Ship attack anyone?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Looks like railguns are going to be viable.

New Navy Railgun Tests Leading to Ship Superweapon by 2020 | Office of Naval Research Railguns | Innovationnewsdaily.com (http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/912-navy-railgun-tests-leading-ship-superweapon-2020.html)

Game changer I suspect.

[Heathrow Harry]

needs a bloody large battery I expect - and an even bigger electric fuse

when you think of it the old 14 Century cannon has worked pretty well as a basic design - the only real changes are composite charge & warhead and breech loading

[NutLoose]

Sadly for the Royal Navy it will be a none starter, leaves on the rails would leave the UK version sitting in the station.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

--- and wire wound barrels, drop forged barrels, rifling and base bleed. Apart from that, not much change.

I wonder how the, no doubt, massive magnetic field is contained to avoid interference with sensitive ship systems?

[NutLoose]

And all the crews watches. :O

[Jollygreengiant64]

Probably the same way the systems in the lab aren't affected. Would be great to see the return of the Battleship, can't help but think that these shells would be slightly cheaper than cruise missiles...Not to mention space concerns. Whack a reactor in the belly and you've got a running cost cheap platform.

[500N]

JGG

With reactors already on aircraft carriers, depending in the guns size,
would it not be an option to install one on them for protection ?

[Milo Minderbinder]

"I wonder how the, no doubt, massive magnetic field is contained to avoid interference with sensitive ship systems?"

If they think they can control the effects of the EMALS rails on the carriers, this won't be much different,

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Shielding is highly conductive, dissipating the external field as eddy currents.

That's a copper box to you, chief. ;)



Technology is straightforward compared to this
http://www.theinquirer.net/img/2090/lhc-cms-detector.jpg?1241331986

CMS detector at CERN. 50 foot high, 100 000x Earth's field, weighs 12 500 tons, cooled to -271 degrees. Quite green too, using titanium recycled from Soviet subs and bits of old NATO artillery shells.

Data from this has probably accelerated railgun development.

[Buster Hyman]

Knowing the RAN & safety legislation, they'll need to be licensed electricians to operate it! :rolleyes:

[dead_pan]

Game changer I suspect

I have my doubts on the usefulness of firing an unguided projectile over the ranges mentioned (50 to 100 miles), unless of course they're talking about direct fire against airborne targets. I reckon it would be nigh on impossible to hit a surface target at that range.

No mention of the rate of fire or how often the gun liner will have to be changed.

[parabellum]

Absolutely! No Certificate of Compliance, no shooting, "Sorry Skipper, HE & S says 'No'!"
(And Work Place Safety want a bigger office).

[500N]

dead pan

I was thinking the same thing. All well and good chucking a shell that far but it needs to hit the target.

Maybe the US has or is planning a shell that has it's own fins/guidance system once it gets close.



Re the shape of the item he loaded into the gun, what was with that ?
It looked like a half shaft shape piece of metal from a truck !

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

There will be the usual selection of terminal guidance toys in the nose of the "bullet" I imagine, once they've figured out how to protect same from the EM fields/g-forces.

The test round was deliberately high drag, for "indoor" testing.

maybe not fins at that high speed; perhaps some kind of directional venting at the base of the round.

[Jollygreengiant64]

500N, Dammit man, don't start the navy down multirole lane too... It needs more ships not less. Besides, Battleships are just the epitome of death.

Anyway, the carriers need aircraft before they need a defence.

[Buster Hyman]

maybe not fins at that high speed; perhaps some kind of directional venting at the base of the round.
May as well stick with missiles then. :confused:

[orca]

I'm not sure how this technology (rate of fire, guidance etc) would change anything wrt ship attack. The technology already exists to make the task suicidal with free fall or short range weapons in the open ocean - and pretty hard with long range stuff or in the littoral.

With CAP, phased array radar, vertical launch SAMs, decoys and CIWS you really don't need a rail gun.

If you ever see yourself fragged for ship attack, pick up the Yellow Pages and give dial-a-sub-Faslane a call - they'll have far more fun!

