Electromagnetic Railguns in Military

Werewolf wrote:
But on the other hand russians already have an 30kg explosiv-magnetic generator that generates enough energy for a plasma EM that accelerates the projectile about 5km/s.
This device explodes immidiatley after use.
Also mentioned that this could be used for "ATGM" tube like AT weapons, but the explosion is high enough that it could kill a person so that will be launched from distance via wire.

Hmm, AFAIK, that explosive-magnetic generator(also known as flux compression generator) concept is not that new, there have been examples of it near the current form dating back to the 70's. They are used to generate large amounts of current in a snap, which is good for railguns and similar applications where huge amounts of current are needed at a moments' notice. Anyways, they could also be used to generate EMP's so they must be properly shielded from the outside to be usable. However I do not see them powering railguns in tanks in their current form, they are very dangerous and bulky.

Werewolf wrote:
I have also seen documentary about russian Laser tanks where they also used explosives inside of a tube, during the explosion the light is intense and collected through the lense the light is strong enough to melt metal. There was no possibility to generate enough energy on a tank with usual generators to create a high intense laser to melt armour

Hmm, those are probably chemical cartridges similar to the canceled airborne laser. However, it would take a huge amount of energy just to melt through the surface of the armor of a tank, much higher when you consider the efficiencies of current and near-future laser tech. Besides that you need a relatively static target in order for the laser to have as much dwell time and the proper angle to burn through much of the armor or more likely just enough to raise the temperature of the interior to rotisserie levels. Then there's blooming where the laser diffuses across distances and that pesky ablation problem that generates enough particulate from the surface of the armor to block effectively block further laser beams. Add to that host of problems, the fact that you can pretty much just shine the surface of your tank so it deflects laser beams for a large part of the time it is firing at you.

Strangely very little has been discussed about another(and probably more viable) application about early railgun technology:a ground based ABM system. It would be more effective because it would have the possibility for the projectile to exceed the speed of the nuclear warhead(around mach 12 or more).
The projectile would weigh around 15kg and and would travel at around 7-8km/s. Optimal ROF of each railgun would be 4-5rpm which might be possible since the battery would be stationary and size of the powersource would be thus unlimited.

What do you think? Will missiles be still the pnly effective means of ABM or will railgun technology kick in?

KomissarBojanchev wrote:Strangely very little has been discussed about another(and probably more viable) application about early railgun technology:a ground based ABM system. It would be more effective because it would have the possibility for the projectile to exceed the speed of the nuclear warhead(around mach 12 or more).
The projectile would weigh around 15kg and and would travel at around 7-8km/s. Optimal ROF of each railgun would be 4-5rpm which might be possible since the battery would be stationary and size of the powersource would be thus unlimited.

What do you think? Will missiles be still the pnly effective means of ABM or will railgun technology kick in?

I was thinking about rail guns and lasers vs ABM missiles like S-500.

Ofcourse S-400 and 500 are fantastic technologies, and will have many uses. But there is a difficulty.
If you're firing against n enemy missile, thats an immense speed differential. Without atmospheric differnces, it could be a little like shooting a bullet with a bullet.

Hitting an ABM sideways to its trajectory is hard. And hitting it playing "catch up" from behind is hard too.

Put simply, speed has its uses, but I wonder if a "swarm" attack may be better in some ways.
The idea that projectiles could "hang" in space ahead of an attacking ballisitc missile. Or a swarm that could block the predicted path of a missile.

Another way, is an ABM missile to get close to the attacking missile. Then it somehow releases a "swarm" when within x distance of the attacking missile.

Ofcourse this is tremendously complex technology. But then so is constantly having to improve a single ABM shot approach.

FOrtunately, the railgun could fire many many projectiles at once. I'm sure that has cost benefits, once you have set up an effective system. Longterm, I'm sure lasers will be an option. But before then, I'm guessing railguns will be helpful.

My question is, how will this affect the Mutually Assured Destruction principle?

