lasers on 747’s for SDI. Maybe relook that. Back on subject, I bet Japan has the power issue figured out with elelectro-magmatic drive….useful for more than just a rail gun. What platform replaced Asuka?
Rail guns will be doomed to failure because the spec for generating the electricity will be solar, wind or some other green renewable resource. And, the Navy's need for raw material to make batteries to store the energy for multiple shots will compete against the needs of civilian EV's. Count on the Army to weigh in too on their need for tank, fighting vehicle, transport truck and self-propelled artillery batteries too. Nah. The only way this breaks Lucy's grip on the balls and gets this off the ground is to co-opt an 89-year-old Ralph Nader in his dotage to sign off on portable plutonium nuclear reactors to power these rail guns. Once these rail guns are installed on ships, accuracy can be fine-tuned by subcontractors. As a former 7121/6121 SWO I'd be proud to carry a pocket dosimeter like my betters did back in the day.
I saw this article earlier in the week & was quite pleased the Japanese have started their own program.
If history is any predictor, the Japanese will take our research , succeed in making a practical unit and sell it back to us smaller & cheeper than we could do..
I'd love to see them partner on a common hull cruiser also.
It has been quite a while since Japan has built a cruiser in this size range. I wonder if they will actually design a cruiser hull or just a super-super-stretch destroyer hull. The last IJN cruiser Sakawa was sunk during atomic testing. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0367496.pdf
Gotta be large enough for a large fly wheel and powerful pulse batteries. Seems kinda dangerous but going to sea is getting 18th century dangerous with ballistic and hypersonic middles.
They create some very interesting ships. I toured their large minelayer over 20 years ago. Kinda rube-Goldberg in its dedication to one mission but impressive non the less.
Shipyards. For most of our nation's life the Washington Navy Yard was a technical center. The Navy owned and controlled the laboratories and workshops where naval personnel developed naval technology. In today's navy John Dahlgren would never go near a foundry. Hell, we used to put foundreys on ships that could tend to other ships.
Enlisted instructors used to write curriculum for their "A" Schools too. Who better than the Subject Matter Experts? They had the assistance of a civilian TraSpec and a team of subcontractor civilian experts in curriculum writing to ensure the products' teachability. They still taught curriculum writing when I went to Instructor Training School in 1980. A decade or so after they quit letting Enlisted men write the curriculum and bid it out to the free market, I got assigned to run an "A" School". The TraSpec and subcontractor civilian experts were still there on the payroll to assist our Enlisted men in curriculum development they were no longer doing. What did I care? They had a huge budget and were eager to pay for things I couldn't afford on my budget. But still...what a waste. ...5 guys in the 2 digit GS paygrades sitting around idle 8 hours a day.
A non-issue, Sid. Ship's laundry could be dried topside in hundreds of mini-sails. Lighter weigh solar panels could replace the SPY-1 radar panels and most of the aluminum bulkheads in the superstructure. A lighter ship weight translates into better main propulsion fuel efficiency. Still plenty of room for a rail gun, shuffle-board, deck chairs on Steel Beach to work on the tan.
I'm all for railgun and other experimental weapons development. We need to push the envelope or we WILL get caught behind our enemies.
That being said, there is a huge difference between research and actually developing and fielding weapons.
here is the biggest problem I see with how many responded to this post, as well as how the US and in some ways Japan are approaching this development.
I see a lot of talk about how too make the weapon work for this or that, ie nuclear power, multiple barrels, flight, caliber, etc etc.
Know what I don't see/here?
A coherent description of a mission or target that requires this type of weapon to perform/service.
How about we start by describing what it is we want to accomplish with said railgun, BEFORE we go off wishcasting on how to build it.
The Japanese seem to be focused on using it as a form of air / missile defense, ie.. hitting a bullet with a faster bullet. If it works for that, great. That defines requirements, like rate of fire, position, which in turn lead to limitations on power source etc.
