“What is the electromagnetic railgun?,” the Navy asks in a news release today. “In a word, innovation.”
The innovation stretches back to the 1980s, when railguns were part of President Ronald Reagan’s antimissile defense plan. But a test in 1985 revealed it to be more fantasy than reality, as William J. Broad wrote in a wry account in The New York Times:
Displaying a photograph of the splintered booster, he said the test demonstrated the antimissile potential of the electromagnetic railgun, an experimental kinetic-energy weapon that could be based in space. The audience, made up of hundreds of Pentagon officials, military industry executives and reporters, broke into applause at the sight of the crumpled booster.
But after the presentation, in response to questions at a much smaller briefing, General Abrahamson revealed that the damage had not actually been done by an electromagnetic railgun but by a hardened projectile fired from an air gun, a technology much less futuristic. The modern air gun was developed in France in the early 18th century.
By 2008, the technology has come a long way in a more terrestrial application: the Navy is testing them as ship-to-land projectiles.
So far, there have been several successful tests of the railgun, which uses electromagnetic rails to fire missiles, instead of fuel and on-board motors.
The latest test, scheduled for Thursday, plans to break a record by firing the gun at 10 megajoules. A 16-megajoule test was planned for later this year, with the ultimate goal is to get it up to 64, officials say. The more power, the farther these things will fly, obviously.
For a megajoule frame-of-reference, a Navy official compared the 8-megajoule railgun shot to “hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph.”
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The Navy gives as a nice representation of government itself going off the rails at high speed.
— Weapons of mass Ford destruction.I remember Doug Barish telling me about this secret military technology. He has access to the most incredible stuff. I think they should shoot Doug into outerspace so he can start a new colony on some distant planet. They should launch a couple hot chicks too, his guitar, and a lot of snacks.
— TomBillions for this nonsense and continuing billions to fight illusive Islamic enemies, build a country (Iraq) up, support economic competitors and ignore the needs of America. The US as a declining latter-day Roman Empire!
— Robert LoCiceroIt will be exciting to use these fantastic weapons against people making less than $2000 per year! Boom! Boom!
Then when we partially incinerate children we can bring them to the US and use MRI and all sorts of modern surgical techniques to give them new faces. We can broadcast this on cable news as a testament to our kindness and generosity.
We can use our invisible, supersonic, and atomic-armed planes against countries without air forces as well. Take that for not loving freedom! Boom!
— jmc“What is the electromagnetic railgun?,” the Navy asks in a news release today. “In a word, innovation.”
For some reason that line strikes me as being extremely funny.
— Zackthis is very cool indeed
— bobI guess that we need to spend the money somehwere that doesn’t conflict with profit making industries.
Still one wonders how much basic health care the R&D for this toy would have paid for.
— WonksAnonymousI have an idea, if they get the 16 megajoule version running by later this year, they can use it in January of 2009 to fire Bush, Cheney and his whole administration out of the city…..
— wdefFinally, the advent of the “green” missile. It doesn’t use fossil fuels to kill our enemies.
— ATL GuyIf the Navy is not out trying to kill whales with sonar waves it’s out trying to fire the equivalent of Buicks by means of electromagnetism. Someone needs to step in and straighten out the captains of this military-industrial canoe club.
— MikeBoy, you’ve let them bamboozle you again.
Try asking the Navy how much power a 64MJ shot will take…and their answer should be “about the same as a Nimitz class carrier uses at cruise speed”. In other words, you’ll need a couple of nuclear reactors - and a way to store all the power, then deliver it instantly.
Oh - and after five shots, the railgun will need new rails.
That’s for a single 64MJ shot, folks. Railguns are impractical at best, but at least sainted old Ronnie is getting his pie-eyed weapons.
— Bamboozled again!Sweet, all my sci-fi dreams are coming true!!!!
ONWARD TO THE PHOTON TORPEDOS!
— a.h.Neat idea, using electromagnetic fields to propel a projectile. It would be very useful for weapons or for propelling much larger objects like rail transportation vehicles across long distances.
