Navy Tests Incredible Sci-Fi Weapon

The sabot or guide they used looks like some kind of plastic. At that velocity I may have vaporize and ignited

This projectile can't be carrying a sabot along with it disrupting the airflow. Wouldn't that cause accuracy problems.

The round is traveling at 8x the speed of sound. It doesn't need any explosives in the round because it does a lot of damage upon impact.

They can implement small pellets that would riddle all the soft targets with holes to the point that they are rendered useless.

And the weapon gives a ship a 400 mile radius coverage.

Note that the military conducts experiments all the time. This looks like a very effective NGFS (Naval Gun Fire Support) weapon but experiments are scrapped all the time.

They have not resolved a problem of equipping a ship to be able to handle the voltage needed nor the heat produced by such a weapon for shipboard use.

...also, at those speeds the AIR is literally "electrostatically-charged" by the projectile's rapid passage through it...and much of the light display is the electrostatic-corona-like discharge, similar to what occurs during rocket and satellite re-entry phenomena.

yes but the speed is mach 7 and planes traveling at mach 7 won't be trailing a fiery trail will they?

Hello Sail. I do not believe airplanes travel at mach 7 while in the lower atmosphere. If there are airplanes traveling at this speed, I believe they are doing so at the upper fringes of the atmosphere where friction with the air is lower. By comparison, very high velocity rifle ammunition ( around 3500 to 4000 feet per second ) leaves a fiery trail because the bullet is ablating as friction with air melts the surface. This effect is occurring at much lower speed than the rail gun projectile. I would guess the rail gun projectiles are made of ablation-resistant material especially designed to survive the heat of such high speeds.

Bill Morrow

Pilots can barely handle traveling at Mach 2 let alone Mach 7.

That projectile is traveling at 8x the speed of sound.

The friction created would make it a hot round all the way to the target.

In those tests that projectile wasn't traveling very far. It had a plastic like casing around it and for the short duration of travel that casing may still have been burning off.

Air cannot be "electrostatically charged"

Maybe not, but moisture laden air sure can be, i.e., clouds/lightening, etc.

Just looked this up in Wikepedia. It may not be an absolute:

Leader formation

As a thundercloud moves over the Earth's surface, an equal but opposite charge is induced in the Earth below, and the induced ground charge follows the movement of the cloud.

An initial bipolar discharge, or path of ionized air,

A possible explanation could be the friction with the air. At such speeds the friction is intense and air can reach a very high temperature. The shock wave generated by the movement spreads the heated air which is seen as a 'fire trail'.

Such tests at a lower scale have been done years ago already. The problem was to be able to use the huge currents required for an important acceleration. The limit of acceleration is the reason for the gun length.

That one might be getting close. Perhaps the Blaze is that of trailing, burning ablative material that keeps the projectile itself intact as it heats due to friction while finding its target. It's as if the projectile was emulating an exoatmospheric reentry (except...an "entry" to the target) virtually from the moment of launch.

Whereas a launching shuttle wants to keep its clothes on, this launching projectile needs to shed its clothes off.

Just an idea...

You dun gud

To all, Unfortunately the film is a deception. The "rail gun" in the film is a Navy 155 battleship cannon. It uses conventional propellant. Notice the blackened char on the rear hatch, and the distance the sabot is inserted into the barrel. The Military does have a rail gun under development but the one in the film is not that weapon. The Magnetic Acceleration Cannon or MAC as it is known launches cylindrical rounded projectiles at 2.5 miles per second and has to be rebuilt every time it is fired. The MAC's barrel is square in cross section and is forty feet long.

Sorry but the Military will not even come clean on the true events of 911 they certainly will not allow film of a top secret weapon out into public domain.

By the way the round fired from the cannon in the video is a tank penetrator round made of depleted uranium fired at 5000 feet per second (1 mile per second approx.) It has been in use since the first Gulf War.

Dragon

What a great forum this is to be able to bring together enough diverse interest to uncover the realities of the matter.

Thanks Dragon

I thought they call it HAARP?

No, HAARP is that mind control thinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

coilguns are magnetic launchers that can be fired multiple times, why are they not in use?

How many have you actually built and tested? Where is your patent recorded?

You might want to investigate the difference between rail guns and "coil guns." Even back during the Star Wars days, no one was interested in coil guns. They are inherently inefficient and really bulky for the bang or the buck.

