I caught the orange man talking on the radio, as I am not american I knew it was going to be something stupid but this? I thought it was a joke, an onion like thing, but nooooo. What sealed it is when in the very speech about the new 100x battleships, trump stated that he did not know why the us stopped using battleships…
Yes, for longer range shots. For the middle of your range, you can’t “aim up” that would not hit the target at the speeds needed. Lobbing rounds with a railgun is mostly worthless and can be done, as you have said, with a normal naval gun. So take your diagram (that has the labels wrong) and compare to an old one, from when battleships where still in use.
See you are assuming that all ballistic curves are the same but the old 16 inch guns (for example) shot at 762 m/s vs the railgun that shoots at 2,220 m/s so the railgun will be more “flat” then the naval gun. Still a curve yes, but one that is now awkward when at sea. From what I was seeing this issue can be mitigated by moving the gun higher on the ship (its not by much the dart clips the waves) but that introduces new issues. The distance before something is “lost” over the horizon at sea is between 5 and 10 km (based on the height of the ship), at this range the railgun is still mostly going “straight” (its not but the drop is not enough yet). So if you want to hit something say 12 km away (in range of normal naval guns fyi) you would need to shoot so high that you would be putting the dart into a sub orbital trajectory and without guidance be lucky to hit anything (and good luck making a system that can withstand air at sea level when traveling at mach 6).
As a projectile falls, it is accelerated by the force of gravity and gains speed.
The projectile fired by the railgun is GPS guided. What you’re describing is literally the exact situation it is designed for. It is intended to leave Earth’s atmosphere.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/emrg.htm
You’re simply incorrect about how any of this works.
Yes in a vacuum. Good thing the sea is famous for the lack of atmosphere. Not like the projectile exiting and re entering the atmosphere will have any effect on it after all.
Please see the source in my comment above that I have included.
That link is literally an older report and is a section of the report I linked before. That is the theory from before they tested and found they could not meaningfully guide the dart once in flight and they would need the dart itself to be more steerable (they are not as of unclassified data now). They also have (in the later report) listed missile interception as being a potential future use case that currently they don’t have the accuracy for. The issue remains that shooting a projectile into space to hit something not very far away is less then ideal and the project was killed in 2021, only to be brought back now.
From another page on the railgun project: Like the Medieval search for the Holy Grail, the USN’s search for a “Super Weapon” ultimately proved to be unsuccessful. In July 2021, the USN cancelled the Railgun development program, citing unresolved problems with barrel life and a low rate of fire. The Navy had spent about $500 million to develop the weapon. Future R&D funding will now go to other weapon systems such as anti-missile lasers.
This is false and not mentioned by your source.
Lol.
You were wrong about something. It’s really not a big deal. It’s worse to make stuff up to try to seem right and post “sources” that don’t even mention what you’re talking about.
Its right in the first document I linked That is still outdated from 2019. But no please lets keep going about how I am wrong due to you posting a promotional article from the people who are selling the system that does not address anything I stated. Or you can just say the word physics again, that would I am sure help us come to an understanding.
We do both agree that the railgun system was scrapped for good reason, just not the same reasons.
No, it isn’t. If it was, then you could simply quote the relevant text and prove you are right. I’ll wait.
Again, completely false:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/org/index.html