‘Record’ rail gun test planned

[unhappycamper]

‘Record’ rail gun test planned
By Zachary M. Peterson - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jan 29, 2008 17:48:23 EST

The Navy plans a “record-breaking” test shot of its developmental electromagnetic railgun Thursday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va.

The gun fires a projectile with electricity, rather than gunpowder. A shell is launched at Mach 7 through the electromagnetic rails into the atmosphere for about one minute, flies out of the atmosphere for four minutes, and then descends to Earth toward its target at Mach 5 in approximately one minute. The projectile is guided using the Global Positioning System.

In November, defense contractor BAE Systems delivered a 32-megajoule laboratory gun and launcher to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren. A joule is the work needed to produce one watt of energy for one second — a megajoule is 1 million joules. Eventually, the Navy wants to produce a 64-megajoule railgun that will be able to hit targets on land from over 200 nautical miles away.

The test firing Thursday will expend far less energy than the lab gun is designed to handle, but will exceed the eight megajoule output attained in a previous test.

“More than 75 ( railgun ) firings have occurred at the Dahlgren facility this year, but this firing event is the next step forward in the development of this technology as the gun will be fired at over 10 ( megajoules ) of energy — a power level never before achieved by an ( railgun ),” according to a statement by the Office of Naval Research.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/01/navy_railgun_test_080129w/



uhc comment: Previous thread on the BAE rail gun --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=259&topic_id=10074