Everybody is talking about the speed of the projectile being the reason for this weapons development. This isn't the only reason. A ship's biggest weakness is its magazine. A hit to the magazine usually means instant death for the entire ship. Railguns require no gunpowder, which means no explosive magazine. This essentially removes the greatest weakness of a battleship.
Vinco Clavis Was going to make this point, and saw your comment. :)Not to mention carrying energy for propellant in the form of nuclear radiation is much more efficient and sustainable than hydrocarbons. Also, you get to carry much more ammo, since 40-60% of the weight of the shell is in the shell casing. It really is an all around positive gain.
deepblue2 well then the entire ship is a dud. if the ship is hit with an emp, fire control goes out, turret rotation goes out, radar, navigation, steering, flight control. the whole ship is dead in the water (literally). who cares if you can still detonate the powder charge on a conventional round if you can't aim the damned thing? who cares if the gun itself is taken out, if the rest of the systems that fire it are gone too?
Good points from both deepblue2 and DesertFoxCXVII . Electronic warfare may soon become the most important deciding factors in not only naval combat, but land, air and nuclear.
I heard that the U.S. Navy is developing a new kind of rail gun. The plans are to design it for field operations. Because it is important for it to be used at night, special symbols are engraved on the handle containing the operating instructions. This advanced project has earned the code name... Braille Gun
+TheQuackSavior metal gear solid is just a video game and i dont think any country want to product that type of weapon like a mech +nuclerwarhead?I think any aircarft better than that
The first rail gun was invented in World War II by a German scientist with the name of Joachim Hänsler (in 1944), but the first "electric gun" (the predecessor of the rail gun) was invented (in 1918) by a french scientist with the name of Louis Octave Facuhon-Villeplee
Look at world war II all the advancements we enjoy today pretty much come from that war. From the microwave to the TV are all based on world war II technology.
Since this will be mounted on a ship I'm guessing they will hook it to the ships power supply. They are nuclear powered so I'm sure they will be fine. They said it will require so much power that the ship will have to stop its propellers.
Dustin Linhart 1... only carriers and subs are currently nuclear powered. 2please enlighten us as to how your know the exact output of a naval reactor is not enough for this. im sure the navy would love you to cite your source as well. 3 a huge bank of huge capacitors will be used either way because these arnt kids fucking around with a nail wrapped in wires attached to a battery... it was designed by top of their class electric engineers
This is the English 32MJ railgun, which is currently the most powerful in the world. The power requirements are astronomical. I could only imagine the size of the capacitor bank required to fire such a gun.
Can someone kindly explain to me why this is better than an ordinary gun currently on ships? Does it pack a bigger punch, more environmentally friendly or something?
the "bullet" is fired at much higher velocities, so it can travel farther, pack a higher punch, is less prone to wind drift and almost impossible to intercept while being more compact (more ammunition storable) and it relies in kinetic force, not an explosive warhead. so your battleship does not explode when someone hits the ammunition storage. it would be even possive to launch cargo into space (or shoot down satellites, missiles, space vehicles...).
Dominic Schulz Hell, you can USE THE AMMO STOWAGE SPACES FOR ARMOR. Think about this fact for a minute. In all the history of naval warfare with gunpowder, ships had to carry armor to protect their ammunition ; Now the ammunition itself would be able to protect the ship.
No need for gunpowder, just electricity to fire the round. This can penetrate reinforced defenses much more easily using much cheaper ammunition (or projectiles in this case). Much longer travel distance and current tests show its capable of firing a projectile up to speeds of Mach 7 (7 times the speed of sound.)
Bunker86 you said "just electricity to fire the round", will that is the problme with this technology, It needs a lot of electricity to creat a Magnaticfield to fire the projectile, ships reactors can fire this gun, BUT it can only do so for a few shots and then they well need a new reactor. this is the same problme the world is facing in every modern technology ( not powerful enough electricity sources) smart phones, electrice cars and robots are good example for why electricity is still not a replacment for Gas, gun powder and fire. untill someone invent a stronge enough mobile electricity source then it will be a Great idea to use this gun and other technologys. P.S: this is why tell today I did not buy a smartphone.