The USN version was, as far as I remember, much more focused on Naval Fire Support, ie.. blowing shit up for the Marines at very long range, in a very responsive manner.
Hence the USN focus on much larger caliber, lower rate of fire. Lower rate of fire = longer barrel life.
So how about Sal take this to the next level and invite responses proposing theoretical missions too be accomplished by said rail guns, which then invites discussion regarding what limitations each of those missions would incur on the design.
Nuclear power is great, but I doubt we are building CGN's anytime soon or DDN's, and I'm struggling to imagine the mission a rail gun mounted on a Ford CVN would accomplish, although the idea of a deck-mounted cannon on a Virginia class does make my inner commerce raiding spirit smile.
In all seriousness, before we talk about how to build these, we need more coherent discussion of what mission they accomplish, and how they do it better than missiles or bombs, to better form the thoughts about HOW to build it.
And before anyone says I lack imagination, I am a die-hard old school Battletech player who's been dreaming of Gauss Rifles since the late 80's.
Railguns and their ammunition types must be multi-mission devices. NGFS and anti-missile defense are two of the more prominently discussed missions. Surface warfare is another obvious candidate for inclusion in the multi-mission railgun capability list.
Your comment is on target to the extent that a multi-mission railgun and its ordnance will have more performance requirements loaded into their specifications and will therefore be carrying a larger shipboard footprint in terms of power requirements and shipboard support infrastructure than narrowly-focused single mission devices.
This is why we won't be seeing a railgun replacing a multi-mission 5-inch gun aboard a frigate or a destroyer. A practical multi-mission railgun is likely to have a much larger shipboard footprint than a Constellation class frigate, a Burke class destroyer, or a Zumwalt class destroyer could handle.
So again, if it can only fit on a CVN, then what are we going to use it for?
And the version we were exploring for NGFS is an entirely different scale from the version the Japanese are building for missile defense. Ours was about 155mm, theirs is about 40mm
now, a NGFS capable rail gun might have a role in surface warfare, if the range is long enough. it becomes prompt strike on steroids, but how do you anticipate the enemy ships movement, because even hypersonic, that enemy hull is going to maneuver before that bullet gets there.
Again, I just don't see current missions this is servicing from current platforms.
Trying to boot strap a missile defense mission onto a railgun designed for NGFS will be a failing mission, or burn out barrels designed for larger calibers with projectiles way oversized for the mission (missile defense), and by converse, making the missile defense version try and work for NGFS or surface warfare would face similar limitations.
We need to stop thinking of rail-gun as a weapon type.
It's a form of propellant.
When we invented cannon, we didn't try to use the same size cannon for every job, we used different sized cannon and projectiles with various mixes of propellant, to meet the mission need.
Rail guns will be no different. Battery bank, discharge capacity, recharge rate, firing rate, caliber, etc.. will all be factors designed to match the weapons purpose (anti ship, anti ground target, missile defense, etc..)
All that requires defining mission requirement.
Stop thinking of rail gun as just "a weapon" that has to be used for multiple missions.
It isn't "A weapon". It is "A Technology to propel projectiles", and the weapons need to be designed to fire the right type of projectile, with the right amount of propellant, to fit the mission.
otherwise, your doing the equivalent of trying to shoot down missiles with a 16" deck gun, or trying to to hit ships and targets ashore with a 40mm AA mount.
Anything else you could associate our last few decades of weapons development with?
Like, I don't know, DDX, LCS etc etc etc?
Think M1 Abrams. It was designed to kill Russian tanks, based on what we knew about Russian tanks, and what it would take to survive in a Russian tank killing environment.
And it was SO good at it, that the modified version is still the best tank on earth, more than 40 years after it was first deployed.
It cannot and will not be ONE WEAPON, because one single rail gun will be the proverbial swiss army knife that will SUCK at almost every job it attempts, because of all the compromises that will need to be made to accommodate such a wide target set.
