Although most people (myself included) think it is some sort of tech demonstrator, a few pros on the Chinese side echoed what you said here. They believe the system has way passed prototype stage, and the barrel durability is a non-issue.
PRC/PLAN Laser and Rail Gun Development Thread
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Although most people (myself included) think it is some sort of tech demonstrator, a few pros on the Chinese side echoed what you said here. They believe the system has way passed prototype stage, and the barrel durability is a non-issue.
Jura The idiot
General
LOL seeing targeting in:
recalled one of my questions: Feb 2, 2017
by the way the time of flight for 32 MJ thing is up to 4 (four) minutes according to this old link:
In which case, I'd also add that effective damage involves more than kinetic energy at impact, but of course I'm not claiming a 32 MJ railgun is necessarily a more effective weapon than a Mk 7. That said, do we know how much damage a Mk 7 round could do to today's combat ships? Those guns were originally designed to penetrate the thick armored hulls of other battleships. They may be overkill against today's lighter and less armored cruisers, destroyers, and frigates.
We still don't know what the muzzle energy of this Chinese railgun is, and how much effective range you can get out of it from a non-ballistic trajectory. I agree that for a high ballistic trajectory you would need guidance, but not all firing solutions require a high ballistic trajectory. Anyways, I could still be wrong about how effectively you can stabilize the gun at sea.LOL seeing targeting in:
recalled one of my questions: Feb 2, 2017
by the way the time of flight for 32 MJ thing is up to 4 (four) minutes according to this old link:
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Only the CIWS role doesn't need guidance, if one means to deal with targets 5 or so km away. Perhaps up 10 km, at most, against sluggish targets.
Non ballistic trajectories against anything other than incoming missiles are not really applicable. How often will it happen that the railgun will get to shoot at a ship 10-20 km away? Almost never. Even for 20-30 km there will be some sort of shallow ballistic trajectory. (granted, ships are so slow that guidance is not needed against ships at 30 km) And for shore bombardment 100 or 200 km away - guidance will definitely be needed. One can't expect to have identical shot parameters, there will be miniscule deviations from one round fired to the next. Coupled with the wind change, a flight over 100-200 km away will surely result in over a dozen meters of average miss distance. Perhaps dozens. Add to that that the railgun round may hold only two thirds or so of explosive and shrapnel compared to, say 130mm, and its killing radius would be less. Or do they mean to use X times more rounds and hope for a hit over a certain period of time?
Non ballistic trajectories against anything other than incoming missiles are not really applicable. How often will it happen that the railgun will get to shoot at a ship 10-20 km away? Almost never. Even for 20-30 km there will be some sort of shallow ballistic trajectory. (granted, ships are so slow that guidance is not needed against ships at 30 km) And for shore bombardment 100 or 200 km away - guidance will definitely be needed. One can't expect to have identical shot parameters, there will be miniscule deviations from one round fired to the next. Coupled with the wind change, a flight over 100-200 km away will surely result in over a dozen meters of average miss distance. Perhaps dozens. Add to that that the railgun round may hold only two thirds or so of explosive and shrapnel compared to, say 130mm, and its killing radius would be less. Or do they mean to use X times more rounds and hope for a hit over a certain period of time?
How much range you can get out of a non-ballistic or slightly ballistic trajectory depends on the muzzle energy of the gun and the specific physical properties of the projectile. I don't have an answer for how high or low that range can be though.
I was actually thinking exactly this as a possibility, though it may not shake out in terms of effectiveness or cost.
Jura The idiot
General
noticed your
what do you mean? how would you describe shooting a rail gun in "non-ballistic" way to me please (just wondering what I missed)
also here:
what do you mean? how would you describe shooting a rail gun in "non-ballistic" way to me please (just wondering what I missed)
Firing with a minimal arc (flat) trajectory.
Not sure where you get your 10km from WWII vintage ships were happily peppering each other in the North Atlantic at greater ranges using optical range finders and analog computers (Bismarck sunk Hood at 14,000m !) so expect a rail gun with greater muzzle velocity hence shorter time to target plus more modern gun laying kit to be accurate to the effective horizon (~36km) beyond that things get more interesting as OTH targeting requires external inputs, but given the projectiles are cheap and plentiful c.f. missiles they could go back to bracketing the target till it's hit!
Not sure even a rail gun is the ideal weapon for 200km engagements against moving surface targets although using a 'gun' to sling shot some kind of missile/glider (perhaps a mini WU-14) has possibilities but looking at a pretty large calibre weapon!
Has this picture been posted before? Hopefully, we will hear something about the test in the coming days.
Jura The idiot
General
just order-of-magnitude estimate LOL now:
15 (fifteen) seconds if the shell flew straight (it wouldn't) your 30 km doing 2 km/s on average (it might: M7 = 2382 m/s);
20 knots is about 10 m/s
so good luck