In the game Mass Effect 2, the starships use mass accelerators akin to railguns (except they use a fictional force dervived from element zero rather than electromagnatism). One of the conversations you overhear in-game is a drill sergeant telling his soldiers to aquire a firing solution on the ships and never fire by sight because if it misses, the round will keep going and eventually hit something no matter where or when. The above line is his final quote.
I feel like some people aren't appreciating what happened here. that projectile went somewhere around Mach 7 by using magnets. that's like five times faster than the round shot from an m16. obviously there's ground that needs too be made but this test is extremely awesome as far as what can be done with projectile weapons in the future.
This just does not look right. A railgun, or magnetic projectile cannon, would use a magnetic field to pull a ferric object along a path at increasing speed until the object left the tube, similar to what happens in a particle accelerator. there should be no explosion or flash, just a large boom upon impact, along with the debris created. if the gun and the projectile are large enough, then you will also have a sonic boom as the projectile breaks the sound barrier. Such a weapon can easily be mounted on a ship and using computer controlled capacitors, fire an object weighing 50 pounds at over 5X the speed of sound. Anything in its path would be either destroyed by the impact force, or suffer a massive hole and a high level of destruction.
Shock heating, the same effect which causes the "fire" trail on a spacecraft during re-entry. The object it moving so fast that the air does not have time to move out of the projectile's way, so it is compressed until it reaches a critical point where the energy stored by compression is enough to displace the air, and as it decompresses, heat and light are created by the expanding air. It basically is a string of explosive decompression fueled by velocity and air density alone.
An explosion is a release of a large amount of energy. This can be achieved with a chemical or nuclear reaction, but as you saw it can also be achieved by having a lot of kinetic energy. You don't need volatile (explosive) chemicals to make an explosion. The explosion you see in the video is the release of a high amount of kinetic energy. What you just said is like saying stuff can't burn when it falls through the atmosphere because no one lit flammable gas on it, however we know that to be untrue.
The rail gun doesn't use magnetic differences to accelerate objects. If I remember correctly, it uses the current passing through the object to accelerate. The object almost certainly needs an existing forward momentum before it contacts the rails or it would weld itself to them, or melt. Either by explosive or linear accelerators. Although, there most certainly are magnetic interactions since there is current.
KyuzoMugenUndPanzer that's their nickname, the most odst of in this case "helljumpers" became spartan IV's Thinking that you know everything pfoe! ;) (New Spartans vs MC= MC r3kt)
It's a efficient gun that can fire rounds faster,farther,and larger then any gun powder gun.The power it has is absolutely devastating.It is the future of weapons.
When finished, this thing'll have enough firepower to shoot a GOLF BALL across 350 km, and still leave it enough momentum to take out a couple of tanks. That is f***ing badass.
Well, keep in mind that this is a proof-of-concept model more than anything else. It's not designed to do damage, but to prove that the basic mechanism by which the weapon operates actually work. A fully-functional weaponized railgun or coilgun would probably have far greater muzzle velocities, which in turn means far greater damage from even a solid projectile.
Video uploaded 6 years ago.. that railgun was mounted on a modified flat bed truck. I don't even know how long it took for that video to become Unclassified. Imagine how small those things have gotten since then... shit probably fits on a tank by now. CRAZY!
you do realise a bullet travelling over 5,400 mph is going to have a hard time changing trajectory at such a short range, even in hurricane-force winds.
This is not meant to get hate or likes, and I AM NOT trolling. But I know the inventor of the railgun personally, he's my friends uncle, and brother of their father. He's a pretty cool dude. Their family is HUGE on math and electronics, so no wonder he was able to put all this complicated stuff together
@TheYoooth Well, he is right. The MAC means Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. This happens to be a cannon, that uses rounds that are well, magnetically accelerated. The only difference is whether or not the cannons in the halo universe were coil guns, or rail guns.
Very impressive prototype, however the technology needs to mature much further. 4 main hurdles it must overcome. 1) Size 2) Cost 3) Preparation/Reload speed 4) Energy consumption Can't wait to see how this Technology progresses!