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

dead_pan. From the article;
U.S. Navy commanders ultimately want a weapon capable of firing up to 10 guided projectiles per minute at targets up to 100 miles away.

Fox3WheresMyBanana. Supressing external EM fields as eddy currents does, indeed, look a likely solution but not especially simple.

[glojo]

I'm not holding my breath regarding the weapon actually being used on an operational warship. we have heard lots of claims about the development of weapon systems that are 'game changers' but when push comes to shove there is no shove..

IF this ship did become operational then what type of battle group would protect it? I should imagine any submarine in the same ocean will hear the thing when that pop gun makes a noise and once heard it is in a whole heap of doo doos unless it has the ability to defend itself.

The Zumwalt class is allegedly using state of the art weaponry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Gun_System) which can possibly do whatever this system might be able to achieve.

[LowObservable]

The Navy gets very excited about this idea (and about lasers) because they may be the only ones who can use it, since the only way to make it mobile is to stick it somewhere in several thousand tons of grey steel and make it float.

They also love it because it could mean a ship doesn't have to carry large amounts of gun propellant, which has been a factor in too many cases to count of rapid auto-disassembly affecting naval vessels.

On the other hand, they have a hell of a long way to go to turn this into a weapon, and the power requirements could force them into a new ship.

Update: Why in the name of Cthulhu does this board's SW render the acronym formed by "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" as "l@ser"?

[Navaleye]

Given the limits of current sensor technology, sure this is good enough?

oto melara Vulcano precision projectile - YouTube

[oldmansquipper]

Ahhh - but will it fit on Victory (probably the only `boat` to survive the next tranche of Camerons follies) and will it demast the frenchies as well as chain shot?

These and other questions....

;)

[Wander00]

Isn't this where someone (please!) reposts the 4 Buccaneers low level over the sea, to the background of Vangelis!!

[giblets]

What really amazes me is the gun recoil....or lack of it.
Clearly, the recoil is more linear along the 'barrel' than a traditional explosive given, but we are accelerating a 5kg projectile to 5,000m/s ish.

[RAFEngO74to09]

Wander00,

There you go (but Kings of Leon soundtrack instead of Vangelis).

Great aircraft, great crews, great times !

Pirates of the Mediterranean - a Buccaneer special - YouTube

[Heathrow Harry]

Giblets

Wikipedia say:-

" The recoil force exerted on the rails is equal and opposite to the force propelling the projectile. The seat of the recoil force is still debated. The traditional equations predict that the recoil force acts on the breech of the railgun. Another school of thought invokes Ampère's force law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amp%C3%A8re%27s_force_law) and asserts that it acts along the length of the rails (which is their strongest axis). The rails also repel themselves via a sideways force caused by the rails being pushed by the magnetic field, just as the projectile is. The rails need to survive this without bending, and must be very securely mounted."

I'll bet

[Wander00]

RAFEngo - many thanks - never flew the aeroplane but have a great affection for it

W

[BEagle]

Isn't this where someone (please!) reposts the 4 Buccaneers low level over the sea, to the background of Vangelis!!

Wander00 - here's the original (and best):

C4vkBWLmnZA

One or two PPRuNers might just recognise the dashing young fellows who appear in the end credits!

[Wander00]

Thanks Beagle

W

[kkbuk]

Very stirring stuff about the aircraft but the producers of the film obviously know nothing about what happens on a ship under attack!

[Landroger]

Shielding is highly conductive, dissipating the external field as eddy currents.

That's a copper box to you, chief.


Not so copper F3 - good old fashioned iron, but steel will do and is much cheaper. Copper will interact with a strong magnetic field, because of the Lenz Effect, but it won't shield a magnet. You need a ferrous metal to concentrate the flux lines.

A mobile MRI is basically a 40ft trailer with a 15,000 Gauss magnet inside, but the field will barely extended outside the sides of the van. A few Gauss maybe, but not much. That's because of about three tons of steel sheets on either side of the magnet. The copper box round round an MRI is the Faraday cage, to shield the magnet from external radio frequencies and the outside world from the magnet!

