Electromagnetic Railguns in Military

Russian scientists first tested the electromagnetic railgun-gun

MOSCOW, July 12 - RIA Novosti. In Shatura Branch Joint Institute for High Temperatures tested so-called railgun - electromagnetic accelerator that can accelerate matter to the first cosmic speed and output payloads into orbit, "Russian Science" reports.

"Getting high speeds with great difficulty Our task -. Receiving system with high pressures and to explore with them the Universe The second problem -. Protection against high-speed cosmic bodies that pose a threat to us, including space debris, comets, etc. The next task. - withdrawal of satellites in Earth orbit, "- he told reporters the president of Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir fort.

Railgun are special devices that can disperse objects to extremely high speeds by electric and magnetic fields of force. Typically, a set of several parallel conductors, known as rails, through which current is passed ultrahigh strength. If these concerns conductor rail, the Lorentz force will push and disperse it to the ultrahigh speeds reach gunpowder weapons.

Such devices are now considered the basis for the creation of new weapons systems and output of goods into orbit. For example, the US Navy is seriously working on the creation of guns based on railgun from mid-2000, when the first prototypes of such systems have been demonstrated to be installed on a new generation of destroyers. The development of space and military railgun engaged and Russian scientists.

According to the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian scientists were able to reach a speed of 11 kilometers per second during acceleration "bullets" in railgun created them. This speed is enough to overcome the pull of the Earth and reach its orbit, and a little is not enough to enter into an open space

As the Forts, achieving such speeds require such high currents and energies that all components of the railgun quickly wear out and fail. Now the main task - to find a material that could withstand such loads, and how to protect them from wear and tear. The head of the RAS has promised that soon the institute specialists will prepare and lay out a video in which you will see the "shot" railgun.

In the speed of 3.2 kilometers has been achieved during demostratsionnogo startup accelerator in the second, that the fort considered a good indicator. According to him, railgun, temporarily released from the system after the first "shot", repaired tonight.

According to the academician, the development and further study of how these electromagnetic accelerators work will not only derive loads into space and destroy dangerous objects in their approach to the world, but also to reveal the deeper secrets of the universe - that the behavior of the plasma in the space, both born and dying stars. In addition, the study of the behavior of the plasma inside the railgun will help physicists to tame fusion energy, with what scientists today are experiencing great difficulties in the framework of ITER and NIF projects.

Railgun 3,2km/s? like 10Ma...not bad but whooping 11,2 as objective is real deal.  33Ma.
With 24Ma suborbital flight US in 30min not to mention satellites. So scaling down nuclear reactors and investing in high temp superconductors pays off

max steel wrote:RUSSIA DISMANTLES THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN NAVY’S INVINCIBILITY

heh nice but I do not believe hypersonic weapons will fly without nukes. 200-.750kt as in Soviet times should be enough take off A/C group form action 2-3 probably down all ships beyond repairs.

When Us fleet goes ot Russia´s shores there is the Doomsday no time for conventional weapons.

Here is the test...


But who said that they tested it only now?
And what about this?

I have seen this very same bench model for the last 15 years being trotted out sporadically. It is something straight from the 1970s.

Either they have no video of the real test model or they are trying to embarrass themselves.

kvs wrote: Either they have no video of the real test model or they are trying to embarrass themselves.

Option 1 I presume, journos are armed with google an yt noit real footage from secret labs

Russian Defense Ministry develops electromagnetic gun to counter drones

The gun can be charged from the grid, as well as from a car battery



KUBINKA /Moscow region/, August 22. /TASS/. The Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Robotics Research and Test Center has developed an electromagnetic gun to counter unmanned aerial vehicles, named Stupor, a TASS correspondent reported, adding that a model of the gun was presented at the Army-2017 International Military-Technical Forum being held in the Moscow region.

A press release says that the Stupor gun is designed to counter unmanned aerial vehicles, including copters, under direct visibility.

According to a center spokesman, the gun emits separate electromagnetic pulses to suppress channels used to operate a drone. As a result, the drone loses contact with its operator, while its uncontrolled flight ends in a crash. The spokesman added that the Stupor gun had a range of two kilometers, covering a 20 degree sector.

Support documentation explains that the device is capable of suppressing navigation and transmission channels used by unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as their photo and video cameras within the electro-optical range of frequencies.

The gun can be charged from the grid, as well as from a car battery.

A warning on the device says that it should not be pointed towards people, manned aircraft, transport vehicles and animals.