@DarkxRebelx Because the heat generated during fire is so intense that the barrel needs to be replaced after every two firings. It's incredibly ineffective, however powerful.
@Tejaswrex Because reactors are very heavy, and expensive. Plus where would you mount the gun? Also the ECM put off by the electromagnetic rails might screw with the avionics.
I'm pretty sure they did use the metric system to do the actual loading and other more serious parts of this video. Seeing as this was a video released for public viewing because it is really cool, they likely chose to use the imperial system just because it was what most of the American viewers would be familiar with.
Rail guns are one of the more exciting future technologies I think. The projectile size can be changed to suit the need, but at the requirement of a longer rails. They clearly didn't have a good reload system when this was made, I'm sure advancements have been made there. I'm sure the finished technology is a ways off, but there is a lot going for it, we just need some advancements in energy technology. To be feasible on a ship, it would likely have to be nuclear powered to be able to support more than one large rail gun. And the more you use the more energy you need, current naval warships have a lot of weapons on them, so we'd need a new type of high output energy that we just don't have yet. There's plenty of theoretical ways to power them, but I can't think of anything practical yet.
I'm actually a pacifist, I believe there's a non violent solution to any situation. However, that doesn't mean something that goes Mach 8 and can send a block of aluminum through hardened ship steel is any less interesting. Nukes are a horribly overpowered weapon, that has no place on earth because of the environmental hazards, namely the radiation, but it doesn't make the them any less interesting. E=MC2 (I can't make the right 2) is the principal behind nukes that allows them to have such a large yield from a tiny amount of material, it's really amazing how it works. But if you choose to ignore these weapons, and stick your head in the ground because violence is bad, then you're part of the problem too, you need to learn from the mistake of the past. These railguns are the future, if you sink a ship with a missile people will die, if you sink a ship with a piece of aluminum, there's a chance they can escape because there's no explosion.
@hashmash0 As a matter of fact, somebody did think it up. Look up "Project Thor". Basically, you launch a tungsten rod (anywhere between the size of a crowbar to the size of a telephone poll) from an orbital platform (such as a satellite) and it hits the ground with between enough force to kill a tank, to enough force to emulate a small nuclear explosion.
@Halomaster4life1 actually that is a common misconseption the magnetic accelerator cannon(coil gun) and the rail gun are different the m.a.c gun accelerates their projectiles through the use of magnetic coils as for the railgun it uses utilize magnetic rails to perform its task.
@twleo1975 It's not the range requirement that would dictate the power of such a weapon, it would be the penetrating power of said weapon against whatever targets they're designed to hit. In the case of a hand held weapon, it would need to penetrate armored vests and whatnot. That takes a hell of a lot of projectile velocity and is difficult to achieve via magnets without ungodly energy. A really big backpack perhaps? haha
This is in fact a rail gun. It's called Velocitas Eradico. This is clearly shown in the video at 0:18 including the words "Electromagnetic Launch Facility". The first result on Google when this name is searched is the Wikipedia page titled Railgun. I hope this puts that discussion to rest.
Defence technology runs in parallel with many other technological sectors. In fact the defence industry normally puts experimental tech into practical usage before they are released into civilian markets. Because of this we normally tend to jump forwards in innovation during war time. The second world war and cold war is a great example of this. Defence innovation normally spearheads the development of the human race as a whole.
I wouldn't call them progenitors either because we use them now anyway. In fact they are older than railguns, coilguns, and even lasers. A particle cannon, is a weaponized version of a particle accelerator. If you have an old CRT TV, then there's a particle accelerator in your house (a simple/weak one). The Large Hadron Collider is the largest one today, admittedly none of these are weapons, but during the Regan administration there were tests with particle beam weapons.
this is just a lab article to test the electromagnetic part of the gun, in service it would use a loading system similar to the one used on the 5 inch currently in service.
@superdupe8 Maybe the fact that it could shoot through you, 48 of your friends, your high school and still have enough velocity left to kill a tank. Not to mention that it uses no powder charge. It is all electricity that powers and fires the weapon so there is zero recoil and zero smoke (which makes detection of the weapon very low).