We have to stop thinking of "The rail gun" and start thinking of "Rail Gun tech" that will be adapted to multiple different systems.
What works for a smaller caliber, high rate-of-fire system for hitting fast moving aerial targets will probably NOT work for a large caliber system for killing ships or bunkers.
They very gun design must change to meet different targets.
So the first weapon will be experimental to develop the technology. How do we quick charge the capacitor banks? How do we keep them from frying on discharge? Barrel life? etc etc etc.
Much like unmanned aircraft. Are they for strike? ASW? aerial refueling? letting Marines see over the next hill? Yes, all of the above, but each requires a different UAV/RPV/drone.
If the mission is what the Japanese are describing, which is essentially point defense against hypersonics ("hitting a bullet with a faster bullet") then railguns do offer a real advantage over conventional chemical guns. Chemically propelled guns hit a very hard limit on muzzle velocity around 6000 fps (about Mach 5.5) and the sacrifices that have to be made in terms of heating and barrel wear to even get there are prohibitive for a naval point defense system. (The highest muzzle velocity acheived with a conventional firearm was with a specially loaded .30/378 Weatherby using specially manufactured 60gr. plastic bullets, around 6200 fps). Above that, you are trying to essentially drive the bullet faster than the chemical reaction propogates through the propellant.
Nuclear propulsion and rail guns. WE NEED THIS.
A reliable railgun barrel which deals successfully with the rail erosion issue might contain multiple sets of redundant rails. Lets assume four sets of four rails per barrel. The first round uses the first set of rails, the next round the next set, etc. etc.
Another problem is that embarking just one railgun barrel isn't enough. Three or more barrels would be necessary if reliable combat sustainment performance is to be maintained.
Each of the three railgun barrels must be replaceable at sea. Combine that requirement with employing four sets of four rails per barrel -- plus the power generation systems and energy discharge control systems needed to feed each barrel -- and the shipbboard footprint of the entire railgun system as a whole becomes quite large.
More than a decade ago, I came to the conclusion that a practical railgun system -- emphasis on the terms 'practical' and 'system' -- would be of such a physical size, and would have such a large shipboard footprint in terms of energy power generation capacity and discharge control that a platform of possibly 20,000 tons displacement or larger would be required to carry a truly useful railgun system.
Nuclear power is the obvious choice for that kind of platform embarking those kinds of railgun mission support requirements.
Which means an entirely new platform designed from the keel up to carry a practical three-barrel railgun system, a platform which is large enough in physical size and displacement to deliver the levels of rapid and reliable volume fire required for the assigned missions.
Thanks for the Intel! I learned something!
Smart move by the Japan guys. Using the ocean as a target gets a go on one of the test checklist items.
Hit Target. 👍
Sounds like the annual fam fire drill for the ship's SAT team. Hand out a pistol, rifle or shotgun and have them point it aft off the fantail and fire at the ocean. Score a hit and you qualify. Kind of cheesy that they wouldn't spring for a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophy.
That’s conducting sustainment training!
I remember those... Specifically when one of the Chiefs was so bad, he removed some nonskid from the flight deck...😂
^ Probably a twidgit like an ETC or DSC. I was an EW but by the grace of God we were folded into Deck Group as our origin was from RD's. Heck, the FTG3 (twidgit) who handed out guns to the SAT team put one into the linoleum from an unloaded 1911 that ricocheted into a stateroom. Was an EMO/ERO twice. Once as an EWC and once as a CWO2-LTjg. I have twidgit stories. Oh my, do I. But it'd probably strain the CDR's patience to post them here.
As an ET , ill try to remain unoffended haha...
But yeah, there's twidget stories!!! A fav, if only coincidental, is when ET1 was doing quarterdeck turnover, he let go of the 1911 slide and it promptly flew off, and over the side!! There were actually divers sent to retrieve it a few days later!!!