More:
http://tass.com/defense/961402

Very interesting article - there is some "recycled info" IMHO  but , no BUT there is couple of extra sentences made me post it here.
updated stuff  in bold.


3km/s as stated is recycled - this was form like 4-5years ago. But more powerful 6 times? tkhm (2,5)2 = 6,25 right? so speed might b 3kmsx2,5 = 7,5km/s?!!!! shit!!! OR I am wrong? almost first cosmic velocity...



On the eve of the inauguration of Vladimir Putin in Russia successfully tested railgun

On May 6, the Shatura branch of the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of the Russian Academy of Sciences passed another successful test of the device, which in the information environment is called a railgun.

The head of the OIVT RAS, academician Vladimir Fortov, an outstanding Soviet and Russian physicist, has already several times publicly spoken about the railgun - electromagnetic artillery of the 21st century.

During the period of theoretical research and development work, the staff of the Shatura branch of the JIWT created such a capacitive storage device that can already "fire" an object weighing 100 grams at a speed of 3 km per second. Employees of Vladimir Fortov for two years increased the energy of armament of their installations by 6 times. Natural experiments with a railgun have begun, which are powered by a pulsed induction storage. Such a solution significantly increases the temperature of the "plasma piston" and, accordingly, the velocity of the projectile.

On the night after the election of the President of the Russian Federation - from 18 to 19 March - Academician Fortov, on the air of the First Channel, was asked: will the railgun be able to shell objects at a distance of 300-400 kilometers from the ground, that is, to shoot down not only enemy satellites, but, for example , asteroids? From the answer it was possible to judge that such a development of events with the railgun is not ruled out. But the main thing for today is to arm the Russian army with electromagnetic cannons. This direction is rapidly developing. Employees OIVT RAS, have found a way to increase the power of a plasma railgun six times.

The system developed by V. Fortov, who has for his work and discoveries in the field of plasma all the most prestigious world prizes in physics. In addition to the Nobel Prize. But Fortov is a military physicist, and, as you know, the Nobel Prize is not awarded for military development.

For your information: with the help of an electromagnetic field, the academician Fortov's railgun accelerates charges to almost cosmic speeds. Even a small shell is endowed with great permissive power. For example: a relatively small object without any explosive stuffing can be dispersed on the railgun to such a speed that it can crush the MSU building on Vorobyovy Gory.
Now we are ten years ahead of the Americans, who dream of equipping their warships with railguns.

Today the railgun with a "plasma jumper" is being tested in the US Army as a catapult for launching kinetic projectiles from aircraft carriers. But the electromagnetic guns created by our military physicists already have a unique power and can disable military space objects if they threaten the security of the Russian Federation.
Railgun is the weapon of the future. And if the experimental and engineering work of our physicists this year will be successful, the railroad track of Academician Fortov, like the missiles of Yuri Solomonov, will almost completely cover the needs of the military-industrial complex in creating weapons that will completely protect our country from all possible air strikes or strikes from outer space.

http://argumenti.ru/society/2018/05/571801


Academic Fortov

The main problems are the size of the objects being launched... 100 grammes, is certainly not nothing, but in terms of a payload for shooting down satellites it is plenty, but for pretty much anything else it is not so useful.

I rather suspect other issues like rate of fire and cost per round probably make it interesting but not really there yet.

In terms of speed then very high speed with lower mass would be useful for disabling satellites or just shooting down things in the air... but when it comes to penetrating armour I seem to remember a German scientist working on armour penetration saying that normally increasing velocity is a great way and an easy way to increase penetration but when you start getting to velocities like 3km per second or more it starts to make more sense to increase mass rather than velocity.

Above about 3km/s the penetrator pretty much vapourises, so increased speed does not increase further penetration... increased mass allows better penetration then.

In that situation I suspect most development would revolve around shooting down aircraft and satellites.

The problem is that with improvements in scramjet technology pretty soon missiles will be able to fly at enormous speed too... up to and beyond orbital speed (7km/s+) or even escape velocity (11km/s).

Well in the case of faster and more capable SAMs railguns would serve as higher velocity and more capable close in guns.

Railguns are theoretically capable of extreme rates of fire and their projectiles will be cheap so I could easily see a railgun based replacement for the AK-630 CIWS.

GarryB wrote: I rather suspect other issues like rate of fire and cost per round probably make it interesting but not really there yet.

"Employees of Vladimir Fortov for two years increased the energy of armament of their installations by 6 times. Natural experiments with a railgun have begun, which are powered by a pulsed induction storage. Such a solution significantly increases the temperature of the "plasma piston" and, accordingly, the velocity of the projectile."



