Then you should also include the cost of an equivalent C4ISR/OCA/DCA/SEAD capability to the cost of your gun system.  Aircraft don't just drop bombs. 

I'd just like to see tests showing electronics (any electronics) can survive a realistic railgun launch.  Otherwise, railguns will be relegated to "Phalanx on steroids" status. 

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Again, just my opinion.

 

 

Herald

 

 

Still, not bad.

And when I block out all the anti-political conspiracist nature of a good many of my posts, I can come off as somewhat knowledgeable enough, or at least heading down the right track (mostly, a well-read jack-of-all-trades,master-of-none type).

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As to the idea of "bagged capacitors", vircators, and whatnot,

I'm actually cueing off Hollywood for this next one, mainly George Lucas and his Star Wars universe:

 

For those of us who've seen the movies, and are into it enough to have gotten some of the Essential Guide to... (Vehicles and Vessels, Technology, Alien Races, etc) books, as well as some of those other science-behind-the-magic tech whitepapers and interviews that real-life professors, scientists, and think tanks put out,

here's a good one on the tech behind those guns we saw in the ships during the battle over Coruscant at the beginning of Episode 3, Revenge of the Sith.

 

In a few scenes, we see battle droids and clone troopers manning massive coast-defense-artillery-sized cannons in their ships, firing broadsides at each other.

The guns appear to be firing laser beams, energy bolts, or some kind of particle energy burst,

and then actually ejecting a spent case from the breech after firing.

Some of the Star Wars books actually make a good explanation of it (pseudo-science aside).

 

It seems guns along this line are, in effect, massive magnetic cannon, whose shells contain all the necessary reaction components. Upon firing, the shell is actually consumed in a miniature atomic detonation, and the magnetic cannon compresses and forward-directs the explosion thru the barrel (another very intense magnetic coil), finally emitting the discharge out the end like any typical human-created firearm (complete with all the mechanisms to compensate for the recoil).

The on-target effect, by the Star Wars universe's description, is a multi-kiloton-yield energy discharge/detonation into the target upon impact. (note that not all lasers and turbolasers- the battleship guns of Star Wars- are described to function in that manner, just heavy particle cannon and other broadside weaponry. The seige guns, in effect.)

 

Another explanation is that each round of ammunition contains a near-critical-mass isotope, and upon being fired at such high velocities from those magnetic cannon, at impact the warhead crushes/compresses enough to cross the critical mass threshold, and an ensuing atomic blast occurs (again, in the few-to-multi-kiloton-yield range), thus vaporizing a good chunk of matter in the immediate vicinity.

 

To me, it almost sounds plausible (even if currently light years beyond our technology): magnetic coils compressing an explosive effect (or critical mass projectile) to be directed over a short range and catastrophically disperse upon connecting with an object beyond the barrel's magnetic confinement field (which is projected a distance from the end of the gun to prevent the detonation/release from occuring too close to the launch platform).

 

Almost seems to me that, our current railgun attempts at using coils to accelerate solid slugs as compared to these Star Wars magnetic cannon ideas, is like comparing the earliest gunpowder firearms to where we are with railguns now.

A half millennium of improvements and refinements has given us exponential magnitudes of range and power from projectile weapons.

 

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Quote    Reply

Lucass is a decade late and about two entire technology cycles behind................................................

 

A.F href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2F" target="_blank">http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2F>

Same system ultimately, 1=1.

Herald

Rocket sleds don't produce gigantic EM fields, and they probably wouldn't even produce the same levels of acceleration as a railgun, due to their longer impulse.Now if we're back to talking about your 4km long railgun warship, guess the impulse might be similar.

1. The 4 kilometer railgun is for an ICBRG and is LANDBASED, no ship can be built that big that could survive the sheer forces involved.
2. A travelling electromagnetic charge through the 10 meters of the planned 64 Mjoule gun can be radio-opaqued cold by faraday caging the sabot that will be the travelling cage of the actual round. so the electronics inside the railgun will be completely shielded from an electromagenetic effect until it unlocks and drops away after launch.
3. Thus the question becomes package acceleration and deceleration. In this case the rocket sled tests are directly on point, as when you slam a physics package into a block of concrete, punch all the way through, and expect it to perform its function exactly as designed, at the other end of the whole interval at MACH 9; then you very much set the goal for the identical requirement for your 64 Mjoule railgun launched guided projectile.

 

Herald

Maybe so.

But it makes one wonder how "in the ballpark" a good many scifi movies may have been with all their "what if?" tech.

 

I wonder if someone came up with a concept for a scifi movie, and it ended up coincidentally being very close to some black program, would the government intervene because of the sensitivity issues of the technology?

(perhaps that would lead to an admission of application (or guilt) by the government, no more "neither confirm nor deny" excuses.)

Or would the governmenmt instead just go along and play it off, using the movie/TV show/story as a plausible deniability, citing "anyone who has heard/seen/observed such aircraft/technologies/concepts must have been under the influence of the aforementioned story perking their imaginations"...?

 

Or even, how much could the gov't/military play off as disinformation to distract snoopers from what's actually going on?

 

Hmmm, the plot thickens!

 

...Still, nice links btw. Thx again Herald.

(that "Do Not Circulate" on the pdf  got me, until I saw the 1975 date!)   

My point is, if we're going to compare total costs of aircraft delivered SDBs to ship launched railgun projectiles, then we really need to look at total capability costs.    The railgun requires ISR assets to find targets, observe fires and talk to ground forces.  The aircraft can do those things on its own.

No the aircraft can't, or we wouldn't be using forward air controllers.

Herald