In outer space you don't need a rail gun since you are already in orbit and therefore going even faster. You just need to use a tether to slow down enough to fall from orbit into the right trajectory to hit whatever you want.
It seems to me that the biggest advantage of a rail gun is the velocities it is capable of firing projectiles. When mass moves at hyper speeds normal rules of penetration do not apply. Therefore I was a bit shocked to see that they were firing this huge projectile rather than a smaller lighter one that could have done alot more damage.
Indeed DEPLETED uranium retains very little radioactivity(though not entirely null, we're talking a tiny fraction of what is necessary for a nuclear reaction to take place.... under very specific conditions). However depleted uranium is extremely dense as David said as well as being hard and tough(as in not brittle). It's a landmark of science fiction dealing with coilguns and railguns for that reason, sometimes as a saboted penetrator. See U-238 upgrade for Marines in Star Craft c.1998.
@superdupe8 Maybe the fact that it could shoot through you, 48 of your friends, your high school and still have enough velocity left to kill a tank. Not to mention that it uses no power charge. It is all electricity that powers and fires the weapon so there is zero recoil and zero smoke (which makes detection of the weapon very low).
@HelmutVillam While we're at it add some longsword fighters to her decks and a few metres of AAA class titanium plating. Don't forget the archer missiles and nova warheads.
No, just something that doesn't look like some obscure off-the-road auto repair shop in Alabama. I worked on our high school float in a building almost identical to that one... Minus the railgun (sadly). Maybe something more like at white sands, or a big facility of some kind, or at least something with some security, but whatever, just not something that looks like where I built a high school float. Where they assemble rockets, for example, is similar but much bigger, and more clean and gleamy
@brunohm1 Yes, one could say that modern firearms today has evolved from cannons, so its a good possibility that other fancy stuff will come in more practical sizes eventually.
The modern cannon/musket :D those reload times ._.
SIenderplier autoloading systems are on the way.
Worth it. That thing has zero ballistic propulsion and can travel for miles and still be accurate.
Everybody is talking about the speed of the projectile being the reason for this weapons development.
This isn't the only reason.
A ship's biggest weakness is its magazine. A hit to the magazine usually means instant death for the entire ship.
Railguns require no gunpowder, which means no explosive magazine. This essentially removes the greatest weakness of a battleship.
Vinco Clavis Was going to make this point, and saw your comment. :)Not to mention carrying energy for propellant in the form of nuclear radiation is much more efficient and sustainable than hydrocarbons.
Also, you get to carry much more ammo, since 40-60% of the weight of the shell is in the shell casing.
It really is an all around positive gain.
Vinco Clavis until the ship is hit with an EMP. Then it's a dud.
deepblue2 well then the entire ship is a dud. if the ship is hit with an emp, fire control goes out, turret rotation goes out, radar, navigation, steering, flight control. the whole ship is dead in the water (literally). who cares if you can still detonate the powder charge on a conventional round if you can't aim the damned thing? who cares if the gun itself is taken out, if the rest of the systems that fire it are gone too?
Good points from both deepblue2 and DesertFoxCXVII . Electronic warfare may soon become the most important deciding factors in not only naval combat, but land, air and nuclear.
I heard that the U.S. Navy is developing a new kind of rail gun. The plans are to design it for field operations. Because it is important for it to be used at night, special symbols are engraved on the handle containing the operating instructions. This advanced project has earned the code name...
Braille Gun
If it was small enough you could possibly mount it on an Abrams, if power wasn't a problem.
These things are stupidly powerful; you could drive a thumbtack through an office building and it'd probably keep going.
This gun will finish being loaded when the war is over
Yep. Lol
If it is modifed to fire nuclear warhead, I'd call it Metal Gear.
But then it would get its ass kicked by a guy and a cardboard box...
***** more like it conditions you to jump under a box whenever you see one.
isn't the Temprature to high to be able to Shoot a Nuclear Warhead from a Safe Distance?
+TheQuackSavior metal gear solid is just a video game and i dont think any country want to product that type of weapon like a mech +nuclerwarhead?I think any aircarft better than that
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a railgun?
