So I never really understood what railguns are. I recently read this news byte and thought it was pretty interesting. I copied the essential elements out of the article I found off the Army’s newsfeed, which is taken from major newspapers around the nation. I meant to get the source, but forgot before closing out.
The Navy’s railgun is basically a long tube lined with two copper alloy rails. When charged by an enormous pulse of electricity, these rails exert a tremendous force that sends an inert projectile out at incredible speed.
And the more juice generated, the more muzzle velocity the weapon has and the farther and faster the projectile can go.
Thursday’s test produced a record 10.86 megajoules, which sent the 7-pound aluminum slug at Mach 7 (more than 5,000 mph) for 80 meters, a roughly 20-millisecond ride.
The Navy’s ultimate goal is a ship-mounted weapon capable of firing missiles 200 nautical miles in a six-minute arc into outer space and back to land, guided by GPS.
This dwarfs the range of the Navy’s current workhorse gun, the 5-inch MK 45, which shoots about 13 nautical miles.
The railgun uses electricity to propel its missiles, so they carry no fuel. The damage is caused purely by the kinetic energy of the missiles’ descent, which is projected to reach Mach 5, so they carry no warheads.
Pretty interesting eh?
2LT Adam Ochylski
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