U.S. NAVY SUCCESSFULLY TEST FIRES NEW EXPERIMENTAL ELECTROMAGNETIC RAILGUN, COULD FIRE PROJECTILES UP TO 100 MILES

Say hello to the Navy's little friend.

Navy scientists set a world record Friday during a test of an electromagnetic railgun, a tractor-trailer sized weapon that sends a 20-pound projectile rocketing through the air at seven times the speed of sound.  WARNING:  Before you play the below video, turn down your speaker volume.

 

The futuristic gun was tested twice at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Dahlgren, Va., and the first shot generated 33 megajoules of force out of the barrel, a world record for muzzle energy, the scientists said.

One megajoule is a unit of energy roughly equal to the energy generated by a 1-ton vehicle moving at 100 MPH. The same rail gun generated about 10 megajoules during a test two years ago.

Roger Ellis, the railgun program manager, told The Washington Post that people "see these things in the video games, but this is real. This is what is very historical."

What is novel about the gun – aside from its astonishing power – is the way it works.

Instead of relying on explosive propellants like gunpowder to fire, the gun uses a giant surge of electricity to propel the slug out of the barrel at speeds that can approach Mach 8 and can strike targets more than 100 miles away.   

Charles Garnett, a project manager on the railgun experiment, told the Post that the gun gets its power the same way a pocket camera builds up energy to operate its flash, but on a much larger scale.

Also, the projectile does not carry a warhead and therefore does not explode on impact, which will allow Navy ships to carry far less explosive material on board and cut down on the possibility of accidental blow ups.

Instead, the slug obliterates whatever it hits by sheer force of impact, hence the Navy's Latin motto for the project, "velocitas eradico." Translation: Speed destroys.

The Navy also said that the railgun will allow warships to attack enemies from safe distances and could be used as a defense against enemy cruise missiles.

On Friday, the schoolbus-sized gun took about 5 minutes to power up before an explosion inside the barrel flung the slug about 5,500 feet through the wooded test range. 

A bright column of fire trailed the bullet as it left the gun, and it caused a small sonic boom during flight before tumbling into the woods.  

"It's exhilarating," Elizabeth D'Andrea, the railgun project's strategic director, told the Post.

Navy officials said the gun isn't going to be ready for battle any time soon.

Rear Admiral Nevin P. Carr Jr , Chief of Naval Research, told the Post he would like to see the railgun demonstrated at sea by 2018 and deployed on ships in the early 2020s.

By 2025, the Navy wants to be able to fire the gun at 64 megajoules, making it capable of sending a bullet 200 miles in six minutes, scientists said. 

COMMENTARY:   As a former U.S. Navy hand, my eyes swell-up with tears when I read the story of the Navy's new experimental Electromagnetic Railgun.  I had to find out more about this new gun that someday will be able to hit targets 100 miles away.  What a way to spend taxpayer dollars, don't you think?

I have covered the U.S. Navy's experimental weapons systems before, particularly my all-time favorite, the U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship, which many experts are calling one of the Navy's biggest boondoggles.  Littoral Combat Ships are very fast combat ships that will allow us to fight our enemies very close-to-shore, namely terrorist groups, pirates, dictators, etc, then be able to hightail it out of there really fucking fast.   The Navy has four Littoral Combat Ship designs it is testing:  Absolon, LCS-1, LCS-2 and F-125.   Our Navy can't seem to make up its mind.  Ahh, I am so proud.  Our U.S. Navy in action, spending like a drunken sailor, no pun intended.

Now we have the U.S. Navy's latest killing machine--the Electromagnetic Railgun (a.k.a. Terror Gun).  If this is going to be such a powerful weapon, and we can hit targets with pinpoint accuracy from distances of up to 100 miles, this begs the question:  Why do we need the Littoral Combat Ship?  The "Terror Gun" can do the job much cleaner, and hopefully much cheaper, but I qualify that last comment, since we really don't know the costs to develop the "Terror Gun".

While I was on the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center website, I thought I would poke around a bit, and see what other weapons of war our Navy is developing for the wars of tomorrow.  And, you can bet there will be more wars.  We have so many enemies, and more are appearing every day.

It turns out that the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center is working on a total of 15 weapons projects:

NSWC Dahlgren is on the forefront of leading edge technologies. While limited in offering the full scope of our capabilities, our website is updated regularly. Please visit us often. For more information on our programs and technologies, please contact: Corporate Communications.
Aegis Weapon System
	Aegis is a highly integrated total ship combat system with the Aegis Weapon System (AWS) as its core.

 

C2 TACAID - Network-Centric Tactical Decision Aid
	TACAID presents Tactical Action Officers (TAOs) with an advanced Tactical Decision Aid (TDA) to assist the TAOs in managing assets in a more coordinated, distributed manner through a network-centric warfare paradigm.