Railguns are nice, esp. if you put them up on satellites on space.
Since there is no atmosphere, you can use very light projectiles(Al foil perhaps)
accelerated to mind bending speeds to pick off ballistic missiles.
The warheads have thick and dense shielding that is very dependent
on their shape, if you manage to hit one and poke a nice hole
(hypervelocity impacts produce larger diameter craters than deeper penetration)
, then the trip back to Earth would finish the job.

collegeboy16 wrote:Railguns are nice, esp. if you put them up on satellites on space.
Since there is no atmosphere, you can use very light projectiles(Al foil perhaps)
accelerated to mind bending speeds to pick off ballistic missiles.
The warheads have thick and dense shielding that is very dependent
on their shape, if you manage to hit one and poke a nice hole
(hypervelocity impacts produce larger diameter craters than deeper penetration)
, then the trip back to Earth would finish the job.

Ofcourse the strange thing is, treaties allow you to blow up the whole world if you send something from Earth going VIA space.

But if it starts its journey IN space, then the treaties are breached.

I would how this might change in the future...?

Perhaps railguns will be a very effective deterrent. BUT they could also become a potent weapon of attack in their own right.. Either way, I think lasers and EM-weapons are the longterm future..
Even today, I'm sure Russia and America have powerful weapons in this sector.

Infact, some argue that it was EM pulse weapons that were used in Iraq (basically causing psychological trauma to Iraqis and damaging electronics), when the coventional arms were taking a time. This was reported on iraq-war.ru, as I remember.

Interception is complicated if the target has immense speed, but if you think about the game of cricket the batter might not need to move his bat very far if at all when batting even against a fast bowler because the bat is already in front of the wickets.

If the enemy has accurate missiles and you know what he is targeting then intercepting incoming missiles is not super difficult.

The key difference however is that as the targets come in they can change trajectory as they hit the atmosphere or when correcting their aim to ensure they get close as possible to their targets.

Once fired a projectile fired from an EM gun pretty much follows a ballistic path up and then down with no control at all... one change in trajectory and your projectile will miss.

Part of the problem is that the incoming threats are travelling at enormous speed... when something is moving at 7km per second then it is covering 7,000m every second... if you are half a second out then you miss by more than three and a half kilometres...even if you were going to get a perfect hit.

In this context an interceptor that can adapt its trajectory after launch and still have a good chance of a kill after several changes in trajectory needs a missile or guided projectile.

The point is that even the slightest deviation from a long way up means a very large change in impact point which also means new trajectory so all those shots fired at the original trajectory are now going to miss.

Not even the Iskander has such a capability; AFAIK it manuevers only in the terminal stage when it slows down a good deal.

As for the latest manueverable Russian ICBM classes; I'd imagine that it'd be similar.

A small bump as it starts hurling through the atmosphere can shift its trajectory hundreds of metres in a few seconds flight time.

For projectiles that cannot manouver after they are fired even if it slows down faster than expected as it travels through the atmosphere and you will still miss and wont have time for the extra shots that need to be fired can be fired to compensate.

They are always shifting the 300 ton plus ISS to avoid collisions with small objects in orbit and it is travelling at orbital speed too.

A small shift early enough can result in a guaranteed collision becoming a miss by hundreds or thousands of kilometres.

magnumcromagnon wrote:a electro-magnetic main gun powered by magneto batteries

In order to push a bullet out of the gun we need an enormous amount of power. Even the 7.62x39 M43/67 has already consumed a great deal of energy.

Which means the current generation of batteries and power generators may not be able to sustain an EM gun... at least in large scale to be a competitor with explosive gun.

Those two sensor boxes (one for the commander and one for the gunner) remind me of the sensor boxes for the Palma systems so I suspect this is the turret from the company that makes the ATAKA and Kristantema missiles... so there is no surprise it is not fitted with KBPs Kornets.

Werewolf wrote:

Russia has developed an Explosive Electromagnetic Generator and it has this since few years which can generate enough power to fire a projectile up to 5km/s.