Vaporised metal has a unique smell, retired now but worked on a test range for many years and for some reason I miss it 😮
I genuinely enjoy your way of thinking.
the navy wants to have weapons from halo
best kind :D
Where do you think halo got it's ideas from about 5 years before halo they looked at a combat suit very similar to the odst suit
the fuck u think unsc is based off of? russia?
DireEpidemic Yeah, United Nations Space Command
The first rail gun was invented in World War II by a German scientist with the name of Joachim Hänsler (in 1944), but the first "electric gun" (the predecessor of the rail gun) was invented (in 1918) by a french scientist with the name of Louis Octave Facuhon-Villeplee
Anyone else find it funny that some of humanity's most elegant and fascinating feats of technology, are often advancements in weapons of war?
Look at world war II all the advancements we enjoy today pretty much come from that war. From the microwave to the TV are all based on world war II technology.
Actually yes. I am constantly amused at how much truly useful innovation comes from warfare.
squidlybytes Like, oh, idk, the internet.
Dustin Linhart and your jet planes and night vision cameras......
Yes, I do think that is funny
This was made in 2006. I can only imagine what we can make now.
SadistiklyMusical Mach 7 - 10
Do not fear the weapon, Fear the one who wields it.
THE CAPACITOR MUST BE GIGANTIC!!!!!!!!!!
And that sir is what she said.
Since this will be mounted on a ship I'm guessing they will hook it to the ships power supply. They are nuclear powered so I'm sure they will be fine. They said it will require so much power that the ship will have to stop its propellers.
Dustin Linhart capacitors can xdeliver a stonger birt current than the ship power supply. they would have to charge the capcitore and then fire.
Dustin Linhart 1... only carriers and subs are currently nuclear powered. 2please enlighten us as to how your know the exact output of a naval reactor is not enough for this. im sure the navy would love you to cite your source as well. 3 a huge bank of huge capacitors will be used either way because these arnt kids fucking around with a nail wrapped in wires attached to a battery... it was designed by top of their class electric engineers
I developed a theory of "conceptual design" of plasma cannon in 1999
it is. The whole series is awesome.
You sir made my day!!!
Where's the swirly blue trail? j/k
skip to 3:28 if you wanna just get on with the shooting
i knew you'd be there for us.
This is the English 32MJ railgun, which is currently the most powerful in the world. The power requirements are astronomical. I could only imagine the size of the capacitor bank required to fire such a gun.
What an improvement in the more recent NAVY railgun!
5:25.... BEST PART OF VIDEO!
Can someone kindly explain to me why this is better than an ordinary gun currently on ships? Does it pack a bigger punch, more environmentally friendly or something?
Much much cheaper can achieve greater velocities.
the "bullet" is fired at much higher velocities, so it can travel farther, pack a higher punch, is less prone to wind drift and almost impossible to intercept while being more compact (more ammunition storable) and it relies in kinetic force, not an explosive warhead. so your battleship does not explode when someone hits the ammunition storage. it would be even possive to launch cargo into space (or shoot down satellites, missiles, space vehicles...).
Dominic Schulz
Hell, you can USE THE AMMO STOWAGE SPACES FOR ARMOR.
Think about this fact for a minute. In all the history of naval warfare with gunpowder, ships had to carry armor to protect their ammunition ; Now the ammunition itself would be able to protect the ship.
No need for gunpowder, just electricity to fire the round. This can penetrate reinforced defenses much more easily using much cheaper ammunition (or projectiles in this case). Much longer travel distance and current tests show its capable of firing a projectile up to speeds of Mach 7 (7 times the speed of sound.)
Bunker86 you said "just electricity to fire the round", will that is the problme with this technology, It needs a lot of electricity to creat a Magnaticfield to fire the projectile, ships reactors can fire this gun, BUT it can only do so for a few shots and then they well need a new reactor.
this is the same problme the world is facing in every modern technology ( not powerful enough electricity sources) smart phones, electrice cars and robots are good example for why electricity is still not a replacment for Gas, gun powder and fire.
untill someone invent a stronge enough mobile electricity source then it will be a Great idea to use this gun and other technologys.
