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.