General Atomics electromagnetic rail cannon

[Old Man]

With a little test footage: http://defensetech.org/2010/05/05/ki...c-rail-cannon/

[SSgt Baloo]

Cool!

[McCoy]

Cool!

What he said.

[tkdguy]

Now all we need is the Orion Battleship to put it in.

Thanks for posting this. I had been wondering about the progress of the railgun being pursued by the Navy but didn't find anything.

[Markdoc]

If nothing else, General Atomics is an awesome company name!

As for the rail gun .... meh. We had this exact same discussion - with the exact same claims as made by the guy in the video - 7 years ago in this thread. The same - so far unsolved - engineering problems exist too.

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Now all we need is the Orion Battleship to put it in.

Thanks for posting this. I had been wondering about the progress of the railgun being pursued by the Navy but didn't find anything.

That's because the program was cancelled years ago. The DDX program - including the ships that were suggested as platforms for railguns - was cut from 70+ ships to 3 destroyers, renamed DDG-1000, and much of the fancy technology originally planned for them has been cut. With no ships capable of mounting railguns, the navy ended the weapons program. This model - like the one we discussed back in 2003 - is a proof of concept - a sort of technology demonstrator, intended to demonstrate that it might one day be possible to build railguns. PoC programs tend to run mostly under the radar, since they are relatively small, budget-wise.

I think that's smart - the DDX program looks like a gigantic boondoggle, spending hundreds of billions to deploy technology that hasn't been invented yet, mostly to benefit companies in the home turf of the congressmen who promoted it. In today's economic climate, projects like that have little chance of survival.

cheers, Mark

[Old Man]

So I figure that thing must do at least 3d6K. Str min looks pretty high, it's probably a tripod mounted weapon...

[Markdoc]

Not if you have - say - 50 STR Even if the rails burn out after a couple of shots, it'd still make a dandy club!

cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

With a sling, you could fire it from the hip!


And now that I've watched the video, two thoughts.
i) "Hundreds of thousands of pounds of thrust." Hee. You American sure are crazy with your Imperial measuring system!
ii) "Could be fielded this decade." It's good to be a futurist in years that end in zero!

[Kraven Kor]

What about the college kid who built a man-portable rail gun a few years back? It had some impressive stats as far as energy imparted to target - several megajoules - and was about the size of your average tripod-mounted MG, not including the batteries.

[Zeropoint]

What about the college kid who built a man-portable rail gun a few years back? It had some impressive stats as far as energy imparted to target - several megajoules - and was about the size of your average tripod-mounted MG, not including the batteries.

Shh! We don't talk about things that didn't come through the established corporate channels!

Also, link? That sounds pretty cool.

[BlueCloud2k2]

What about the college kid who built a man-portable rail gun a few years back? It had some impressive stats as far as energy imparted to target - several megajoules - and was about the size of your average tripod-mounted MG, not including the batteries.

I thought that was just a hoax? I could be wrong though. *shrug*

[tkdguy]

I remember this website.

[tkdguy]

That's because the program was cancelled years ago. The DDX program - including the ships that were suggested as platforms for railguns - was cut from 70+ ships to 3 destroyers, renamed DDG-1000, and much of the fancy technology originally planned for them has been cut. With no ships capable of mounting railguns, the navy ended the weapons program. This model - like the one we discussed back in 2003 - is a proof of concept - a sort of technology demonstrator, intended to demonstrate that it might one day be possible to build railguns. PoC programs tend to run mostly under the radar, since they are relatively small, budget-wise.

I think that's smart - the DDX program looks like a gigantic boondoggle, spending hundreds of billions to deploy technology that hasn't been invented yet, mostly to benefit companies in the home turf of the congressmen who promoted it. In today's economic climate, projects like that have little chance of survival.

cheers, Mark

Thanks. I remember reading about the DDX program being scrapped, but I didn't know the railgun project was scrapped too. Still, didn't BAE deliver one to the Navy back in 2008?

[NuSoardGraphite]

Really? Thats pretty darned cool. I just started working at General Atomics recently, I'll see if I can spot one for you guys! (I can't divulge any details though etc etc)