Looks like this might be a method to speed up reloading. And no 100g is just testing AFAIK not real projectile.

I seem to remember a German scientist working on armour penetration saying that normally increasing velocity is a great way and an easy way to increase penetration but when you start getting to velocities like 3km per second or more it starts to make more sense to increase mass rather than velocity.

Above about 3km/s the penetrator pretty much vapourises, so increased speed does not increase further penetration... increased mass allows better penetration then.

e=0.5*mv2 with enough energy you get through armor regardless what. But we need to live to see it in action. Gun needs soid energy source thus nuclear reactor has ot be near. Can be used anti-ship, or as precision bombardment? AAD perhaps too.

Unless power souce will ge tminimized.

In that situation I suspect most development would revolve around shooting down aircraft and satellites.
The problem is that with improvements in scramjet technology pretty soon missiles will be able to fly at enormous speed too... up to and beyond orbital speed (7km/s+) or even escape velocity (11km/s).

Depending what is soon. Besides with such speed you dont travel in earth atmosphere. BTW Scramjet theoretically is like orbital speed not escape isnt it? Speed or railgun is only depnding on energy and what you have to do.

The-thing-next-door wrote:Well in the case of faster and more capable SAMs railguns would serve as higher velocity and more capable close in guns.

I'd see it rather as long range cheap alternative to anti ship missiles. Or AAD.

Railguns are theoretically capable of extreme rates of fire and their projectiles will be cheap so I could easily see a railgun based replacement for the AK-630 CIWS.

regardless on reloading energy/time, not sure about plasma temp and cooling of gun...





Putin: We will pay constant attention to work on new weapons

MOSCOW , May 15, 2018 , 21:33 - REGNUM Russian leadership will keep the creation of new Russian weapon systems in the field of constant attention, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on May 15.

Such a statement was made by the head of the Russian state during the military meeting.

Vladimir Putin stressed that the new Russian strategic weapons not only multiply the defense capability of Russia, but also provides a strategic balance in the world.

"This year, for the first time, we demonstrated our promising models and a system of weapons that do not have world analogues. They multiply increase the opportunities to ensure Russia's security, provide a strategic balance for 10 years ahead, maintain a strategic balance in the world, "Vladimir Putin said.

The President noted that the development of new weapons is at different stages of completion and the country's leadership will pay constant attention to these works.

"We know that they are in different degrees of readiness, we will continue to keep these issues in the field of constant attention, " the Russian president said.

As REGNUM reported , on March 1, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the creation of new types of strategic weapons in Russia, whose analogues do not exist in the world.

First and foremost, we talked about hypersonic missiles that neutralize any missile defense system, which guarantees a retaliatory nuclear strike against any aggressor.

Подробности: https://regnum.ru/news/polit/2415520.html
Любое использование материалов допускается только при наличии гиперссылки на ИА REGNUM.

Big_Gazza wrote:

Railguns are a joke, nothing but grasping at straws for an unrealisable wunderwaffe.  R&D funds will be spent, but no practical systems will see service with any ability to be a game changer.

The issues with railguns remain unsolved:

1) enormous electrical power requirements - you need MW of generation (and fuel to run them) plus capacitors to store the charge.  Its expensive, heavy, and takes up a lot of space that could be used for more effective weapons & systems
2) high G forces on firing are enormous, sufficient to detonate explosives, so your projectiles need to be dumb, little more than shaped lumps of steel.  They'll readily penetrate a target but unless they hit a critical system, they will do little consequential damage to a enemy vessels combat potential.
3)  high G forces on firing damage electronics and mechanical steering mechanism, so projectiles will be dumb fired, and will require PRECISE targeting to hit a distant target, like a human sniper. The tracking systems need to locate the targets position, bearing & speed with absolute precision, targeting solution needs to compensate for wind, humidity, local air pressure/density, weather conditions etc, while the aiming systems will need micrometer accuracy & repeatably.  Any error in these systems or a tiny delay in firing will result in a miss, and with a dumb projectile without frag or prox fuse, only a direct hit is effective. Try doing that against a incoming hypersonic weapon that is constantly shifting its trajectory by a few arc-seconds/minutes and where you have less than 20 seconds to track, compute, aim & fire...
4) barrel wear is a serious issue - they literally degrade every time you fire them.

Saying that a railgun can be used to reliably defeat hypersonic AShMs is divorced from any conceivable reality.  Its like saying you can reliably detonate incoming artillery by hitting the shells fuse with a sniper shot...

