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RailGunShot

It'southward been almost a decade since the US Navy conducted its kickoff demonstration of a prototype electromagnetic railgun, and the technology has advanced significantly in the last x years. The Navy is currently considering whether to proceed with at-sea tests of its railgun applied science, or canceling those tests in favor of funding increased R&D and expanding the number of platforms that might one day adopt the weapons.

Equally with a number of cut-edge war machine technologies, there's some degree of controversy over whetherthe Navy's Hyper Velocity Projectile (HVP) and electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) are worth the cost and expense of their own development. While the HVP is intended to be used as ammunition for the EMRG, it's not a requirement — in fact, the HVP is designed to be fired from a broad range of platforms already and can be fired past conventional guns. The table beneath, courtesy of The Strategist, shows the diverse combinations and costs of various weapons. AGS stands for Advanced Gun System (currently mounted on Zumwalt-class destroyers) while LRLAP is the Long Range Land Assault Projectile.

Development on the HPV seems to be proceeding fairly smoothly, and while the projectile would have to be integrated into the weapon systems of existing Navy cruisers, that job does non seem to present any unusual challenges. The larger question dogging both the railgun project and its ammunition is whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

ECMG and HPV: Potential game-changers

Price, ironically, is at the heart of the ECMG and HPV evolution programs. In the past, we've talked near how guided missile systems face high barriers partly considering the applied science and expense of building a missile that can hit another missile is much higher than building a missile and launching information technology at someone to brainstorm with. If it costs $1 million to block a $x,000 missile, yous've got a serious problem. The second issue is the limited number of SAM (surface-to-air missiles) that any unmarried transport can carry. These two bug are referred to every bit the cost substitution ratio and the depth of magazine.

RailgunPrototype

Big gun. Biiiiiiiiig gun.

An HPV round fired from a railgun leaves the barrel at Mach 7.v (Mach 3 if fired from a conventional gun) and is theoretically fast plenty to counter a anti-ship cruise missile. Replacing expensive SAM batteries with projectile weapons could dramatically cut costs and improve the chance of a ship surviving a pitched battle. Meanwhile, an ECMG, one time fully functional, could deliver rounds at distances far larger than any other projectile — and a xx-32MJ railgun could deliver a serious punch.

HPV1

One meaning question about railguns, however, is whether the Navy tin actually retrofit its current cruiser lineup to use them. The power requirements for the Navy's side by side-generation weapon system require a 25MW power capacity. The Navy's Zumwalt-grade destroyers can supply this, having been designed with 58MW of spare electric capacity and the ability to chop-chop shift its distribution between propulsion and other on-lath systems. Unfortunately, toll overruns led the Navy to aggressively downsize its plans for the Zumwalt class from 32 ships downward to three. This means the Navy would accept to detect a way to shoehorn a 25MW weapon into the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers — and they currently but provide 7.8MW of power full. Retrofitting them for railguns might prove extremely hard.

It'south unclear if railguns will show to be decisive battleground weapons, a fringe adequacy carried by just three US Navy vessels, or an expensive boondoggle. Then again, the programme seems to be in absolutely pristine condition compared with the F-35 — and then I guess it's all in how you choose to compare.