Hi Vermin,

why do you think coilguns to be inefficient?

The eddy-current in the moving part will have similar losses compared to the railgun.

The contact resistance not existing will make it much better.

Switching on and off the power supply is much easyer in an oscillating drive as the switch can be closed at zero voltage and opened at zero current.

Coils wound around or immersed in a glassfiber-epoxi tube would make much more sense for guiding the moving mass because of radial forces and stiffness generated by the eddy current if the conducting surface is nearer one side of the exciting coil.

Forget about capacitors for energy storage - except stationary and ultrafast as z-machine or lasers - flywheels integrated into a motor-generator structure will be much better.

I estimate that a successful coilgun will operate evacuated, giving much more range than possible with the same force in a railgun that is not easily evacuated.

The cone that is shown in the film of the "test" is very likely a shape of inherent stability at high Mach number.

Please post your arguments.

Maybe I build a small one.

10g of mass at 1Km/s would be a good start: 5KJ is a lot!

RHABE

Hi Dragonsfarm,

If the shell is depleted uranium, it would be a lot heavier than the way the man holding the round in the video suggests. I did a rough calculation and came up with ~50 lb for the weight of the round. However, when the other guy puts the round in the gun, I can believe by the way he moved that it could weigh that much. This whole video is wierd - seems to be pieced together from parts of different videos.

Just an observation.

Mike

Hello sail4evr,

Did you catch this thread; http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/4811/Navy-Rail-Gun-Successfully-Tested

I haven't read it, but it may contain some useful info. It seems like an annual outing !

What I think the reason for the fiery trail may be is, as follows.

The electromagnetic energy is transferred to the projectile where it gets converted into kinetic energy. However, this conversion is not 100 % i.e. part of the elctromagnetic energy is transferred to the atmospheric air at the muzzle of the gun causing ionisation and the resulting fireworks.

The 'rail gun' concept has been around for years. It is nothing more that a linear accelerator similar to that used to make particle colliders for advanced physics research. A rail gun has even been suggested as a launch tool for the space program. The major drawback for its use as a weapon is supplying enough power to the magnets to launch any sort of mass. However, in theory at least, small masses can be accelerated to near the speed of light and can pack enough energy to mimic a small atomic explosion.

That's pushing it. We have a very hard time accelerating single atoms at near C in particle accelerators. Anything with any mass at all is going to be much, much slower.

That is exactly what I was trying to point out. The rail gum project was discontinued long ago.

Well, that was because they couldn't get anyone to chew it.

I agree. Old fashion inertia is a problem that takes a lot of over coming.

I am not sure what holds the speed record at the moment but the SR71 was right up there fore a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sa5Sk2ZDJQ

That was Mach 3 point something. These mach speeds are somewhat miss leading as they are a ratio of the speed of the object compared to the speed of sound in the same fluid. These Mach speed records tend to be set at high altitudes where the air is thin and therefore less resistance and a slower speed for sound.

What is the fastest aircraft these days and how fast are the particle accelerators moving a proton or any other sub atomic particle?

Doesn't the X-15 still hold the speed record?

Nope. It's a lifting body aircraft, a UAV, about 30% scaled, with about a 25 foot wingspan (I didn't measure it, but I leaned against it while talking to a friend, retiring from the Navy, at Pax River Museum, who was leaving his post as CO of the Pax River NAval Air Test Facility, Maintenance Wing. The bird was parked in the museum.), which uses SCRAMjet technology, and has flown at (I think this is the officially released speed, I may be off a little) Mach 5.3.

Of course, how high it was flying at the time, and what the atmospheric conditions were, I don't know. The Navy didn't bother to say, and I'm pretty sure its because most people would only be confused by the "Mach-Relativity" issues we take for granted.

It is expected, and nothing in the tests caused anyone to doubt it, that SCRAMjet technology will push the same bird up to speeds in the Mach10-Mach12 range. Other, more refined shapes and designs, could push that further. Nothing yet looks like it limits the ability of the SCRAMjet to just keep on feeding its appetite, by eating ever more atmosphere, and spitting it out. Think of that bird as a baby with a limitless appetite, and the ability to just keep moving faster and faster, to burn off the ingested calories. I doesn't grow fatter, just faster.

