Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

BFG-9000; USN Edition

The Navy tests its brand-new railgun:




Congress is bitching
, to some extent, at the costs of the development program. What they're not considering is that a railgun would be the first non-incremental change in naval artillery in five hundred years. The muzzleloaders of the 16th Century lasted until the 19th Century, when the development of mass-production of steel led to the practicality of breechloaders. Breechloading permitted the use of rifling and the use of steel permitted the guns to withstand the higher pressures of both firing rifled projectiles and smokeless powder. For smaller guns came fixed and semi-fixed ammunition. The advances since then have been in gun mount automation and improved fire control. But the basics of shooting a naval rifle at a target today would be familiar to a naval officer from the Spanish-American War.

The railgun changes all that. Some of the issues, such as how one provides massive amounts of burst power to a device, are not unfamiliar. There have been sonars that required their own energy storage devices to power them. The idea of getting rid of powder magazines is a pretty attractive one; I don't doubt that is a major, and less-publicized, reason for the Navy's interest in railguns. Damage control isn't very sexy.

Developing electronic guidance package that can survive a gigantic acceleration rate isn't a new problem. Developing one that can also survive a humongous electromagnetic field as well as crushing acceleration is another story. So the concept that a railgun can shoot guided munitions over a few hundred miles is something of which I am rather skeptical. But without guidance, then it's just a modern version of the Paris Gun at those ranges.

9 comments:

Nangleator said...

Flames why? How?

Or is that just air being turned into plasma?

Frank Van Haste said...

Dear Miss Fit:

I confess to puzzlement over the Latin motto adorning the program seal: "Velocitas Eradico." Doesn't that mean, essentially, "Eliminate Speed?" I'd think that the projectile (looks like a spanner, eh?) would be hell for fast...the opposite thing.

Yours confusedly,

Frank

Eck! said...

Eradico is detroys. So it's Speed Destroys.

How much speed.. Mach 7 from the 10.6MJ, they navy wants 64MJ.

MJ is megajoules or about a million watts dissipated over one second.

Eck!

Comrade Misfit said...

Or "Speed Kills".

Frank Van Haste said...

Ah, so. All is made clear. Thank you, Miss Fit and Eck! for alleviating my Latinate inadequacy.

FVH

Comrade Misfit said...

I read the translation somewhere else.

Cujo359 said...

So the concept that a railgun can shoot guided munitions over a few hundred miles is something of which I am rather skeptical.

Good shielding and clever use of fiber optic connections might do the trick. Doing that in conjunction with surviving G forces near infinity might be a problem, though ...

Oh, and someone would have to make sure the batteries were fresh. ;)

Eck! said...

Heck it was an accomplishment to fire vacuum tubes and batteries out of a 5" navel gun in WWII but the VTfuse was exactly that and very successful.

Look up the MARK-53 fuze. It's quite a story for then and now.

Eck!

Cujo359 said...

True, Eck. Those old tubes had a lot more moment arm in their workings than integrated circuits do.