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The army already has these invented,they have one invented that can take out a whole country,Frying every single electric device in that country.

thanks for posting

I'm surprised its taken this long, it seems to me they have been working on this a long long time in many different types of projects.

Well if they are finally admitting they have this tech, I wonder how far advanced there actual capabilties really are.

Well I can tell you one thing for certain, the project is a British Rail-gun design from BAE, it underwent extensive training at the Dundrennan Range in Scotland for a few years and even the mid-level prototypes had a FAR greater range and exit velocity than is stated here!

I watched a test fire in 2008, pretty impressive with sooo much kinectic energy focussed into a solid projectile (no propellant needed of course), even medium sized target vehicles (tanks) are pretty much vaporised. Damage to naval vessels would be catastrophic even to Nimitz class carriers.

There was talk of a larger version undergoing tests which was exceeding 1500Km at Mach 6.5/7.0+ but I know they were having problems with stable power supplies (it needs a small nuclear reactor to achieve optimum fire rates)

The final version which was pretty large scale was being explored as a cheap satellite launching system as high launching angles can achieve sub-orbital trajectories.

Ahh railguns, thats pretty impressive but what of the
lifespan of the rails? as there prone to failure because
of the nature of the design.
a one shot wonder no doubt. i do hope they perfect this
as the application for use in space will be awesome.

This is where the technology is headed as conventional
explosive propellants will not be phased out for a long long
time if at all as there just so less complex and cost effective.

But the Rail Gun does have it's uses!
as stated by another poster there use to get a payload
into orbit cheaply is another no-brainer.

on a side note, quite an interesting hobby the whole
electromagnetic Rail/coil gun design.many amateur
hobbyist have built these things with great results
and the components are readily available and not
really that expensive or complex.

I have been toying with the idea of building at least a coil
gun just for the fun of it.maybe i will.

Originally posted by whipsandchainsamerica
The army already has these invented,they have one invented that can take out a whole country,Frying every single electric device in that country.

NO that would be the EMP bomb(electro magnetic pulse)
or the Flux compression device.

Do do your home work.

.. hands down Japanese.
And who ever voted for india need to get some real info...

Originally posted by ANOMALY502
Well if they are finally admitting they have this tech, I wonder how far advanced there actual capabilties really are.

I totally agree it's scary to think if they're admitting this now imagine how far the technology has come. Electromagnets have been around for a while and i'm sure that they're not just getting to this point now but who knows i could be wrong either way it is some seriously awesome technology. The possibilities for this tech are exciting to me especially when i think about the future of space warfare this could be a primitive version of a weapon that could be a main weapon one day.

Given the amount of Blue on Blue incidents even when they can see the target, good luck to them hitting the right one with this gun.

I am sure it's enemies will soon find and exploit a method for defeating it's seeker head

Well from the discussions I've had with BaE personnel the only defence against it appears to be putting something with sufficient mass & density to absorb or deflect the projectile, this would have to be done at a large enough distance from the intended target to induce a miss shot.

There is no guidance mechanism built in to the current projectiles - solid lump of metal, static targets are pretty much toast unless there is a competing rail gun as a defence system but that makes the Patriot anti-missle system (itself hopelessly inaccurate in the real world) look like a toy , closing velocities would be horrendous!

As for the rail degradation, I understand that the latest prototypes use an "active" rail system that reduces the rail wear by a massive amount, maybe upto 3 shots per rail! when you consider the lack of propellant in the projectile and the potential damge inflicted, replacing a set of pretty simply rails every 3 shots may be considered acceptable.

No doubt, the Chinese, Russians & Indians will soon have operational systems, anybody with nuclear powered destroyers won't find it too hard to make one work. For any military equipment targets, the countermeasure is early detection of firing, but computing trajectory details could be fun from orbital platforms.