PLAN ships should have these guns

siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Finn McCool said:
Yeah but a railgun projectile is so much cheaper. It's nice to have the ability to shoot cheap projectiles pretty damn far. Sure, it's not as far as a guided missile, but its still far over the horizon, and it costs a lot less and has much less risk of getting intercepted because it's moving so much faster.
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What about katyusha style MRLs? I think they could fire cheap (not as cheap as metal chunks though but close) projectiles over much farther distances.

Has anyone toyed the idea of using railguns to fire ramjet cruise missiles? This will eliminate the need for a secondary engines since the missile could be accelerated to supersonic speeds upon leaving the barrel.
 
N

no_name

Colonel
siegecrossbow said:
Has anyone toyed the idea of using railguns to fire ramjet cruise missiles? This will eliminate the need for a secondary engines since the missile could be accelerated to supersonic speeds upon leaving the barrel.
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You will need dedicated systems because the missile is likely to be alot larger. The system will take up alot of space etc so I think unless the technology is revolutionised it is unlikely to happen.
 
Spartan95

Spartan95

Junior Member
no_name said:
It seems rail guns have a long way to go.
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Well, its an emerging weapon systems with a lot of issues that still need to be solved before it can be used properly.

no_name said:
What about a conventional-rail hybrid, one that does not demand destruction of target from kinetic energy alone but instead fires modified explosive shells at the current required speed using rail gun technology? What it can do is to eliminate the need to carry propellant for the shells. Can it still fire at competitive rate to the current comparable platform (1 shell per 3~4 sec)?
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Hybrid is hazardous to the firing platform.

This is essentially using large EM energy to fire a conventional high explosive projectile. The EM energy will create a lot of heat/sparks in the projectile being fired. This may cause the explosives in the projectile to explode the moment the gun is charged up, thus damaging the firing platform.

And this is the reason why rail guns are designed to fire projectile with no explosives in them.

As for the firing of anything else with electronic components from an EM rail gun, expect the electronics (such as GPS tracker, guidance warhead, etc) to be fried in the firing process.
 
rhino123

rhino123

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The thing with railgun is that it is massive at the present level... and the amount of energy consumed to power one is incredible too. Unless the size of a rail gun can come down drastically and powering one could be decreased drastically, I am not seeing much of a use of such a weapon.

In modern warfare, enemy's are very mobile and almost all nations that could be classified as enemy, have very advance surveillance system, satellite tracing and tracking system, even spy plane and ships. They can easily detect monstrous structure like the railguns and called in cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and whatnot to demolish such over price sci-fi piece of junk.

We do not just look at a piece of equipment as how alien it looked, how seemingly high tech it is. But we must looked at today's or near future's warfare and technology advancement in different field to determine if this piece of equipment are useful or not at today's advancement. And by looking at its flaws that then could we expect to improve this piece of equipment, but not by thinking that... well, other people are experimenting it, then it must be cool.
 
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Gallaghan36

Banned Idiot
What would be a railgun of the US type cited here capable of being effective against? What targets are effective for this system? Destroying enemy air bases' runways, hangars, shore bombardment, anti-ship, fire support in urban warfare? Also, what would be the damage radius of these ERMG shell once it impacted? Would it heavily destroy/damage anything within, for example, 50-100 metres. Since it is a high speed projectile i would assume it has an impact power of a 2-4 metre meteorite, is it not so? If it has a decent radius of destructive capabilty(100 metres radius or more, than even if the accuracy of the shells is 50-100m CEP, it would be good enough right?)
 
siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
rhino123 said:
The thing with railgun is that it is massive at the present level... and the amount of energy consumed to power one is incredible too. Unless the size of a rail gun can come down drastically and powering one could be decreased drastically, I am not seeing much of a use of such a weapon.

In modern warfare, enemy's are very mobile and almost all nations that could be classified as enemy, have very advance surveillance system, satellite tracing and tracking system, even spy plane and ships. They can easily detect monstrous structure like the railguns and called in cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and whatnot to demolish such over price sci-fi piece of junk.