At 03:52

So far it's remain within a Lab as testbed platform. Would be nice to see practical applications but i feel it's kinda unlikely for today. and given the nature of Explosively pumped flux generator used as power source.. It need some extraordinary confinement to contain the explosion. and the shell won't likely to be "12.5 mm" small.


As for the reports though.. I kinda feel that 12.5mm anti missile gun to be weird.. Perhaps that's a mistake. Shells, ATGM is a very small target.. very difficult to hit with regular kinetic munitions. Thus why APS relies in fragmentation or explosive.

Werewolf wrote:

higurashihougi wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:a electro-magnetic main gun powered by magneto batteries

In order to push a bullet out of the gun we need an enormous amount of power. Even the 7.62x39 M43/67 has already consumed a great deal of energy.

Which means the current generation of batteries and power generators may not be able to sustain an EM gun... at least in large scale to be a competitor with explosive gun.

Russia has developed an Explosive Electromagnetic Generator and it has this since few years which can generate enough power to fire a projectile up to 5km/s.

At 03:52

With the projectiles that they fired, they were able get reliable speeds as high as 15km/sec.

magnumcromagnon wrote:
With the projectiles that they fired, they were able get reliable speeds as high as 15km/sec.

speed is too high- optimum ive read for penetrating armor with sabot rounds is 2.5km/s. beyond that and you are only making the hole wider and shallower. maybe if the penetrator could be made intact as it goes through the armor such speeds would then be desirable, but until then just increasing the dimensions and improving the material characteristics when the 2.5km/s limit is reached would be enough.

I have read that the most efficient penetrator speed is about 2.5km/s too and that rather than increase velocity it is more energy efficient to increase the penetrator weight.

Ironically it is actually harder to get higher speed than to increase the penetrator weight ... just make the penetrator longer will increase weight...

Long live Russia,

Dear admins,

There are lot of fuss about the electromagnetic rail gun that the US developed and tested recently in media. It says sing its truly a game changing weapon and few analogues are there to challenge it> I would like to know how the Russians have done with that technology and what are there achievements in this field. Thank u,

There are several limitations of rail guns... a major one being they need fairly significant power supplies to operate, which limits the sort of platforms that can operate them in the foreseable future to being large warships.

Having said that the Russians are working on their own designs.

GarryB wrote:There are several limitations of rail guns... a major one being they need fairly significant power supplies to operate, which limits the sort of platforms that can operate them in the foreseable future to being large warships.

GarryB wrote:Having said that the Russians are working on their own designs.

Garry can you provide some more insight on this? What new design are you referring to? I suspect such ships will need to be nuclear powered.

GarryB wrote:There are several limitations of rail guns... a major one being they need fairly significant power supplies to operate, which limits the sort of platforms that can operate them in the foreseable future to being large warships.

Having said that the Russians are working on their own designs.

They had rail-less electro-magnetic guns, powered by electro-magneto batteries for about 2 decades now....with that being said the Russian MOD is rather conservative, and would (most of the time) conserve spending (the general trend of the last two decades) and prevent escalation of tensions. It's a card they rather not play until they absolutely had to...which explains why they stuck with the 125 mm caliber over the 152 mm caliber smoothbore MBT gun.

USS Zumwalt 78 MW powered ship is planning to use Railguns. As for the weapon being "new", they were first made in 1918 - the trick is to keep the barrel from wearing down too quickly with the very fast projectiles - which are also part of the electrical circuit, so it's a materials-science/tolerance problem, not a design problem.

If the barrel wears down after 10 shots and it won't fire anymore, it's not really a "superweapon".

Why Navy can't have nice railguns




America’s New Superweapon Fails to take Russia and China by Surprise

Garry can you provide some more insight on this? What new design are you referring to? I suspect such ships will need to be nuclear powered.

AFAIK still secret...

http://sputniknews.com/military/20160530/1040475728/railgun-russia-us.html