We’ve been generating electricity by spinning axles and using that electricity to spin axles for over a hundred years using the forces exerted by electromagnetic fields on opposing electromagnetic fields.
This is different but similar.
— FuturisticDid the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), the office charged with ensuring the integrity of weapons tests, confirm this supposedly successful test? If not, the test is worthless.
One of the first things Bush did on taking office was to exempt Star Wars from DTO&E, as well as the financial auditing unit of DOD. So all those supposedly successful tests are worthless.
— GarakAre these electromagnetic railguns akin to the gauss weapons of science fiction and video games?
Also, given weapons firing at 10, 16, or even 64 megajoules, is a nuclear powered vessel required to make the weapons practical?
— Robert GerrityI think that given the atmosphere and the tendency for deception, much of the testing is overstated, overblown claptrap.
It is all show in star wars land and little reality.
— MarkNo fuel? That’s just bull excrement. Some source must be used to generate the ELECTROmagnetic energy. It may be more fuel efficient than other weaponry–now there’s an oxymoron; fuel efficient destruction!–but there is simply no way this thing doesn’t use some kind of energy source. It’s not exactly easy to get a Ford Taurus up to 380 mph.
— GeorgeAnyway, could they not simply catapult the Ford from nearby.
A much less costly solution.
— Weapons dreamer.Obviously this requires an energy source. There is no such thing as free energy, but some conspiracy theorists will disagree. This can only be used on a nuclear powered vessel with large capacitors. (I mean huge!) We still require fossil fuels to extract and build that vessel, gun, nuclear fuel, etc. I don’t mean to let down your article but on that basis that statement is not true. Please report on the actual facts and the amount of shots that it can actually fire before being replaced, etc.
— Chris#15:
— FireflyYes they are: both railguns and coilguns (which use a series of coils to impart momentum and are less subject to wear issues) are classified as gauss weapons.
And yes, this does score ain’t-it-cool points.
I think if you had a flux capacitor you could operate the rail gun safely at 1.21 gigawatts or harness lightning to power it.
I wanna rail gun on my car AFTER I install the flux capacitor.
— Capt. ConcernicusExpeditionary warfare? Hmmm… So we’ll continue to spend billions of $ that we don’t have on trying to extirpate an “enemy” that routinely defeats us with the simplest home-made weapons. That’s some good logic there. Can I get in on the IPO?
— MunchausenI mean really, it’s so much more work, and so much less cost effective to develop strong, effective partnerships and alliances in the global community. You know, like we had before Jan 2001?
Quoting Munchausen:
“I mean really, it’s so much more work, and so much less cost effective to develop strong, effective partnerships and alliances in the global community. You know, like we had before Jan 2001?”
In other words, the kinds of “partnerships and alliances” that did us so much good on Oct. 12, 2000, and August 7, 1998, and June 25, 1996, and Feb. 26, 1993, and that were so enduringly crafted by your beloved Philanderer-in-Chief that they lasted all of 7 months after he left office? Foreign policy before “Jan 2001″ was just another aborted love-child of the promiscuity that penetrated everything Bill Clinton handled: he made it sound oh-so-right at the time, but he had no taste for the bloody show came along in due course.
— ChasI’m not sure why I’m supposed to be impressed by that “Ford Taurus (ca. 3000 lb.) at 380 MPH”. That level of kinetic energy is roughly equivalent to a typical 6″ naval gun of the WWI/WWII period.
— SteveSince i know a little about these things, i wanted to clear up some of blatant misconceptions shown here.
— clearing up the obvious1 obviously the projectile is not the size of a buick, it just has the kinetic energy of one.
2 it does not need “several nuclear power plants” you could get the energy from your home power line for under a dollar (do the calculation, really). True you need more power than that for any useful rate of fire, but it’s well within the capabilities of the next generation electric navy ships. (look it up in pop-sci)
3 true, the life of the rails are the biggest obstacle, but even now it’s much better than 5 shots.
to number 11:
i don’t know or care about the DTO&E but this is the navy not star wars (geez read the article) and you seem to forget that people working on this have spent most of their life training to be professional scientists, and won’t make up data for a press conference, no matter who is or isn’t auditing them.