Those 45s were the ones originally issued to the ship in '64, so to say they were worn out is an understatement!! When I did quals, I was in S-2, and went shopping LOL...found all the pieces to put together a brand new gun, and a GM buddy put it together and 'tuned' it. The day that Chief shot the flight deck, I shot some nice tight groups, unmatched by anyone else that day by far!!
(And yes, i put all the pieces back later...)
Outré twidgitry seems to manifest itself at the ETC level in my experience, X-Jr Sailor. Most of my stories would have been about three ETC's I served with who's first sea duty tours were at their 18, 20 and 26 year points in their careers to my 9 and 17 year points. And, of course, in any comparison & contrast between them and me would have made them look twidgitier. 18 months after EW"A" I became a Chief and was encouraged to never turn one of those tiny Craftsman screwdrivers we kept in our pocket protectors again but rather to embrace my many, many new collateral duties with gusto. Getting tossed into that brier patch of standing CICWO watches suited me fine even if it didn't for the OS's. I can also dish it out on Postal Clerks, Tradevmen, GURL's, PAO's, CTM's and a few SUPPO's I have known. All of that would spotlight my bias' and a propensity to wield the tar brush heavy-handedly. No offense meant.
Well the Japanese did develop the Mitsubishi A6M.
Sal, don't be too hard on yourself. Yeah, sure... Lucy... Football... Again & again. Drat! And like many other things, rail guns don't work... until they work. Cf: Edison's light bulb, which achieved success after 999 failed experiments, per legend. In this sense, USN ought to keep line-fill in the R&D pipes; with an open mind towards plus-ups for testing whenever new developments offer promise. Indeed, considering how much $$ goes to other Navy boondoggles (okay; a low bar), rail gun research is cheap at twice the price.
Concur with the idea of keeping it in the R&D pipeline, but unless we want just another money pit, the PM needs a set of quantitative test achievements. My understanding it that the USN’s last shot at railguns kept melting the rails.
Melting the rails? Yes, another technical challenge. Look at tungsten and carbon fiber, if not graphene. More material science! Reshape the magnetic field! The truth is out there.
Sounds like a plan! Ceramics can handle the heat, but brittleness will be an issue. Perhaps replaceable liners? Naval guns are commonly refurbished by replacing the liner. That is done thru differential heating to separate the liner from the exterior barrel, and so was a gun factory job. I can envision that as a possible shipboard job for EMRG, or perhaps one done over a weekend pierside.
Railguns on airships in 3, 2, 1 …
heh. I saw it too. on the road this week and not able to truly address it, but saw how the good CDR opened the door a bit......
When Steampunk jumps from fiction to reality, I am going to start PT-ing again, lose 50 lbs, lie about my age and go see the recruiter to enlist for blimp duty. I want to be a GMR3(AW) some day.
Ah no. There ain't gonna be any hot, stacked redhead airship pilots, no matter what book covers imply😪
I'd be happy to see the ShinMaywa US-2 in US Navy inventory sans railgun!
Well, if you use the usual DoD acquisition approach, the old MINS \ ORD or newer JCIDS process, hand it over to the usual major defense contractors, you'll get what you got (spend a lot for little return). If we can make a steerable artillery round (sort of, see Excalibur) and hypersonics once out of the plasma bloom, then the ability to correct to target in flight after launch issue seems solvable. But, JCIDS, major defense contractors, etc. (where's DARPA?), you got what you got. Perhaps hire Elon Musk for some out of the box thinking and actual design \ create prototypes? Heresy!!
As much as I love the tech, HELs and HPMs don't need reloading. Not sure the rail guns are gonna prove out
Problem is that lasers have an extremely hard time against hypersonic targets. These are going to be fairly robust vehicles with a plasma cloud in front of them closing at multiple km/sec. It's going to take an enormously power laser to destroy an RV as it goes from 50km to zero.
If we are using lasers as part of a multi-layer defense against hypersonics, megawatt class lasers possibly combined with multi-spectral beam capability will be required.
