trippenbach
tanith6227
rustedangel
Pale HorseRusty told us about this on Sunday, but it’s time to share with the whole Objective 514 community: the U.S. Navy recently tested a new toy:
“The railgun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun [...] will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact.”
Check out LiveScience’s full article here. Choice quote:
“I never ever want to see a Sailor or Marine in a fair fight.“ - Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations.
Maybe someone can clue me in here. The test firing shows a colossal fireball when the weapon is discharged - that certainly looks like a chemical reaction, not an electromagnetic one. Is the fireball simply a result of the tremendous heat generated by the weapon?
Hmm… when I last mentioned this, I hadn’t see the video yet. Tanith’s is a good question. The footage is a bit hard to interpret, but I assumed that was the target going up in flames, which doesn’t make much sense either. I suppose there could have been a lubricant in the barrel that ignited as a result of friction, or (if it was the target) they could have gussied things up with some gasoline on the assumtion that Americans at large wouldn’t be impressed with a kinetic explosion instead of a chemical one.
The shell, if you can call it that, looks impressive, but I share Tanith’s concern; did those look like navy weapons testers? If this is all above board, I look forward to a Discovery documentary about the 10 hicks from Oregon who turned their backyard into the next manhattan project.
Watching the video again, I see where Rusty is coming from - that could be the shell passing through the target. Good eye. In that case, we don’t actually see the railgun firing at all, which is kinda lame.
Also, I don’t know what a Navy Weapons Tester looks like, but if this was just a bunch of guys who built a cannon behind their barn you’d think we’d have heard about it.
Um, I sort of imagined them looking a lot like the scientists from Half Life, you know, with lab coats. On the other hand, this is the kind of technology that a third party developer could be working on…
A lab coat isn’t terribly practical when you’re out in the January cold test-firing your new super gun - but I realize what you’re getting at.
I didn’t think that the Navy (or Army or Air Force) actually did much in-house R&D. I thought it was all carried out by the private sector and then pitched to the military when they have something to show.
[...] agree with the comments on I Need Gun. That vid below looks totally dodgy and almost certainly not output by the US Navy. [...]