We do not just look at a piece of equipment as how alien it looked, how seemingly high tech it is. But we must looked at today's or near future's warfare and technology advancement in different field to determine if this piece of equipment are useful or not at today's advancement. And by looking at its flaws that then could we expect to improve this piece of equipment, but not by thinking that... well, other people are experimenting it, then it must be cool.
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Here is where we disagree. Although I don't think that the PLA should not too hastily induct "sci-fi" weapons they should definitely research them. Take the firearms, for example. When they first came out in the early 14th century they were inaccurate and very inconvenient to fire. In just two centuries, however, they replaced crossbows as the most commonly used infantry projectile weapon in Europe and we know how things went from there. While lasers and railguns may seem awkward and cumbersome to use now we never know just how lethal and effective they will become when the necessary technological hurdles are overcome (which may happen very quickly given the rate of technological development these days).
 
rhino123

rhino123

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VIP Professional
Gallaghan36 said:
What would be a railgun of the US type cited here capable of being effective against? What targets are effective for this system? Destroying enemy air bases' runways, hangars, shore bombardment, anti-ship, fire support in urban warfare? Also, what would be the damage radius of these ERMG shell once it impacted? Would it heavily destroy/damage anything within, for example, 50-100 metres. Since it is a high speed projectile i would assume it has an impact power of a 2-4 metre meteorite, is it not so? If it has a decent radius of destructive capabilty(100 metres radius or more, than even if the accuracy of the shells is 50-100m CEP, it would be good enough right?)
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First of all... to answer all your questions, the main thing is, what are the railgun designed to do? WHat are the targets that they are designed against or for? was the railgun designed to replace certain weapons or as a new weapons entirely? Railgun - was it intented as a direct weapon or an indirect weapon?

I doubt anyone could answer these questions unless they are in the testing team themselves.

And your assumption of the projectile being a high speed element would have an impact power of a 2-4 metre meteorite is WRONG. I am not saying that railgun do not have such power (because frankly, no one here knows). But high speed element DO NOT necessary have an impact power of even 1 meteorite, that would vastly depend on how high your speed is, the size of the particle, the energy developed, the distance it was to travel, etc...

So like many had been telling you... DON'T PLUCK FIGURES OUT OF THIN AIR!:nono:
 
X

xywdx

Junior Member
Gallaghan36 said:
What would be a railgun of the US type cited here capable of being effective against? What targets are effective for this system? Destroying enemy air bases' runways, hangars, shore bombardment, anti-ship, fire support in urban warfare? Also, what would be the damage radius of these ERMG shell once it impacted? Would it heavily destroy/damage anything within, for example, 50-100 metres. Since it is a high speed projectile i would assume it has an impact power of a 2-4 metre meteorite, is it not so? If it has a decent radius of destructive capabilty(100 metres radius or more, than even if the accuracy of the shells is 50-100m CEP, it would be good enough right?)
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The purpose of the rail gun would be to bully opponents who pose no threat 200 miles in the water, and in a situation where you are not worried about civillian damage. I think Somalia would be an ideal target, send a couple of rail gun armed ships in and they should be able to rain destruction on the coastal cities, with no chance of retaliation.
I expect you will be able to destroy enemy runways, hangars safely if you can take out all enemy aircrafts at the said airbase beforehand. In such a case the railgun ship should be escorted by 1 or 2 CVBG who can neutralize the enemy air force.
 
Z

ZTZ99

Banned Idiot
rhino123 said:
So like many had been telling you... DON'T PLUCK FIGURES OUT OF THIN AIR!:nono:
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I would seriously like to echo that sentiment. Gallaghan you have absolutely no basis for the numbers you are posting, so stop posting them. Otherwise I could start talking about the per cubic km detonation yield of a photon torpedo spread set to wide pattern dispersal and have as much basis in fact as you do.
 
Spartan95

Spartan95

Junior Member
Gallaghan36 said:
What would be a railgun of the US type cited here capable of being effective against? What targets are effective for this system? Destroying enemy air bases' runways, hangars, shore bombardment, anti-ship, fire support in urban warfare? Also, what would be the damage radius of these ERMG shell once it impacted? Would it heavily destroy/damage anything within, for example, 50-100 metres. Since it is a high speed projectile i would assume it has an impact power of a 2-4 metre meteorite, is it not so? If it has a decent radius of destructive capabilty(100 metres radius or more, than even if the accuracy of the shells is 50-100m CEP, it would be good enough right?)
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Dude, can you snap out of Never Never Land and come back to reality?

1. There is no full capability rail gun until 2016 at the earliest. What was shown is a demonstration gun (that is also likely to be a small scale prototype).

2. A full capability rail gun is estimated to have a range of 200 km. Which means it needs to be on a ship to be able to bombard enemy targets on land. How is this possible when there isn't even a full capability gun on land? Much less fitting it to a ship with all the associated issues of EM interference?

3. Even with a rail gun ship with a range of 200km, the ship is within range of enemy shore based SSMs. And this does not take into account enemy warships, submarines and aircraft.

4. Why is there a need to risk rail gun ships like that when Tomahawk missiles can do the job without risking own ships at all?
 
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