IMHO, just as it is with multi-mission railguns, a new class of warship must be designed from the keel up to handle a combination of multi-mission railguns, megawatt-class lasers, and high power microwave arrays.
The Atlanta-class, reborn...
Oh, it gets even better than that. This new class of surface combatant would need to support anti-submarine operations as well as to support the rapid deployment of an ad-hoc in-theater communications network after the Chinese shoot down all our satellites. And it will have to do so unsupplied for extended periods of time because there won't be enough of a fleet logistics train available in a big dust-up with China to keep it in fuel and ordnance.
Was ok til i hit "asw operations"...
Im not a fan of multimission ships. I think its past time we separate AAW, ASuW and ASW. IMHO, ships optimized to do their particular mission are a better tact than what weve been doing. What would it cost to build a Burkes AAW capability into a hull without ASW components, helo facilities, etc?? It could be far smaller and cheaper. Same for the ASW component!! How simple could a ship be when its built around a sonar, a towed array, helo facilities, and some quieted engineering spaces? I think we really need to look at abandoning the multimission ship concept and start building ships exquisitely tailored to their specific mission...
Sorry...went on my soapbox again LOL...
We looked at lasers on 747’s for SDI. Maybe relook that. Back on subject, I bet Japan has the power issue figured out with elelectro-magmatic drive….useful for more than just a rail gun. What platform replaced Asuka?
I still think that rail(shot)guns could have great utility in space warfare. Atmospheric: Not so much.
The novel "The War in 2020" had a railgun mounted in an Osprey-like tilt-rotor.
If nothing else, good for a laugh. Thanks, I needed that.
Rail guns will be doomed to failure because the spec for generating the electricity will be solar, wind or some other green renewable resource. And, the Navy's need for raw material to make batteries to store the energy for multiple shots will compete against the needs of civilian EV's. Count on the Army to weigh in too on their need for tank, fighting vehicle, transport truck and self-propelled artillery batteries too. Nah. The only way this breaks Lucy's grip on the balls and gets this off the ground is to co-opt an 89-year-old Ralph Nader in his dotage to sign off on portable plutonium nuclear reactors to power these rail guns. Once these rail guns are installed on ships, accuracy can be fine-tuned by subcontractors. As a former 7121/6121 SWO I'd be proud to carry a pocket dosimeter like my betters did back in the day.
I saw this article earlier in the week & was quite pleased the Japanese have started their own program.
If history is any predictor, the Japanese will take our research , succeed in making a practical unit and sell it back to us smaller & cheeper than we could do..
I'd love to see them partner on a common hull cruiser also.
https://news.usni.org/2022/09/06/japan-to-build-two-massive-20000-ton-missile-defense-warships-indian-carrier-commissions
It has been quite a while since Japan has built a cruiser in this size range. I wonder if they will actually design a cruiser hull or just a super-super-stretch destroyer hull. The last IJN cruiser Sakawa was sunk during atomic testing. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD0367496.pdf
Gotta be large enough for a large fly wheel and powerful pulse batteries. Seems kinda dangerous but going to sea is getting 18th century dangerous with ballistic and hypersonic middles.
They create some very interesting ships. I toured their large minelayer over 20 years ago. Kinda rube-Goldberg in its dedication to one mission but impressive non the less.
Shipyards. For most of our nation's life the Washington Navy Yard was a technical center. The Navy owned and controlled the laboratories and workshops where naval personnel developed naval technology. In today's navy John Dahlgren would never go near a foundry. Hell, we used to put foundreys on ships that could tend to other ships.
