Blitzer Railgun will it be successful?

[Everten P.]

The blitzer railgun defence system is a mobile anti-missile defence system that uses a railgun and kinetic ball bearings to destroy rockets, cruise missiles, and ICBMs http://www.ga.com/railgun-systems so who thinks that the system will look remotely like in the video?

[Nibb31]

Why wouldn't it?

[Nuke]

railguns are pretty simple machines when it comes right down to it. they just need a lot of power. nuclear reactor kind of power. naval vessels for example will be likely candidates.

[Scotius]

Nah, power is easy - especially when you have nuclear reactor available. The real problem is with finding material for the rails, that won't melt or shatter after couple of shots.

[KerbMav]

It still is debatable if we should build nuclear reactors on land - but using them on ships ... ships that are built for military use ... that might very well be fired upon at some time, destroyed and sunk, possibly close to shores ... nuts.

[Mazon Del]

Actually the real problem with the rails isn't the melting or shattering, it is the slag generated when the railgun fires.

Basic physics lesson for everybody on how a railgun works. You have two parallel side by side rails. The voltage difference between the two is massive, lets call the right rail positive and the left rail negative. The electricity flows through the railgun round that is connecting the two rails, through magic reasons this generates a magnetic field on the front of the railgun round that pulls it forward along the rails. The greater the voltage difference, the greater the magnetic field, the faster the round goes. Now, something that operates relatively similarly is your standard welder. Charge your welding material, ensure the material to be welded is a suitable ground, bring welder material near the objects to be welded. As the electrons arc over, they carry the welding material with them, depositing it on the objects to be welded, also imparting a massive amount of heat. In the railgun you have a small amount of matter from the negative side depositing itself on the railgun round, which deposits some of its material on the positive side (remember kids, we got it wrong the first time and refuse to change, electrons flow from negative to positive! Even if the opposite was true, the railgun example would still be true, just which part is depositing on which part would change). So basically the left rail gets torn up while the right rail gets crap welded to its surface. Why might this be a problem you ask? Railguns work better when there is a firm contact between the round and the rails. If you fire weapon enough you run the risk of the round failing to achieve the velocity you needed it to, or worse, you risk the round jamming in the rails which instantly turns this device from a railgun, to the worlds biggest electric heater (without a "load" for the energy to be devoted towards, in this instance pushing the object with the magnetic field, the whole thing becomes one super charged wire that was not designed to operate that way).

Ways you might solve this? Every other shot, reverse the polarity of your rails. Suck from left, deposit on right. Next shot! Deposit on left, suck from right. This will delay the inevitiable accumulation on one rail and steady degradation on the other by basically causing both to accumulate and degrade at the same rates at the same time (the accumulation and degradation will NOT be evenly distributed along a rail, this is a matter for random placement of particles and such). However, it is still a simple and valuable thing to do.

How might you protect your rails from fouling? Well, their solution I'm sure is classified, but my personal guess is that they are using some metal with a layered molecular structure like graphite or possibly depleted uranium. When a given rail happens to be the negative side, as the round shoots down the rail, the round is basically pealing up the whole top layer of the rail as though it were a giant strip of tape. This SHOULD rip up the layer, even if it is coated with slag from the round from a previous time when this rail was the positive side of the weapon.

[Javster]

It still is debatable if we should build nuclear reactors on land - but using them on ships ... ships that are built for military use ... that might very well be fired upon at some time, destroyed and sunk, possibly close to shores ... nuts.

So could nuclear submarines, and they have nuclear missiles on them too.

The chance of a submarine being sunk is lower than a battleship (I assume)

[vger]

Ways you might solve this? Every other shot, reverse the polarity of your rails. Suck from left, deposit on right. Next shot! Deposit on left, suck from right. This will delay the inevitiable accumulation on one rail and steady degradation on the other by basically causing both to accumulate and degrade at the same rates at the same time (the accumulation and degradation will NOT be evenly distributed along a rail, this is a matter for random placement of particles and such). However, it is still a simple and valuable thing to do.

This might be too tricky to pull off since you're also using it to propel the projectile, but how about suspending it in a magnetic field so that it 'floats?' Then it would never come in contact with the rails at all.

[General Rarity]

So could nuclear submarines, and they have nuclear missiles on them too.

The chance of a submarine being sunk is lower than a battleship (I assume)

The chance of a battleship being used today is far less than the chance of a nuclear reactor melting down. Or by battleship you meant your average destroyer/cruiser...

I've heard about a naval rail gun a few years back... not sure if it's the same as this though.

[Nori]

It still is debatable if we should build nuclear reactors on land - but using them on ships ... ships that are built for military use ... that might very well be fired upon at some time, destroyed and sunk, possibly close to shores ... nuts.

I don't think it should be debatable.

Nuclear power has and will continue to be one of the safest and cheapest power generation methods we have.

