Items tagged with Railgun
Just as the U.S. Navy looks to scrap its incredibly powerful railgun, the Chinese Navy have apparently installed a railgun of their own onto one of warships. A leaked image appears to give us our first glimpse at this immensely powerful weapon, but no real details are known about the Chinese weapon at this time. Image via NewScientist The image appears to show parts of the barrel of the railgun wrapped in camouflage (sort of like what we see automotive manufacturers using to hide the lines of their new vehicles during testing). If the weapon in the images is in fact a railgun, it would make China the first nation to install a railgun on a warship. The U.S. Navy has been testing railguns for years,...
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The U.S. Navy has spent half a billion dollars working to perfect a new type of projectile weapons technology that could be used in current and future naval ships. That gun is the railgun, which has always sounded like something out of a video game or science fiction. Unfortunately, it looks as though the project is possibly going to be scrapped after all the money and time was put into the research and development of the weapon. The strange part is that the weapon isn't possibly being scrapped because it doesn’t work; the railgun works quite well. The beast can toss a projectile down range travelling at 4,800 mph for distances of up to 100 miles. The problem so far is that the high-tech...
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A railgun is the stuff of science-fiction and video games. Instead of firing an explosively fired projectile, a railgun uses an electromagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet to several times the speed of sound. On Friday, at 11 AM today, the Navy set a record, by producing a 33-megajoule firing, more than three times the previous record it set in 2008. Rear Adm. Nevin Carr, chief of naval research, said in a Navy report on the test: "The 33-megajoule shot means the Navy can fire projectiles at least 110 nautical miles, placing sailors and Marines at a safe standoff distance and out of harm's way, and the high velocities achievable are tactically relevant for air and missile defense....
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