P.S: this is why tell today I did not buy a smartphone.
In the game Mass Effect 2, the starships use mass accelerators akin to railguns (except they use a fictional force dervived from element zero rather than electromagnatism). One of the conversations you overhear in-game is a drill sergeant telling his soldiers to aquire a firing solution on the ships and never fire by sight because if it misses, the round will keep going and eventually hit something no matter where or when. The above line is his final quote.
From what ive heard this bad boy is the ultimate barrel burner
It's a shame naval warfare is becoming more and more obsolete as the years go by.
This would be used in Naval combat
Silver Wind
I think he meant Ship to Ship and not Ship to Shore. Navy isn't going anywhere. There will always be a need for the Navy.
Naw man, ship to ship contols what shores we can project power too. It still matters
How is that a shame?
Why is that a shame? Fucking idiot.
MAC Rounds online!
+Nowhere Doge Cortana, you've got the MAC gun...Badass!!
+Mario Alberto Nuñez Hate to be "that guy" but MAC guns are coilguns, not railguns.
Faross mac round in atmosphere
I feel like some people aren't appreciating what happened here. that projectile went somewhere around Mach 7 by using magnets. that's like five times faster than the round shot from an m16.
obviously there's ground that needs too be made but this test is extremely awesome as far as what can be done with projectile weapons in the future.
looked at this vid after a 2012 test fire, they really made this weapon more compact
This just does not look right. A railgun, or magnetic projectile cannon, would use a magnetic field to pull a ferric object along a path at increasing speed until the object left the tube, similar to what happens in a particle accelerator. there should be no explosion or flash, just a large boom upon impact, along with the debris created. if the gun and the projectile are large enough, then you will also have a sonic boom as the projectile breaks the sound barrier. Such a weapon can easily be mounted on a ship and using computer controlled capacitors, fire an object weighing 50 pounds at over 5X the speed of sound. Anything in its path would be either destroyed by the impact force, or suffer a massive hole and a high level of destruction.
Shock heating, the same effect which causes the "fire" trail on a spacecraft during re-entry. The object it moving so fast that the air does not have time to move out of the projectile's way, so it is compressed until it reaches a critical point where the energy stored by compression is enough to displace the air, and as it decompresses, heat and light are created by the expanding air. It basically is a string of explosive decompression fueled by velocity and air density alone.
I'm not an expert on this topic, but I believe what you're describing is a coilgun, not railgun.
An explosion is a release of a large amount of energy. This can be achieved with a chemical or nuclear reaction, but as you saw it can also be achieved by having a lot of kinetic energy. You don't need volatile (explosive) chemicals to make an explosion. The explosion you see in the video is the release of a high amount of kinetic energy. What you just said is like saying stuff can't burn when it falls through the atmosphere because no one lit flammable gas on it, however we know that to be untrue.
***** Yes, and the 'blast' you can see there is a plasma.
FallenOrcHunter This is a railgun. Notice the use of a sabot (not used on coilguns) and the channel that the projectile travels down (the rail).
Misaka mikoto (?
An anime fan,finally
Annie lawlliet she was the only reason i searched for real railguns ;D
Annie lawlliet ;o; who is that
KyuzoMugenUndPanzer One of the most fleshed out anime characters ever.Oh,and she can manipulate electricity
Samir Salanovic
xD I will have to find this anime sounds good.
The rail gun doesn't use magnetic differences to accelerate objects. If I remember correctly, it uses the current passing through the object to accelerate. The object almost certainly needs an existing forward momentum before it contacts the rails or it would weld itself to them, or melt. Either by explosive or linear accelerators. Although, there most certainly are magnetic interactions since there is current.
You can tell those guys are nervous as heck being around that thing.
Nervous enough to wear goggles
all this money for a rail gun, but can't get 1080p video.
Where are the spartans, odst and the unsc!?!
Weird
high five bro! I was looking for this comment
*High five* glad that I'm not the only one here! :D
The us army have to build a spartan laser!