Enlisted instructors used to write curriculum for their "A" Schools too. Who better than the Subject Matter Experts? They had the assistance of a civilian TraSpec and a team of subcontractor civilian experts in curriculum writing to ensure the products' teachability. They still taught curriculum writing when I went to Instructor Training School in 1980. A decade or so after they quit letting Enlisted men write the curriculum and bid it out to the free market, I got assigned to run an "A" School". The TraSpec and subcontractor civilian experts were still there on the payroll to assist our Enlisted men in curriculum development they were no longer doing. What did I care? They had a huge budget and were eager to pay for things I couldn't afford on my budget. But still...what a waste. ...5 guys in the 2 digit GS paygrades sitting around idle 8 hours a day.
How much deck space will be required for the mandated power source of solar panels and wind vanes?
A non-issue, Sid. Ship's laundry could be dried topside in hundreds of mini-sails. Lighter weigh solar panels could replace the SPY-1 radar panels and most of the aluminum bulkheads in the superstructure. A lighter ship weight translates into better main propulsion fuel efficiency. Still plenty of room for a rail gun, shuffle-board, deck chairs on Steel Beach to work on the tan.
Do I detect a wee whiff of sarcasm here???
Not a whiff, a whirlwind.
God strike me ded if I warn't Ded Sirus, doggone it.
..... Enough deck space for the solar panels and the wind vanes.
I'm all for railgun and other experimental weapons development. We need to push the envelope or we WILL get caught behind our enemies.
That being said, there is a huge difference between research and actually developing and fielding weapons.
here is the biggest problem I see with how many responded to this post, as well as how the US and in some ways Japan are approaching this development.
I see a lot of talk about how too make the weapon work for this or that, ie nuclear power, multiple barrels, flight, caliber, etc etc.
Know what I don't see/here?
A coherent description of a mission or target that requires this type of weapon to perform/service.
How about we start by describing what it is we want to accomplish with said railgun, BEFORE we go off wishcasting on how to build it.
The Japanese seem to be focused on using it as a form of air / missile defense, ie.. hitting a bullet with a faster bullet. If it works for that, great. That defines requirements, like rate of fire, position, which in turn lead to limitations on power source etc.
The USN version was, as far as I remember, much more focused on Naval Fire Support, ie.. blowing shit up for the Marines at very long range, in a very responsive manner.
Hence the USN focus on much larger caliber, lower rate of fire. Lower rate of fire = longer barrel life.
So how about Sal take this to the next level and invite responses proposing theoretical missions too be accomplished by said rail guns, which then invites discussion regarding what limitations each of those missions would incur on the design.
Nuclear power is great, but I doubt we are building CGN's anytime soon or DDN's, and I'm struggling to imagine the mission a rail gun mounted on a Ford CVN would accomplish, although the idea of a deck-mounted cannon on a Virginia class does make my inner commerce raiding spirit smile.
In all seriousness, before we talk about how to build these, we need more coherent discussion of what mission they accomplish, and how they do it better than missiles or bombs, to better form the thoughts about HOW to build it.
And before anyone says I lack imagination, I am a die-hard old school Battletech player who's been dreaming of Gauss Rifles since the late 80's.
Railguns and their ammunition types must be multi-mission devices. NGFS and anti-missile defense are two of the more prominently discussed missions. Surface warfare is another obvious candidate for inclusion in the multi-mission railgun capability list.
Your comment is on target to the extent that a multi-mission railgun and its ordnance will have more performance requirements loaded into their specifications and will therefore be carrying a larger shipboard footprint in terms of power requirements and shipboard support infrastructure than narrowly-focused single mission devices.
This is why we won't be seeing a railgun replacing a multi-mission 5-inch gun aboard a frigate or a destroyer. A practical multi-mission railgun is likely to have a much larger shipboard footprint than a Constellation class frigate, a Burke class destroyer, or a Zumwalt class destroyer could handle.
So again, if it can only fit on a CVN, then what are we going to use it for?
And the version we were exploring for NGFS is an entirely different scale from the version the Japanese are building for missile defense. Ours was about 155mm, theirs is about 40mm
now, a NGFS capable rail gun might have a role in surface warfare, if the range is long enough. it becomes prompt strike on steroids, but how do you anticipate the enemy ships movement, because even hypersonic, that enemy hull is going to maneuver before that bullet gets there.