 

Collaborator Common Collaborative Environment (CCE)
	The Collaborator Common Collaborative Environment (CCE) is designed to meet a variety of applications, including shared situational awareness by providing a Web-based chat room equipped with a synchronized, multilayered, multiprivileged, multimedia whiteboard.

 

DDG 1000
	Developed under the DD(X) destroyer program, USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) is the lead ship of a class of next-generation multi-mission destroyers tailored for land attack and littoral dominance.

 

Distributed Engineering Plant (DEP)
	Enabled by today's newest networking technology, the DEP links the Navy's shore-based combat systems/C4/hardware test sites, which are located in geographically disparate facilities across the nation, into a virtual shore-based battle group that exactly replicates a battle group fighting at sea.

 

Directed Energy Warfare Office (DEWO)

Directed Energy (DE) offers the promise of unique and flexible options to address many of the challenges presented to our war fighters and to augment, not replace conventional capabilities. Recent developments by teams of scientists and engineers at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) in High Energy Laser (HEL), High Power Microwave (HPM), and Counter-Improvised Explosive Device (CIED) prototype systems have demonstrated military utility in the laboratory, in field exercises at DoD test ranges, and in operational deployments.

 

Electromagnetic Railgun
	Railguns provide a capability for sustained, offensive power projection, complementary to missiles and tactical aircraft.

 

Global Positioning System
	Originally intended just for navigation, GPS is now used for surveying, time synchronization, vehicle attitude determination, and numerous other purposes.

 

Gunslinger
	The Gunslinger Project is the spiral development of a multi-spectral, on-the-move hostile fire detection and counter fire system that provides mobile ground forces in operational environments with real-time and precise location of hostile direct fire as well as the ability to engage the source of the hostile fire in near-real time.

 

Human Systems Performance

The concept of the HSP Assessment Capability team is a synergistic approach to connect existing Navy infrastructure elements to create a distributed human performance assessment capability. The genesis of this effort will be the integration of human performance assessment capabilities across the warfare command domains, leading to the collection and validation of a defined group of human performance metrics and the certification of component- and system-level human performance.

 

Integrated Command Environment (ICE)
	The Integrated Command Environment (ICE) and Human Performance Laboratory (HPL) team and facilities, due to the location at NAVSEA Dahlgren and partnership with the Center for Surface Combatant Systems (CSCS), provide a valuable link between science and technology, research and development activities, and the acquisition and Fleet communities.

 

Integration Warfare Systems Laboratory
	The Intergrated Warfare Systems Laboratory (IWSL) is the principle Navy facility supporting computer program engineering for operational Aegis cruisers and destroyers.

 

Littoral Combat Ship
	The primary missions for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) include countering littoral small surface craft attacks, diesel submarine threats and asymmetrical mine threats. In the execution of these multiple missions, the LCS is designed to deploy with modular Mine Warfare (MIW), Surface Warfare (SUW), or Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Mission Packages (MP).

 

Systems Safety Engineering
	The Systems Safety Engineering Division (Code G70) of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, is the Navy’s premier organization focused on performing systems safety engineering for all topside naval warfare systems, including Engagement Systems, Combat Systems, and Platform Systems.

 

Warfare Analysis
	Warfare analysis is an interdisciplinary product line that provides senior decision support for force design, force planning, science and technology, engineering, and acquisition of military systems and platforms, architecture development, and analysis.

 

If there is a U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, then there must be an undersea version, right?  Of course, it's called the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC).  You can bet that I will be profiling the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in a future blog post.   

I wonder just how much the U.S. Navy is spending on the war weapons of tomorrow.  It must be a tidy sum thanks to us, the U.S. taxpayer.  

In closing, I thought it would be appropriate to honor our U.S. Navy and its fighting sailors:

 

Baaahhh, baaaahhh.  Somebody please pass me a box of Kleenex tissues. 

Courtesy of an article dated December 12, 2010 appearing in NewYorkDailyNews.com 

Comments

[Tommy]

Thanks for your posts. concerned American, I could not disagree more. Sandiego Loan VA, sorry, but we need to curtail military spending.

[concerned american]

What is a 14.6 trillion deficit. A constant war perpetuated by industrial military complex that values profits over democracy . If our leaders are really concerned about the deficit we should rein in fantasy defense projects .

[San Diego Loan VA]

What is so bad about spending all of our money on fantasy defense projects? Without military spending, we would not have the internet, GPS, cell phones, wifi, etc etc. The new tag line is "Navy, A Global Force For Good", It should be IMO, "Navy, A Global Force For Good Product Consumerism and Technological Development".