Talk-Polywell.org

Guided rounds are nerm term. One of the nice things about railgun is you can control the accel unlike a chemical gun.

Really, the main problem is the big bore cyclic rates. And that is a heating and, more importantly, pulsed power generation issue.

Smaller bores can do the high cyclic rates better. And you need cyclic rate for high speed and maneuvering targets.
One mitigation to this is the idea of Stupid Pebbles. It is the polar opposite of the Brilliant Pebbles concept. You toss out a round that is triggered or pre-timed to dispense a cloud of pellets doing Mach 5-7. Very bad news for something coming the other way.

this is old but it get the idea across
http://www.funker530.com/video-of-elect ... -u-s-navy/

A swarm of "stupid pebbles" that break into shrapnel once above sensible atmosphere could make big trouble for an incoming missile. More so if the missile is counting on decoys or stealth on the active warhead. The same weapon could take on a pesky LEO satellite if political factors favor it.

If your rounds are cheap and high rate of fire very desirable to saturate a target area, it becomes time to think about stuff like water cooling for your gun.

I'd have thought they were already using liquid cooling, if heat dissipation is such an issue...

Pretty sure someone who knows Navy implied it at some point on T-P. That ships and subs use ocean water for cooling. I reckon it's pretty hard not to.

The Mk.75 76mm gun system uses active sea water cooling due to its high rates of fire capability (>80 rounds minute).
The Mk.45 5 inch gun systems do not actively cool. The have a rate of fire of about 20 rds/minute (dependent on round type and consistency).

Smaller caliber mounts are air cooled as well.

All ships use seawater for cooling of HM&E and propulsion systems. It is not hard to get seawater to a gun mount. It is more hard to keep up on the maintenance needs of doing so.
Railgun could well end up using a deionized freshwater cooling system that in turn dumps heat to seawater. Or it could run off its own dedicated refrigerant system. I am not sure what is in the works on that end. I do know that the bigger bore and higher rate of fire requirements will drive a cooling neccessity. The railgun system runs inherantly hot by its nature. And heat is bad for system life.

paperburn1 wrote:With a few tweaks we already have a guided version by lazing or GPS.

Lasing requires LOS and can be spoofed with other lasers. GPS prototype spoofers exist.

Skipjack wrote:[All of this and the fact that Hitlers insanity contributed to many of the leading Wehrmacht officers conspiring against Hitler. It is a shame that the allies did not support this cause more. The war would have been over in 1943, millions of lives could have been saved.

Well, either that and the war would have continued being run by competent, sane people that would have cost more lives and treasure.

It is as difficult to predict the alternate past as it is to predict the future.

KitemanSA wrote:

paperburn1 wrote:With a few tweaks we already have a guided version by lazing or GPS.

Lasing requires LOS and can be spoofed with other lasers. GPS prototype spoofers exist.

AN/AAQ-28(V) LITENING, and GAJT-700ML Next question

I would be very interested to hear the foliks analysis of this new weapon.

http://gizmodo.com/the-sub-that-took-ru ... socialflow

Seems to me if this were designed today, it would be designed to launch while submerged. I thought LockMart had already proved that capability about a dozen years ago. Wasn't there even vid on youtube of such launches?

KitemanSA wrote:

Skipjack wrote:[All of this and the fact that Hitlers insanity contributed to many of the leading Wehrmacht officers conspiring against Hitler. It is a shame that the allies did not support this cause more. The war would have been over in 1943, millions of lives could have been saved.

Well, either that and the war would have continued being run by competent, sane people that would have cost more lives and treasure.

No, they would have ended the war. That's why they went to negotiate a peace with the British. They knew that the war was unwinnable, not matter how competent a leader you are.

GIThruster wrote:I would be very interested to hear the foliks analysis of this new weapon.

http://gizmodo.com/the-sub-that-took-ru ... socialflow

Seems to me if this were designed today, it would be designed to launch while submerged. I thought LockMart had already proved that capability about a dozen years ago. Wasn't there even vid on youtube of such launches?

Wow! A spherical bow array! Very advanced...I wish we had thought of that in the 1960s

Or even the 1950s...



Better pic:
http://www.subguru.com/images/637-plan-small.jpg

There is no-one close in experience and capability for submarines.

This is the sort of things we do to be in a league of our own, and note how long we have been at this;

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/us ... ealth.html

The new Russian boat is a 1980s design. It is not really worth a crap.

I seem to recall one of the big deals with the Virginia class is the phased multi-frequency array that spans most of its hull. Spherical does indeed sound like a step backward, as does the requirement to surface in order to launch cruise missiles.