Again, I just don't see current missions this is servicing from current platforms.
Trying to boot strap a missile defense mission onto a railgun designed for NGFS will be a failing mission, or burn out barrels designed for larger calibers with projectiles way oversized for the mission (missile defense), and by converse, making the missile defense version try and work for NGFS or surface warfare would face similar limitations.
We need to stop thinking of rail-gun as a weapon type.
It's a form of propellant.
When we invented cannon, we didn't try to use the same size cannon for every job, we used different sized cannon and projectiles with various mixes of propellant, to meet the mission need.
Rail guns will be no different. Battery bank, discharge capacity, recharge rate, firing rate, caliber, etc.. will all be factors designed to match the weapons purpose (anti ship, anti ground target, missile defense, etc..)
All that requires defining mission requirement.
Stop thinking of rail gun as just "a weapon" that has to be used for multiple missions.
It isn't "A weapon". It is "A Technology to propel projectiles", and the weapons need to be designed to fire the right type of projectile, with the right amount of propellant, to fit the mission.
otherwise, your doing the equivalent of trying to shoot down missiles with a 16" deck gun, or trying to to hit ships and targets ashore with a 40mm AA mount.
"A coherent description of a mission or target that requires this type of weapon to perform/service."
Build it, and the targets will come....
We haven't built a weapons system to a coherent set of requirements in a couple decades.
Why change now?
Anything else you could associate our last few decades of weapons development with?
Like, I don't know, DDX, LCS etc etc etc?
Think M1 Abrams. It was designed to kill Russian tanks, based on what we knew about Russian tanks, and what it would take to survive in a Russian tank killing environment.
And it was SO good at it, that the modified version is still the best tank on earth, more than 40 years after it was first deployed.
It cannot and will not be ONE WEAPON, because one single rail gun will be the proverbial swiss army knife that will SUCK at almost every job it attempts, because of all the compromises that will need to be made to accommodate such a wide target set.
We have to stop thinking of "The rail gun" and start thinking of "Rail Gun tech" that will be adapted to multiple different systems.
What works for a smaller caliber, high rate-of-fire system for hitting fast moving aerial targets will probably NOT work for a large caliber system for killing ships or bunkers.
They very gun design must change to meet different targets.
So the first weapon will be experimental to develop the technology. How do we quick charge the capacitor banks? How do we keep them from frying on discharge? Barrel life? etc etc etc.
Much like unmanned aircraft. Are they for strike? ASW? aerial refueling? letting Marines see over the next hill? Yes, all of the above, but each requires a different UAV/RPV/drone.
If the mission is what the Japanese are describing, which is essentially point defense against hypersonics ("hitting a bullet with a faster bullet") then railguns do offer a real advantage over conventional chemical guns. Chemically propelled guns hit a very hard limit on muzzle velocity around 6000 fps (about Mach 5.5) and the sacrifices that have to be made in terms of heating and barrel wear to even get there are prohibitive for a naval point defense system. (The highest muzzle velocity acheived with a conventional firearm was with a specially loaded .30/378 Weatherby using specially manufactured 60gr. plastic bullets, around 6200 fps). Above that, you are trying to essentially drive the bullet faster than the chemical reaction propogates through the propellant.
Agreed, but as I pointed out, that makes the system hyper-focused on that application, and therefore much less capable of other missions.
My fear is those who think the 'rail gun' MUST be the ALL mission weapon because of it's complexity.
That's how US defense firms and Pentagon wonk-niks inadvertently kill good technology, by over-burdening it with unrealistic expectations.
You don't use the same gun to kill elephants as you do to shoot clays.
'Rail gun' is, at the end of the day, a form of propellant, which enables much faster MV, although it involves different barrel design etc.
It's still a projectile based system (as opposed to rocket or missile or energy weapon tech)