New weapon on the block

That is awesome. It will have huge impact against domestic enemies as well. Your bunkers just became completely obsolete. These things will be in the hands of local LEOs and even criminals soon after deployment in the fleet.
 
While I agree this can be a game changer in the future of warfare, I am not sure about this comment:

These things will be in the hands of local LEOs and even criminals soon after deployment in the fleet.
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In the video, it said that each projectile cost $25,000. While this is a decent sum of money, it is not impossible for local LEOs to acquire them. But what they do not mention is the cost of the "gun." I could not even hazard a guess at how many tens (maybe even hundreds ) of millions of dollars each gun costs, and that is going to be out of the range of local LEOs and criminials. Sure, the price of technology comes down over time, but $200,000,000 (or whatever the price is) does not become $50,000 and in the realm of what local LEOs and criminal groups could afford.

I guess cartels have that kind of money, but if this is cutting edge technology for the US Navy, is there any place they could even procure one? Atomic weapons were invented here in the 1940's and there are still countries that can not make it work today (even if they were able to procure the right materials).
 
Every innovation is typically a game changer in some way.

If you look on YouTube you can find a fair number of do it yourself railguns.

If you look up Raytheon's energy weapons, they have several 50 KW auto-tracking lasers that can drop a missile at range, and make a mess of a person or slow vehicle.
 
2123 noted:
I see this as a strictly for military application only.

It'll never see it's way to LE.
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"Never say never".
Energy densities are growing rapidly, as is miniaturization and cost reduction. The ballistic drop for a 1/2 mile shot with a LEO variant is minuscule compared to a .308.
Gonna be interesting.
 
I spent almost 30 yrs. in LE.

I never saw or heard of any officer of any kind taking a 1/2 mile shot regardless of the scenario, situation or issue being dealt with at the time.

Police sharp shooters aren't military snipers.
 
Rail guns aren't anything new. The idea has been around for a long time. It's no different than powered armor exoskeletons or really anything else you might see on your favorite Halo video game.

The imperative question here is: why aren't these already in mass production/use??

The simple answer is 2 fold:
1) the 'old tech' way of doing things is fail proof. A centerfire cartridge is well proven to work pretty much all the time. This is the same reason the navy had not used electromagnetic launch sleds instead of the old schools steam powered jet slingshots; the steam powered sleds are extremely reliable. Although the 'rail gun' launch sled takes up less space and is much more efficient.

2) is the lack of technology for portable high power devices, powered exoskeletons for armor or heavy lifting have been around for some time, but they are impractical because of the huge power cords attached to them; why does the navy (instead of army or marines or any other armed force) have rail guns? They have nuclear reactors to power them!!! The physics are out there about rail guns, have been for a long time (Lorenz force, basically counter polar magnetic propulsion) but to get one capable of doing what the navy rail gun does, requires STUPID amounts of electricity.

Although the advantages are clear in velocity and penetration, keep in mind it also means not having to keep volatile gun powder on board (and one good shot would essentially use the enemies munitions against them) but if the power goes out-you'd be better off with a spear.
 
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^ what he said and the fact that, for military purposes you aren't saving yourself any weight, a grunt would not only have to carry projectiles but spare batteries as well.
 
More likely capacitors than batteries (can't get the power out quickly enough) and would probably be dangerous to be around without a weapon attached.
 
This rail gun technology has been discussed for at least a few decades and is hardly 'secret.'

Rail guns in all sizes replace standard propulsion fuel costs and storage and weight, and use electricity to fire bullets faster than you can believe.

Rail gun in man-portable sizes (rifles/handguns) have also been toyed with.

Imagine having, for instance, a rifle barrel filled with 10 caseless bullets, stacked. A charge fires them all at the exact same time and at super velocity. The shooter would score 10 hits/misses on the target nanoseconds apart.

It's a cool concept, and one that may be in common use in my lifetime.

As for old versus new technology...

Well we no longer rely on carrier pigeons, star navigation, horse-drawn buggies, or swords in combat... times change. And while our current tools have uses, new tools obviously can change the battlefield too.

This rail gun, as demonstrated, could effectively put up huge defense networks for incoming missiles and aircraft, and effectively neutralize an airborne assault...

Of course, the flip side is that 1) the other side will have it and 2) the other side also has suicide bombers who will just sneak in to the target location and detonate themselves...

Low tech often defeats high tech as we've come to learn trillions of dollars into the Global War on Terror
 
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Just watched the video of the hand held rail gun. I'm impressed that they managed to build a working prototype. However, it's obvious that the velocity of the projectiles is pretty low; they couldn't even fully pass through a laptop screen. Also, they shot soda cans with a sheet backstop, and as far as I can tell, none of the rounds penetrated the sheet. Pretty ingenious of them though.

I remember we toyed around with one in physics class when I was in college (25 years ago), and the thing I remember was how much power it took to make the thing work.

