How far away are we from obtaining real railguns?

>>52495060
hopefully a long way

>>52495070
Why don't you want this amazing technology? What do you have against it?

>>52495060
Like most shit, the limit here seems to be held back by battery technology.

I thought the US Navy had been testing this out on ships.

>>52495060
not far from now since a war is coming

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion_light-gas_gun
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a462130.pdf
>Can fire a 155mm projectile to a range of up to 200 nautical miles (370 km)

Works similar to a fuel-air bomb, but for firing a projectile. Compressed explosive-gas mixed w/ oxygen is far more powerful than gunpowder or traditional explosives as a propellant. Better than a rail gun because it has the same range and it doesn't lose 10% durability with every shot from the rails bending.

You can even build your own CLGG-powered potato cannon, if you're into that kind of thing.

>>52495087
Not that anon, but
Our country has no money for those -> I won't be the one shooting, I may be the one being shot.
So I guess it's because I have no death wish.

>>52495487
>isnt capable of reaching the higher muzzle velocity of an actual railgun.

>>52495060
what do you mean by "real"?

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>>52495060

>>52495466
Most really cool shit from wars only starts development once they are almost over.

>>52495555
Hail quads of information

>>52495093
Wrong

The primary limitation is that at such high speeds the rail the projectile is guided on needs to be replaced every single shot because the super high friction tears it apart

>>52495060

You would have seriously been better asking this question on /k/

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>>52495555
2700 meters per second / 4.7 Mega-joules is not bad for a weapon that is actually feasible, considering it wont basically destroy itself after ~ten shots like a powerful railgun would. And that's just for that one particular CLGG gun; there have been tests since the seventies that have shown light gas guns capable of firing solid projectiles (of various sizes) at velocities ranging up to nearly 20 km/sec:
http://www.science.gov/topicpages/l/light+gas+guns.html#

What's the point of all that kinetic energy a rail gun can deliver firing a heavier slug when you could just put a fucking explosive payload in a lighter CLGG projectile that has the same range anyway?

Rail guns are not yet practical and are thus only better for the odd scenario where you need extreme armor piercing kinetic energy at extreme range, and are willing to fuck up the prototype weapon firing in order to do it

Whats the point of super high kinetic energy weapons? It goes through everything it hits and is hard as fuck to aim and reload. Why would you possible use one instead of a drone/missile or even a laser?

>>52496312
My guess is that air defense artillery can't really stop a one of these projectile. Whereas your UAV or rocket can be shot down, you can't really shoot down a giant metal slug going tens of km/s. Lasers are not practical for destroying fortifications.

>>52496312
The Navy wants them because they'll be a one shot instant kill on enemy ships once it punches through the hull on the way out.

>>52497237
>shooting a carrier at the right angle and watching the round go through every plane on deck

Ayyy.

>>52496183
>20 km/sec
>20,000,000 m/s
>2*10^7 m/s
>6.6% the speed of light

>>52497264
>shooting the planes when you can just hit it on a high arc and sink the whole carrier

>>52495060
You've never built your own?
Just take a bunch of capacitors from a disposable camera, two billets of aluminum, an aluminum slug, a penny, and a car battery/gas generator.
Put them together and you have a tiny railgun that can shoot molten pennies about three feet and only lasts one shot.

>>52495093
>battery technology
The navy doesn't need more batteries.
They have nuclear power plants integrated into the ship.
If they need more batteries, they'll get more batteries, or they'll pick a bigger ship. They always have a bigger ship.

>>52496312
well when someone shoots a railgun at you you are fucked
when someone shoots a laser at you you wrap yourself in something shiny and the laser bounces back and hits them instead

>>52497521
>well when someone shoots a railgun at you you are fucked
debatable. The slug doesn't have time to expand, so instead of a dinner-plate sized exit wound you just get a hole poked through you. Far less change of that striking vital organs.

>>52497549
.50BMG has been known to turn flesh into lots and lots of tiny bits.
The shock of the force cone is enough so that they don't even have to hit you directly.

>>52497397
>20 kilometers = 20,000,000 meters
Wat

>>52497549
what kind of ant sized thing are you thinking about?
they are so power hungry there isnt much point unless you go balls out
its not the hole thats the issue its the speed and energy hitting you is enough force to shatter your spine.
but i wasn't really meaning a person i meant hitting a ship or something.

>>52496433
I'm sure you can shoot these down if you could shoot down a missile since missile travel just as fast and can be non explosive as well.

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>>52497521
>well when someone shoots a railgun at you you are fucked
Unless you can create a black hole to absorb the fire, hurl it at your enemy and then disintegrate it once it has devoured the enemy completely.

>>52497651
>missiles travel just as fast
>high kinetic weapons travel at 20km/s
>Mach 16
You must be joking if you seriously believe that anybody anywhere has missiles faster than Mach 9.

>>52497651
do you understand how fast these things go?
explosive powered rounds can only go as fast as the expansion of the gas
by the time you know this thing is coming you can't work out the trajectory to intercept before its hit or passed you and you couldn't catch it anyway. or you did already catch it right in the asshole.

>>52496183
>explosive payload
This is why the Navy is actively pursuing railguns. Keeping explosive ammunition in the ship's magazine is one of the major faults of any battleship in history. A lucky hit can totally destroy an entire ship because of the immense explosion resulting from all the propellant and ammunition cooking off at once.
A railgun would fire metal slugs propelled by electricity. There is little to no risk of explosion (apart from certain types of aluminium, which can combust under the right conditions).