I'm confused, this was 4 years ago. Ok that's un-manned, but what about the HL-10 ? ( Don't savage me too bad, I'm but a poor novice !). Until I read your post, I though all Mach numbers were adjusted to set baseline conditions (height etc), so I've learned something here. Mach 10 + must be pretty unforgiving if something goes wrong.

HMMM. No savage here. That doesn't LOOK like the same one I leaned on, but, for my sins (and failing memory), the details look right, including the speed. Maybe I have bad memory AND failing eye-sight, and/or was looking at an unflown model from the same program. And it WAS a few years ago, so depending on when that mentioned test took place, THAT one might have been the one I saw, and it may no longer exist. I have never been to Pax River since that retirement party, and I doubt that the program was Navy only, given its pure experimental nature, the fact that both AF and Navy want to fly higher, faster, farther (along with NASA and who knows how many other agencies). In fact, its probable that the one I saw was in a Navy museum mostly because if it flew out over the ocean (as the successful test did) the Navy would have provided the telemetry monitoring and tracking platforms.

As far as the HL-10 goes, it IS a lifting body, but as noted was not as fast as the X-43a. So I guess as far as manned birds go, the X-15 is still fastest among the atmospheric only types (as opposed to the SPACE shuttle, huh?), and the HL-10 is the fastest in that category among the lifting body types. I think its safe to say that lifting body aerodynamics are getting a good workout in the shuttle on re-entry, and providing a lot of VERY useful data for extreme speed conditions, so the HL-10 probably doesn't see a lot of sky anymore. But the lifting body concept is still going strong, since when you are flying at extreme IN-ATMOSPHERE speeds, you don't need a lot of lift, and any wing that can lift you from a rolling start is almost always going to generate that lift at the expense of drag. Lifting bodies are low-lift/low-drag, but can only really get stable, for that reason, at high speeds.

All of which begs the question "So how in the world are we ever going to develop a plane that can take off in under 25,000 feet (LOOOONNNGGGG runway!) and still fly at high mach numbers, since we can't put a wings on a lifting body without defeating the purpose of the lifting body".

Buehler. Buehler? Anybody?

I remember reading about Rail Guns under development quite some time ago. At the time, they were using plastic cubes as projectiles, but they had a thin film of gold on one side - something to do with the passing of the current between the rails. I suspect that (or it's current equivelent) is what is leaving the fiery trail in the video.

I also recall reading about the early stages of development of the rail gun. Basically DARPA was funding it so that various research groups at Universities such as Texas A&M would eventually have competitions and shootouts to show off their new toy.

The concept is to use a non conductive projectile such as plastic/nylon, etc... and have a conductive outer shell. The canon is non conductive and has multiple spiral electrode sets built into the walls. Each set of conductive spiral electrode sets has it's own HV high current power supplies that charge up large capacitors. The projectile is placed into the cannon, the breach is closed and a burst of compressed air lauches the plastic shell. As the shell passes by the first set of spiral electodes the capacitor based power discharges through the conductive outer layer of the projectile vapouizing it ibto a highly conductive plasma that will conduct and discharge the other electrode sets as the projectile passes through the gun barrel. Each successive set of elctrodes discharging further accelerate the projectile. What you are seeing from the gun barrel is likely the product of a vapourized conductor turned into a hot plasma which is starting to melt the projectile. Initial tests were problematic as the projectiles were disintegrating due to friction in the atmosphere.

This kind of research has been going on for at least 15 years to my knowledge. They also developed some interesting capacitor charge systems along the way. I can Imagine taking out a tank with a ceramic projectile with those speeds and high kinetic energy. You still have to worry about the cannon barrel or the HV capacitors exploding. Lethal stuff !...

Laserlover, you sound like you know what you are talking about. Another poster above, he sounded like he knew what he was talking about too, claims the following: .

"To all, unfortunately the film is a deception. The "rail gun" in the film is a Navy 155 battleship cannon. It uses conventional propellant. Notice the blackened char on the rear hatch, and the distance the sabot is inserted into the barrel."

Do you disagree?

Ah, guys... Didn't any of you read what DragonFarmer had to say?! That was definitely not a rail gun!!!

The gun fired may not have been an actual rail gun but the principle is the same. It's use would still be for naval gunfire support only the range would be greatly increased.