Well its is certainly less absurd than claiming that your railgun will be effective as an anti ship weapon or artillery piece like some retard have (yes I am talking to you general dynamics).

5) Part of (4) is that heat buildup is so extreme that it prevents maintaining a rapid rate of fire.

Well in the case of faster and more capable SAMs railguns would serve as higher velocity and more capable close in guns.

Railguns are theoretically capable of extreme rates of fire and their projectiles will be cheap so I could easily see a railgun based replacement for the AK-630 CIWS.

The ideal would be guided rounds for rail guns...

When you fire a dumb round you have between when you hit fire and when the projectile impacts the target for the target to change direction or speed and create a miss.

A guided round means better kill probability per shot so you don't need to fire so many rounds...

Looks like this might be a method to speed up reloading. And no 100g is just testing AFAIK not real projectile.

If the projectile is moving at 7 km/s then 100 grammes is plenty... a standard WWII full power rifle bullet was generally in the 150-180 grain range, which is about 10-11.5 grammes... ten of those moving at 7km/s would be devastating.

There are photos of testing of colliisions that were done to test designs for satellites and a tiny 1 gramme paint chip at high speed could penetrate several inches of aluminium armour... armour that would be far too heavy to cover any satellite with... so what do you do?

Actually the solution was in the very high speeds involved... when the paint chip hits a surface at those sort of speeds (14km/s plus... 7km/s in each direction) the paint chip is vapourised, so instead of very thick heavy armour they just used a thin sheet of aluminium and then 30cm away another thin sheet... perhaps even with holes drilled into it to reduce its weight and then the skin of the satellite... any paint chip that hit the outer skin blew a huge hole in it and the vapourised impactor and the outer skin material then hit the inner layer but in vapourised form.... still very very fast but with almost no mass so it did not penetrate... and the inner skin of the satellite got hit by small amounts of vapourised material through the tiny drilled holes which was not enough to penetrate the few mms of aluminium...

A piece of steel armour several cms thick would not have done a better job...

A segmented metal rod with spacers of ceramics or high temperature plastic... when it hits the outer skin of the target the penetrator will break up and spread out the damage... with a mass to go entirely through a conventional aircraft or missile...

This weapon would fire the projectile inside a Sabot, so the projectile would look very much like an APFSDS round from a tank gun to retain high speed all the way to the target... a scramjet motor could maintain that speed or even improve it on the way to the target and as I mentioned above some sort of manouver capability would be valuable.

e=0.5*mv2 with enough energy you get through armor regardless what. But we need to live to see it in action. Gun needs soid energy source thus nuclear reactor has ot be near. Can be used anti-ship, or as precision bombardment? AAD perhaps too.

Unless power souce will ge tminimized.

Good way for a CVN to poke the eyes out of snooping US satellites and stop any ICBM based attacks on their carrier too.

Big place like Moscow could use some too I would think.

Depending what is soon. Besides with such speed you dont travel in earth atmosphere. BTW Scramjet theoretically is like orbital speed not escape isnt it? Speed or railgun is only depnding on energy and what you have to do.

As long as it keeps travelling through atmosphere it should be able to accelerate... orbital or escape velocity should be possible as long as it does not melt...

First and foremost, we talked about hypersonic missiles that neutralize any missile defense system, which guarantees a retaliatory nuclear strike against any aggressor.

So Kinzhal might be launched from MiG-31s in Sakhalin island to attack the ABM systems in Alaska, and from the north of Russia to destroy AEGIS cruisers in the arctic ocean...

Makes sense.

Saying that a railgun can be used to reliably defeat hypersonic AShMs is divorced from any conceivable reality. Its like saying you can reliably detonate incoming artillery by hitting the shells fuse with a sniper shot...

Not a sniper... a group of gatling guns...

The technology being used in Rail guns is totally applicable to EMALS catapult systems... which are also being developed.

There was a time when missiles were silly expensive exotic technology and would be a huge waste of time to develop.... just make a bigger gun.

Projecting a solid kinetic projectile is one thing but all sorts of exotic options exist too... a nice powerful gamma ray burst directed at enemy aircraft... wont shoot down anything but any human crew will be killed.

5) Part of (4) is that heat buildup is so extreme that it prevents maintaining a rapid rate of fire.

The technology developed involve super magnets and all sorts of technologies that are useful in lots of other fields.

Imagine if they could develop a gravity wave generator... no propulsion needed... just counter the gravity holding you down from the mass of the earth and then direct a gravity pull or push wave to move around... it would have an enormous impact on everything...