Radio ToraDora Tis wrong about ODST... They are HELL jumpers ;)
KyuzoMugenUndPanzer that's their nickname, the most odst of in this case "helljumpers" became spartan IV's
Thinking that you know everything pfoe! ;)
(New Spartans vs MC= MC r3kt)
It's a efficient gun that can fire rounds faster,farther,and larger then any gun powder gun.The power it has is absolutely devastating.It is the future of weapons.
This kickass rail gun + Advanced Defense Systems = the end of ballistic missile age.
your commentary made me laught while i was drinking soda, you owe me a new screen
@TheChouse27
Totally agree. We don't get to see things like this until they have been around for at least ten years
@AnalogicBeing Railguns don't use "magnets", they use electrical current passed through the slug between two rails. You're thinking of a Gauss Rifle.
Thank you that's why I love the game.
When finished, this thing'll have enough firepower to shoot a GOLF BALL across 350 km, and still leave it enough momentum to take out a couple of tanks. That is f***ing badass.
Well, keep in mind that this is a proof-of-concept model more than anything else. It's not designed to do damage, but to prove that the basic mechanism by which the weapon operates actually work.
A fully-functional weaponized railgun or coilgun would probably have far greater muzzle velocities, which in turn means far greater damage from even a solid projectile.
Is the round thing on top of the oscilloscope some kind of probe which decreases the gigantic voltage to not blow the scope?
@MeamolaMX its a 1st test fire back in '06. the current prototype spec is upwards of 10 rounds per 60secs.
One of the great weapons from QUAKE is becoming reality! Awesome
Video uploaded 6 years ago.. that railgun was mounted on a modified flat bed truck. I don't even know how long it took for that video to become Unclassified. Imagine how small those things have gotten since then... shit probably fits on a tank by now. CRAZY!
So, does a railgun continue until it reaches its destination? Does the air compress it so it goes in a straight line? I'm not sure I understand?
you do realise a bullet travelling over 5,400 mph is going to have a hard time changing trajectory at such a short range, even in hurricane-force winds.
That's some precision loading.
0:42 That man is playing Gallega! He didn't think we'd notice but I did.
This is not meant to get hate or likes, and I AM NOT trolling. But I know the inventor of the railgun personally, he's my friends uncle, and brother of their father. He's a pretty cool dude. Their family is HUGE on math and electronics, so no wonder he was able to put all this complicated stuff together
Made my day
@TheYoooth Well, he is right. The MAC means Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. This happens to be a cannon, that uses rounds that are well, magnetically accelerated. The only difference is whether or not the cannons in the halo universe were coil guns, or rail guns.
Very impressive prototype, however the technology needs to mature much further. 4 main hurdles it must overcome.
1) Size
2) Cost
3) Preparation/Reload speed
4) Energy consumption
Can't wait to see how this Technology progresses!
@DarkxRebelx Because the heat generated during fire is so intense that the barrel needs to be replaced after every two firings. It's incredibly ineffective, however powerful.
@drewsisely It's a big gauss cannon which is also in Halo
Storing the ammunitions of railguns is as simple as it gets. Space efficient, and it doesn't *accidentally* blow up.
So MAC guns have finally come into existence.
this actually kind of gives hope to the idea of a handheld rail-weapon down the road
Joseph Kroon recoil would suck with it i imagine
I dont think it would since it uses magnets to propel it instead of gunpowder.
Doesn't matter how you're applying the force, Newton's third law of motion still applies.
Keiya Bachhuber yep. meaning if you are shooting a 223 caliber round at mach 9 u wont be able to shoulder it.
so where's my spartan suit?
@Tejaswrex Because reactors are very heavy, and expensive. Plus where would you mount the gun? Also the ECM put off by the electromagnetic rails might screw with the avionics.
Haha nice Index reference. I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone said something
I'm pretty sure they did use the metric system to do the actual loading and other more serious parts of this video. Seeing as this was a video released for public viewing because it is really cool, they likely chose to use the imperial system just because it was what most of the American viewers would be familiar with.