You might scoff that I say safest, but think about how many people have died as a direct result of a nuclear powerplant disaster. Then compare that to how many people die in coal mines every year. It is a pretty stark comparison.

Also, if you do some research on new nuclear reactors (gen 3) you will find that they are significantly safer and easier to operate than the previous gen 1 and 2. Many of the new designs have completely passive cooling systems that would have made what happened at Fukishima nearly impossible.

[CptRichardson]

The chance of a battleship being used today is far less than the chance of a nuclear reactor melting down. Or by battleship you meant your average destroyer/cruiser...

I've heard about a naval rail gun a few years back... not sure if it's the same as this though.

A properly built MODERN nuclear powerplant is literally impossible to melt down, as they are designed to be air cooled. Fukushima was a 1960's plant that had the same safety features every other plant of it's era had stripped away or uninstalled because of skimpy owners who didn't want to pay, Chernobyl was improperly designed and was out of date in the 1950's, and 3 Mile was a literal non-event where every safety factor worked perfectly.

Any single coal or gas power plant puts out hideous amounts of radiation compared to the combined output of the normal operation of every nuclear plant on the planet. And the only reason we even HAVE nuclear waste is stupid, idiotic NIMBY/peacenik provisions in the NPT which prevents the world from properly reprocessing spent fuel into far shorter-lived forms.

[General Rarity]

Nuclear stuff

Okay? I was just comparing the chances, because there are no reasons to use battleships in today's world.

[Mazon Del]

This might be too tricky to pull off since you're also using it to propel the projectile, but how about suspending it in a magnetic field so that it 'floats?' Then it would never come in contact with the rails at all.

If you no longer have the round in contact with the rails then you have made the problem more difficult for yourself. The arcing not only will occur, but it MUST occur in order for a railgun to work properly. The electrons have to flow from one rail, into the round, and into the next rail to build up the magnetic field. By suspending the round in air, now instead of the power flowing as it used to, you waste a bunch on having an electric arc snap out from the rail to the round to the rail. Everything is the same, but you have wasted electricity and chances are the magnetic field driving the round would disrupt the field suspending the round, so now your precision and accuracy go out the window.

More along the lines of what you are thinking of is a Gauss Cannon. GCs work by having a big honkin coil of wire that you supercharge and then shove something magnetic into and away it goes. The problem is that a railgun is several orders of magnitude more efficient at converting electricity into movement then a gauss cannon is. This is because with a gause cannon, the magnetic field is very large, it exists through the entire tube (and because of the way field lines work) it extends to covering the tube itself like a sort of shield. In a railgun, just about all of the magnetic field is a couple inches to a foot away from the front of the round, and thats it. So even though the same power might be used between the two, the field in the rail gun will be massively more intense because of its smaller area.

General Rarity:

Right now battleships are indeed not terribly likely to be used. Once the railguns are up and running, that changes a bit. A nuclear powered battleship sporting the largest and most numerous array of railguns on the planet makes for a stupendously powerful weapons platform. Imagine being under attack from 16 inch rounds impacting with the kinetic energy equivalent of a nuke each, from a ship 200 miles away, that is firing these rounds at a rate of like 4-6 per minute per gun, with 9 guns on board. Suddenly ballistic missile boats are no longer the most powerful ships in the fleet.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Mazon Del

[Sky_walker]

Okay? I was just comparing the chances, because there are no reasons to use battleships in today's world.

Battleships in today's world are the cheapest way to deliver explosions at range.

[General Rarity]

Battleships in today's world are the cheapest way to deliver explosions at range.

Or, y'know, we could build a ship with those heavy-cheap-explosion-power-guns without the useless and heavy armor?

Or you're joking.

Edited September 6, 2014 by General Rarity

[magnemoe]

So could nuclear submarines, and they have nuclear missiles on them too.

The chance of a submarine being sunk is lower than a battleship (I assume)

Higher, also plenty of submarines goes down during peace time while no capital ships.

However reactors is pretty much needed on long range subs, for surface ships its not so useful. You would anyway need capacitor banks for this.

Newer US warships are designed with an electrical drive train like diesel locomotives, part of the reason is that they can deliver power to future weapon systems.

[vger]

More along the lines of what you are thinking of is a Gauss Cannon. GCs work by having a big honkin coil of wire that you supercharge and then shove something magnetic into and away it goes. The problem is that a railgun is several orders of magnitude more efficient at converting electricity into movement then a gauss cannon is. This is because with a gause cannon, the magnetic field is very large, it exists through the entire tube (and because of the way field lines work) it extends to covering the tube itself like a sort of shield. In a railgun, just about all of the magnetic field is a couple inches to a foot away from the front of the round, and thats it. So even though the same power might be used between the two, the field in the rail gun will be massively more intense because of its smaller area.