In the Lenz Effect, a copper plate, about 30cm x 37.5cm x 3mm stood on end at the end of the patient table will, if released, fall over. No brainer. But if stood on the table in the bore of the magnet, it will fall over if released - s'gravity innit? - but it will take about forty seconds to do it! It is a really cool demonstration of the power of an MRI magnet.

Doubt if the power for a rail gun will be a battery, you can't discharge it fast enough, more like capacitor banks, charged from the reactor/ generator and 'fired' into the magnet coils. I'm not sure if it would be possible to use superconducting magnets, because it would be hell on wheels (or impossibly expensive) to keep the LHe around the coils from quenching.

My use for the railgun would be to slowly accelerate loads to escape velocity over, say, twenty miles and up a mountain. I was always a fan of Issac Asimov. :ok:

Roger.

[Milo Minderbinder]

My use for the railgun would be to slowly accelerate loads to escape velocity over, say, twenty miles and up a mountain. I was always a fan of Issac Asimov.

An interesting use for Shap or Beattock....?

[stumpey]

To be honest, I'm more interested in the picture of the "Goblin" parasite fighter above this article.

Am I sad or what?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Navaleye - very interesting.

Thanks for the input Landroger,

see http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA386044

for part of the US Army's research.

I shall amend "copper box" to "mostly copper box" to keep you happy.

Reminds me of H2G2 entry for Earth being amended from "harmless" to "mostly harmless".

Still a nifty weapon once they can get it into production.

[TWT]

Why in the name of Cthulhu does this board's SW render the acronym formed by "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" as "l@ser"?Try L.a.n.d. R.o.v.e.r. ! (without the spaces or fullstops).It translates that to Trabant.

[AR1]

Slight thread creep, but does anybody remember that great stirrer of world effluent, the Iraqi 'Supergun' or pipeline, dependent on whether it was intelligence experts or ordinary eyes upon it.

Sat on the airfield at Lyneham for god knows how long - Looked like a pipeline to me.

[jindabyne]

BEags - did you like the gloves!! :cool:

kkbuk - at the time, those on the ship were also a little clueless :ugh:

[Landroger]

Thanks for the link, as riveting as most scientific papers are! I think the 'shielding' they were trying to design/quantify/ research, was against an EMP, I think and not 'shield' a magnet. Two different problems, but with common areas of interest.

We use steel shielding to concentrate the magnetic field - sort of squeezing it through an easier path - to reduce the strength of any stray fields. Say, into a public corridor is quite common. We cannot expose 'the public' to as much as 5 Gauss.

At the same time, all MRIs are surrounded by a Faraday cage - often copper, but sometimes aluminium - to prevent stray RF frequencies, like police/ fire/ambulances, ATC and the aeroplanes themselves, even ships on the Thames operating radar, never mind the BBC et al, getting in to the sensitive receivers in the system. Conversely, the cage also protects people and the BBC from 20Kw bursts of RF energy at Medium wave frequencies, that are used to 'excite your protons'. :eek:

A rail gun like that one, would produce an enormous EMP and the shielding would have to be quite special - both magnetic shielding and electromagnetic shielding.

As you say, a nifty bit of kit though. :)

Roger.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Landroger - thanks for the further detail. Very educational.

BEagle - thanks for the memories. Used to borrow this video endlessly in flying training. Had ex-Bucc QFIs throughout, got offered Buccaneer...and finally ended up flying on Open Gate out of Gib in the F3, escorting or trying to catch the b#ggers. Odd to think it's all to be done by rail gun 'death-rays' soon.

[MagnusP]

LowObservable:
Why in the name of Cthulhu does this board's SW render the acronym formed by "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation" as "l@ser"?

It seems the adbots pick it up and offer to sell the bloody things so that scrotes can buy them with their drugs money and try to blind pilots for fun.

[jindabyne]

Excellent spoof chaps