As to rail guns being built and used by BGs or aggressor nations, I think we probably can rest easy for now. Though the concept is relatively simple, the technical know-how is not, so putting together anything seriously dangerous to the U.S. military is probably not within any other nation's capabilities for now.

The concept itself has been around since at least the '60s in science fiction (in many of the novels I read as a kid they were often referred to as 'gauss guns/rifles,' or 'particle accelerators'). And it's pretty likely the U.S. has been trying to develop a militarily capable one since that time. So, if it's taken us this long to finally produce one that we want to test at sea, it's probable that no one is going to play catch up and have one to threaten us with in the near future.

And I don't think we'll see anything in the hands of the police any time soon either. The sheer mass of the equipment excluding the gun would make it, well, unwieldy at best. This is why they're not talking about airborne/troop versions of this weapon at this time. Currently, to produce enough electricity to fire a battle field railgun, the only real alternative is something like a nuclear reactor probably. Which is most likely the reason the Navy likes this system.

Anyway, it was a pretty cool video.
 
The real limit with rail guns & mass drivers is electrical efficiency. We're at a point parallel to steam-powered heavier than air flight right now. Steam engines just didn't have the weight to power ratio needed for efficient air propulsion. That had to wait for the higher efficiency by the breakthrough of the internal combustion engine.

Right now you need battleship sized generating & storage to keep & releases the energy & until something more efficient than generator/battery/capacitor comes along it is going to stay a massive crew-served system.
 
I expect man portable energy weapons before man portable rail guns. The one in the video above barely goes thru the lap top screen and probably only has the ability to fire a few dozen rounds.

There are some small nuclear generators that have been developed. Seeing one on a tank of some sort in the not too distant future would not surprise me. Once that happens it won't take long at all for local LEO to have them. SWAT teams will come up for soe reason to get them. Probably involving terrorists.

From the limited electrical physics I have, and it is limited as I took only one class and that was long enough most of it has faded from memory, storing energy in capacitors for more than a minute without an attached power supply doesn't work all that well. I might have that all wrong though.
 
Interesting. However, I think that the rail gun will be relegated to large artillery uses over the next 20-30 years. A hand-held rail gun with power and capacity comparable to my Tanfoglio Stock 10mm or even an Aug will need to wait on the pipe-dream of a much smaller and more powerful power source than anything available today. And, even then, you still need to manage the recoil.

Oh, and since rail guns aren't firearms, the 2nd Amendment won't keep your elected officials from prohibiting your grandchildren from ever being able to own one.....unless some really gun friendly folks take the white house, senate and house in short order.
 
This is the same reason the navy had not used electromagnetic launch sleds instead of the old schools steam powered jet slingshots; the steam powered sleds are extremely reliable. Although the 'rail gun' launch sled takes up less space and is much more efficient.
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It has been several years ago now but the last design I saw for the next generation aircraft carrier did replace the steam cats with the mag rail cat.

Just an aside but having a nuclear reactor will not solve any and all power requirements for any kind of application. A ship's reactor is basically a fancy steam boiler that has a 25 year fuel supply (yes it is a bit more complicated but this not a site about how reactors operate). You still need the steam powered turbine generators that can produce the level of power needed, banks of large efficient capacitors, efficient switching capability to charge the capacitors quickly then quickly and efficiently discharge a large but precisely controlled amount of power to the intended load. Yes, having reactors, and very large platforms to house and transport, is one of the main reasons this kind of thing can work for the Navy but there are other hurdles that have to be managed also.
 
Low tech often defeats high tech as we've come to learn trillions of dollars into the Global War on Terror
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Some of us learned this in Viet Nam. The high tech urine sensors didn't work out too well in the field.

you can find it in WWII, "window" (aluminum chaff) defeated the high tech radar.

The biggest problem with high tech (besides when it doesn't work as advertised) is when it does, creating a false sense of security.

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes, the guy watching the sensor screen gets his throat cut by a loincloth clad fanatic with a rusty tin can, who just happened to find a low tech opening in the high tech defenses.
 
I see this as a strictly for military application only.

It'll never see it's way to LE.
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Almost everything cool was tactical gone practical. See that cell phone on the table? Using WiFi are ya? Got a computer? Somebody said the same thing about all those technologies..... Reduce the size/footprint, make it portable such as on a rifle platform and it could be used for deer hunting (if we don't get lasers first).
 
Pretty cool piece of tech. If it's actually implemented it could be a game changer militarily. Imagine a few mounted on the new Ford class carriers. That would give them the ability to control a one hundred mile radius of the air and sea without launching a single aircraft. An aircraft carrying battleship, if you will. That would be pretty awesome.

I wouldn't count on one showing up at the local PD anytime soon, unless someone invents a real arc reactor to power it.:D
 
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