Yeah, I was thinking more about its use against ICBM's rather than for offense on something mobile. It's hard to imagine wanting to use a ship (constantly bobbing up and down) to disable suborbital targets with a purely ballistic projectile in the first place. Much easier to do that from land where a ton of power is easily accessible. In the event of a full-scale nuclear strike, if any kind of mag-gun is going to be used as an iron dome, nobody is going to care about the electrical cost. And with a 'frictionless barrel,' you get a faster rate of fire by not having to clean anything between shots.

Edited September 6, 2014 by vger

[Aghanim]

Is it possible that instead of using copper rails in railgun, we use plasma rails from UV laser that ionizes air?

[Tommygun]

Thick metal rails can conduct a massive amount of current, I would be surprised if you could get ionized air to carry that much current and have a useable current path with respect to the projectile (ie negative to positive).

Edited September 7, 2014 by Tommygun

[Idobox]

Is it possible that instead of using copper rails in railgun, we use plasma rails from UV laser that ionizes air?

Not likely.

You want current to go along the rails and trough the projectile. Ionized air is not nearly as conductive as metals, and you would have arcing between the two rails as soon as the projectile is more than a foot or two away.

I remember reading a proposal for using molten metal projectiles for rails guns, with the idea that molten metal wouldn't be nearly as abrasive as a conventional round. The proposal came from some obscure unprofessional source, so I have no idea how realistic it was.

[meve12]

Or, y'know, we could build a ship with those heavy-cheap-explosion-power-guns without the useless and heavy armor?

Or you're joking.

Hardly useless. Armor is heavy because it's meant to tank explosive shells, and thus allow the battleship to remain combat effective for more than one volley.

On top of that, KKV rounds seem to indicate using lighter Whipple shields rather than solid armor.

Edited September 7, 2014 by meve12

[Seret]

Battleships don't exist any more, they were made obsolete by air power at sea. The primary combat ship is now the carrier. Most other surface vessels function as escorts, or fulfill specialist role such as anti-air or ASW.

As for rail guns, they're one of those technologies that they've been promising us since the 80s. If you've got a big enough power plant they're potentially quite good, but I suspect chemical projectiles and missiles will remain a more reliable and compact solution for a fair while, especially for the frigates and destroyers that make up most surface fleets.

[magnemoe]

Battleships don't exist any more, they were made obsolete by air power at sea. The primary combat ship is now the carrier. Most other surface vessels function as escorts, or fulfill specialist role such as anti-air or ASW.

As for rail guns, they're one of those technologies that they've been promising us since the 80s. If you've got a big enough power plant they're potentially quite good, but I suspect chemical projectiles and missiles will remain a more reliable and compact solution for a fair while, especially for the frigates and destroyers that make up most surface fleets.

Carriers is in a class for itself, however they are pretty rare, most navies don't have them.

Main reason heavy armor went away on warships is the shaped charge like the ones used in anti tank rockets, scaled up they would have no problem penetrating the armor of a battleship.

Yes its possible to increase the armor too defeat shaped charges, the M1 tank is probably the best here, however anti ship missiles is far larger and the ship is also far larger than a tank so the armor would loose out here. Now if your armor is pierced by an heavy warhead you are worse off with armor than without as the explosion would be trapped inside the armor.

Main defense for ships is anti missile guns and missiles who shoot down the incoming missiles before they hit.

As I understand this railgun main purpose is to shoot down missiles, another program work on a heavier gun who can attack ground targets and other ships, downside with this is that you has to make the bullets smart to make it effective at long range.

[vger]

Main defense for ships is anti missile guns and missiles who shoot down the incoming missiles before they hit.

As I understand this railgun main purpose is to shoot down missiles, another program work on a heavier gun who can attack ground targets and other ships, downside with this is that you has to make the bullets smart to make it effective at long range.

If railguns were efficient enough, I could possibly see the Battleship making a comeback. The amount of weight required to make such a system work would probably make it impossible to put on an aircraft. The iron dome would do away with the need for armor, and the effective attack range of such a ship would be terrifying.

[General Rarity]

If railguns were efficient enough, I could possibly see the Battleship making a comeback. The amount of weight required to make such a system work would probably make it impossible to put on an aircraft. The iron dome would do away with the need for armor, and the effective attack range of such a ship would be terrifying.

A battleship is a large heavily armored fighting ship that usually slow, according to my dictionary. Battleships will never make a comeback, unless you magically made them fast, small, and effective, but it wouldn't be a battleship anymore.

The times have changed, and battles are usually fought with fast aircraft, missiles, and sometimes the 5inch gun of a destroyer. A battleship would be a large, slow target that says 'shoot me' to missiles and aircraft... look at how the Yamato was sunk. A hoard of aircraft obliterated her when she had enough AA defenses and heavy armor. Now imagine the same with missiles. Battleships are too expensive to build and maintain and are easily destroyed in today's world. Yes, there's CIWS, but a CIWS can only do so much.

Rail guns will only be effective on ships that are designed for them or can be converted to use them. Battleships aren't one of them.