Russia plans to create a tank with an electromagnetic gun

They can also be controlled in unmanned mode.

Moscow. November 25. INTERFAX.RU - In Russia, they are working on the issue of creating a tracked combat vehicle that can carry fundamentally new weapons, the Interfax interlocutor in the defense-industrial complex said.

"The concept is as follows: a tracked platform - a carrier of promising types of weapons with the ability to control in an unmanned mode," said the source.

According to him, an important task of the first stage of work is to create a powerful power supply system for the tank, which will allow carrying the energy-intensive payload.

"In the future, such a tank can get not only an electrothermochemical artillery system, but also a combat laser and an electromagnetic gun," he said.

According to him, the development of such guns ("railguns") are conducted in several other countries.

Interfax has no official confirmation of this information.

The fact that in the Russian Federation may soon appear unmanned tanks, said earlier in the "Uralvagonzavod." General Director of the Scientific and Production Corporation "Uralvagonzavod" Alexander Potapov reported that work is underway on the unmanned "Armata"

More
https://www.interfax.ru/russia/639320?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop

LMFS wrote:Interesting!

It makes sense to develop a compact land vehicle with a huge electrical generation capacity. Both offensive (railgun, laser) and defensive future systems (plasma fields both as active armour and to disrupt flight of ATGM, RPGs and rounds) will be very intensive in energy use. Just wonder when will we see this becoming operational, but the capacities, from a theoretical perspective, are truly amazing.

If "compact" here means Armata size then OK  Railguns need really huge amounts of electrical energy. None of turbine engines that can be placed in tanks are likely to be able to feed monsters. Unlike we talk about tiny 5g projectiles.

120mm  projectiles have range of 11-12 MJ energy if Im correct.  In Russians in 50s discovered so called explosively pumped flux compression generators. I've seen like 5 years ago a vid abut this kind of generators applied in Russia for experiments with railguns.  

This paper below at p312. DuPont data sheets claims that highest energy density in this case was 11,000MJ / m3  ... This was extreme and I didn't check how large this was but theoretically should be enough for railgun even is 50% efficiency in energy conversion.  Another issue here would be how to transfer this amperage to railgun - high temp superconductors? hundreds of amperes would likely burn any conventional cabling.


Magnetic flux compression Generators
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f20b/94c86b9620166bdb82556b5be93261c80c64.pdf

Railguns efficiency
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/364679?denied=








just for fun below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive-driven_ferromagnetic_generator

https://www.w-hs.de/erkunden/fachbereiche/elektrotechnik-naturwissenschaften/abteilung/elektrotechnik/international-society-on-pulsed-power-ev/introduction-to-pulsed-power/basics-of-pulsed-power/magnetic-fields/magnetic-flux-compressor/

Is China ahead regarding this technology ? Where is Russia ?

China is no more ahead of US. Russia has their experimental since Soviet times.

Electromagnetic guns is a show off tech. It will be on tocken ships (1 or 2) cause the rest of the ship is litteraly reactors to power this tech when missiles are more effective and cheaper.

It's a rather "hey look at me, ain't I great?" Rather than practical. Russians are smart people, they let development happen in the background while introducing real tech.

Rail guns are really good in battles between space ships. Puncturing hulls leading to air loss is serious damage. But as noted by Big_Gazza,
perforating hulls of ships on Earth is not such a show stopper unless it's a lucky shot. Rail gun projectiles in space do not lose any energy.
in the atmosphere they lose quite a lot. So rail guns are a short range weapon. The only advantage is that the ballistic object hurled at
the target moves faster compared to normal shells at the cost of not being able to carry explosives.

At the end of the day a surface to surface missile has most of the speed advantage without any of the limitations.

kvs wrote:
in the atmosphere they lose quite a lot.   So rail guns are a short range weapon.    The only advantage is that the ballistic object hurled at
the target moves faster compared to normal shells at the cost of not being able to carry explosives.    

At the end of the day a surface to surface missile has most of the speed advantage without any of the limitations.  

Me thinks that poor energy/velocity in ship application  was the real reason the project got  canceled.  US railgun projectile's  muzzle velocity ... 7Ma and  range (never reached) 180km.
 

Zircon is 9Ma  and 1000+ km range.

Russian EMR-guns increased the range of defeat


The prototypes of Russian electromagnetic guns have increased range to 10 km. This was reported by TASS with reference to two sources in the military-industrial complex (MIC).