There would also be an issue as to guidance accuracy. The round without any kind of maneuvering system would be fired and in free flight and over a range of 400 miles a miscalculation would throw that round way off target. Just the thickness of a pencil mark could create enough of an error to throw the projectile a couple miles off target. This would require a new concept for an army spotter to make adjustments other then Right 4 Drop 3.

referring to the earliest posts,could it be sabotage?

I wonder if the smell of OZONE will ever replace the smell of cordite and napalm.

As stated by Dragon...the picture is in my opinion unrelated to the story. Either it was released by the military this way or Live Science went looking for a picture to attach to the story to make it more eye catching.

If you go back and look closely at the video clip it becomes clear that there is no wiring or anyhting high tech to indicate that this is anything more than a naval cannon. If this is a test of a rail gun there would just have to be more evidence of a high tech venue, something associated with a lab. Since they display the entire length of the supossed rail gun there would clearly be evidence of the various electromagnetic assemblies necessary to accelerate the shell. There is nothing.

The fiery trail is what one would associate with a traditional explosive chemical propellant.

All very disappointing.

Yes you're right about the wiring.

I saw film on the actual device. The Engineer pointed out the bolts holding it together as being high tension rated and even those would be torn apart during firing. The housing was long with a lot of bolts running down the length of it.

They stated that it would be a major issue building a ship that could house the device and sustain the heat produced by it.

Firing an old fashioned 5" round or the rail gun is still the same principle. It is launching a projectile with no guidance system. The only thing that changes is there is no need for adding an explosive to the projectile and the range is greatly increased.

Now we are cooking. This looks like a railgun firing as opposed to the video that came out with Live Science.

In fact when looking at the range of videos on YouTube many are labeled, as the Live Science was, "rail gun" and I believe incorrectly. The long straight barrell of the cannon as opposed to a rail gun with all its cabling is an absolute giveaway that you are looking at a bogus video.

48 comments later...The high speed video showed no fiery trail in the real railgun test.

Thank you Vandarve for your timely post.

I worked on this project in the late 80's here in Austin. (The University was spearheading much of the project.) Component level manufacture of machined plastic components.

It comes in and out of the news pretty regularly. The stories sure were flying about this thing back in the day. I think I will do a little research when the head cold subsides.

It was rumored that one of the assemblies we were making was actually a projectile. A two part aluminum and G-10 component. About the size of a Twinkie.

cr3

I bet your head cold doesn't get any better for some time to come.

You may be right about the head cold. If you are implying something other than that it is missed on me.

The University of Texas at Austin was heavily involved in both the rail gun project and the super-collider in Waxahachie. Our small plastics company did a good bit of work on these projects as a result.

One of the components we were making was a G-10 disk about 25" in diameter, with pie shaped cut outs which was a cable harness/tray. I helped the engineering department with the fixturing needed for the manufacturing and machining of the difficult bugger. There were some others too. And then there was the before mentioned Twinkie sized 2 part assembly that was rumored to be a projectile.

cr3

cough - sneeze-arrgh

Yes, I was referring to the cold... If you have what's going around, oh-boy, are you in for some fun. As far as I was able to ascertain from a doctor I know, this ain't a cold, but a viral variant of one of the flu strains this year.

No fever, no real body aches, but a persistent sinusitis, lot's of post-nasal-drip, coughing, and in my case a loss of voice.

Aren't you glad I can still type!

You just saved me 60 bucks and a trip to the doctors office. Could you send me the appropriate antibiotics?

This stuff is sweeping through Austin pretty good right now. Lots of sick ones just as you described, only I have had a slight touch of the aches.

Went in to the office for an hour this morning and had to do an about face. Hopes are high for tomorrows attempt.

No joke, I really know how you're feeling. I too, am going to make an attempt to be back in the office tomorrow, so good luck.

As far as meds are concerned, Dr. said MucinexDM and Claritin. Yes, I said the same thing "This isn't an allergy," but the Dr. said take it anyway...

I do have antibiotics, but that's for a different thing - I damn near chopped one of my fingers off, and had to go in for sewing. While there, I asked him about the virus, hence the recommendation. My antibiotics are because they're afraid I'd get gangrene!!!

With 3000+ posts how do you possible get time to work for someone else. I thought you must be a consultant or an insultant or something.

BAB

I've actually been at it now for awhile. And as much as I hate to admit it, at least a part of my social life is connected to CR4.

Oh BAB.

One day you'll look back and say "I remember when I only had posted 136 times".