>>52495487
>>52496183
if light gas guns have been around so long then why has no military adopted them for extreme long range artillery? There has to be some major flaw with the whole concept that makes them impractical

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for personal weapons/weapons not mounted to a giant battleship, coilguns are a lot better

>>52495060
Another 10 years. Maybe they'll finally have a prototype that won't destroy its launch cradle.

>>52497865
Asymmetrical warfare is the only thing that's been going on in the past decade. Destroying an entire neighborhood just to kill Timmy the Taliban man is not acceptable.

Also, existing weapons systems have huge contracts behind them that lobbyists push to ensure their weapons are used, and thus get more contracts. It's kind of corrupt.

>>52497955

If it's mounted to the superstructure of a ship, wouldn't the water absorb the shock after it passed through the hull? I don't think the recoil would only be confined to the ship

do railguns have enough velocity to escape the atmosphere, if fired straight up?

>>52498141
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity

In a perfect system? Yes. Practically? Probably not.

>>52495060
We have real railguns. Right now. They're being tested on a U.S. naval ship right now in the Gulf.

>>52498102
>It's kind of corrupt.
It's the normal course of business. Don't expect ethics.

>>52498250
I know. But the idealist in me cringes at all the innovation being stifled because NG won another contract to just maintain the same 40 year old rocket artillery instead of come up with something new.

>>52498119

You're asking for the ship to destroy itself or get pushed underwater.

>>52496112
Why not use magnets to reduce the friction mag train style?

>>52498329
Considering they installed and are currently testing a railgun on a US navy ship right now in the gulf, i'd say they've figured out how to do it without destroying the ship.

>>52495697
See that part in the beginning? It launched and destroyed everything in practically an eyeblink. By how much did they slow down the video in the later half?

>>52498102
>Destroying an entire neighborhood just to kill Timmy the Taliban man is not acceptable

They can just use GPS guided munitions to make the artillery extremely precise and they'd be able to avoid all that collateral damage, even at 200 miles away.

I don't get why they haven't mounted a long range light gas gun on a naval vessel yet, even if just for testing. Is there some ethical concern between nations about the extreme range, fastness of the projectile, and unpredictability of knowing when the weapon fires? Maybe they would feel threatened by the idea of such a weapon being able to carry a large explosive or nuclear payload?

>>52495060
''Excellent''. ''2 frags left''. ''1 frag left''. ''You win.''

>>52498381
The method of propulsion requires a magnetic field perpendicular to the electrical current through the projectile. Having a magnetic projectile and more magnetic fields would just mess the whole thing up

>>52498102
>Destroying an entire neighborhood just to kill Timmy the Taliban man is not acceptable
Look at this anti-FREEDOM liberal cocksucker
Bet you never stuck your dick in another man in anger

They could try making the rails out of one of those extremely strong/durable new magnetic/electromagnetic materials like Q-carbon or carbon-nanotubes

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-phase-carbon-diamond-room-temperature.html

Would these rail guns be like the ones from the quake series?

>>52498523
They're not man-portable, if that's what you're asking.

>>52497693
The ones being tested and are actually applicable only travel at like Mach 5. The same speeds can be obtained by cruise missiles.

>>52497722
You realize gas can expand fucking fast when its exploding right?

>>52495087
we put so much money into developing weapons. and for what?

all this money could do so much better elsewhere

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What's a real railgun? I don't know what a real railgun is, but we have pic related
>>52496112
They solved that problem supposedly

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Too far away

>>52497397
>20 km/sec
>20,000,000 m/s

American education, not even once.

>>52495697
I love big hunks of metal like those shown in the first few frames.

>>52497237
That's what I don't get about Aircraft Carriers. How can they defend themselves effectively? The risk to dollar ratio must be crazy.

>>52498536
compressed hydrogen and oxygen gas can expand extremely ridiculously fast when combusted, but the gas expansion from solid propellants not so much

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Japan already made railgun

>>52497782
an extreme long-range projectile like that that fires along a howitzer-like arc would be both extremely hard to stop and highly difficult to predict -- not like an ICBM launch, or a plane-dropped bomb. Putting an explosive or nuclear payload in a rail-gun (or other extreme-range "gun")-type projectile would be much more effective than using a purely kinetic slug-type round.

Besides, a weapon like that would only need to be 200 miles from its target, so it shouldn't really even be at risk of its magazine being destroyed from that distance, and if it is, the naval commander is doing something wrong

>>52498722

carriers depend on escort ships and their fighter planes

They're testing them out in 2016, with hopes to begin using them on combat vessels in 2017.

This is pretty major, as they can shoot down a number of targets(land, air, sea). This can mean that a lot of ships and planes will become useless in their role, and tip the scales even more in favor of NATO.

>>52499691
None of that matters when real a war starts with cyber espionage and then will resort to shooting down communication satellites and then deploying biological weapons. Ships and planes will be like horses in ww1.

>>52498554
Yeah I'm with this anon.
Guns are cool and all, but a rocket or a maglift train is cooler.

Any one know any industrial or commerce applications for a railgun?

>>52497549
Not debatable.
Ex army fag here, it's not the round that (usually) kills you, it's the pressure wave that turns a 5.56mm entry wound into a 10cm diameter exit hole.
Just have a think about everything that goes on between the entry and exit and then think about just how much bigger the wave of a railgun is.
It's a lot bigger.

since i'm anonymous i'll go ahead and say it: wtf is a rail gun

>>52500039
Railguns can be used as launch mechanism for things going into space.

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>>52500241
this

>>52495060
We already have them, problem is they are not as cost effective as just dropping a bomb on something.

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Finally a weapon to frag some noobs irl.

>>52500528
is that a low quality hyperbaric bed?