Rail guns are one of the more exciting future technologies I think. The projectile size can be changed to suit the need, but at the requirement of a longer rails. They clearly didn't have a good reload system when this was made, I'm sure advancements have been made there. I'm sure the finished technology is a ways off, but there is a lot going for it, we just need some advancements in energy technology. To be feasible on a ship, it would likely have to be nuclear powered to be able to support more than one large rail gun. And the more you use the more energy you need, current naval warships have a lot of weapons on them, so we'd need a new type of high output energy that we just don't have yet. There's plenty of theoretical ways to power them, but I can't think of anything practical yet.
K
Ooooh I am sooo excited! More weapons for killing more people! As if the world hasn't seen that enough lately yay :D! *high pitched girly squeal*
...
Skrubasaurus Rekt There won't be any killing if they're afraid of us because of it. Therefore this is a good thing.
Colgate Cavity Patrol don't watch videos about weapons if you don't like them, simple as that...
I'm actually a pacifist, I believe there's a non violent solution to any situation. However, that doesn't mean something that goes Mach 8 and can send a block of aluminum through hardened ship steel is any less interesting. Nukes are a horribly overpowered weapon, that has no place on earth because of the environmental hazards, namely the radiation, but it doesn't make the them any less interesting. E=MC2 (I can't make the right 2) is the principal behind nukes that allows them to have such a large yield from a tiny amount of material, it's really amazing how it works. But if you choose to ignore these weapons, and stick your head in the ground because violence is bad, then you're part of the problem too, you need to learn from the mistake of the past. These railguns are the future, if you sink a ship with a missile people will die, if you sink a ship with a piece of aluminum, there's a chance they can escape because there's no explosion.
Its fun to imagine an iowa class battleship reactivated and brimming with finished weaponized versions of these things ^_^
Now we can survive an attack of Nemesis if he comes around.
@hashmash0 As a matter of fact, somebody did think it up. Look up "Project Thor".
Basically, you launch a tungsten rod (anywhere between the size of a crowbar to the size of a telephone poll) from an orbital platform (such as a satellite) and it hits the ground with between enough force to kill a tank, to enough force to emulate a small nuclear explosion.
its not the sheer speed that does this, its the magnetic fields that become violent and tear away at the surface.
@Halomaster4life1 actually that is a common misconseption the magnetic accelerator cannon(coil gun) and the rail gun are different the m.a.c gun accelerates their projectiles through the use of magnetic coils as for the railgun it uses utilize magnetic rails to perform its task.
That's awesome.
Ah LOL nice one
need to try this game, looks awesome
The projectile itself doesn't have to be magnetic, but the casing around it is.
nice C&C reference!
The railgun was a weapon in Shdow warrior which was made in 1997.
The quake Rail Gun is in it's testing phases! YAY! Now all we need is to combine it with the Cyberdyne HAL suit.
@twleo1975 It's not the range requirement that would dictate the power of such a weapon, it would be the penetrating power of said weapon against whatever targets they're designed to hit. In the case of a hand held weapon, it would need to penetrate armored vests and whatnot. That takes a hell of a lot of projectile velocity and is difficult to achieve via magnets without ungodly energy. A really big backpack perhaps? haha
AgrivatedKillah was never heard from again
This is in fact a rail gun. It's called Velocitas Eradico. This is clearly shown in the video at 0:18 including the words "Electromagnetic Launch Facility".
The first result on Google when this name is searched is the Wikipedia page titled Railgun.
I hope this puts that discussion to rest.
So basically it's like an upgraded oldschool cannon only insted of fuse and gunpowder it uses electricity. Nice
This is probably going to become part of a Metal Gear REX...
Defence technology runs in parallel with many other technological sectors.
In fact the defence industry normally puts experimental tech into practical usage before they are released into civilian markets. Because of this we normally tend to jump forwards in innovation during war time.
The second world war and cold war is a great example of this. Defence innovation normally spearheads the development of the human race as a whole.
I wouldn't call them progenitors either because we use them now anyway. In fact they are older than railguns, coilguns, and even lasers. A particle cannon, is a weaponized version of a particle accelerator. If you have an old CRT TV, then there's a particle accelerator in your house (a simple/weak one). The Large Hadron Collider is the largest one today, admittedly none of these are weapons, but during the Regan administration there were tests with particle beam weapons.
That thing is a little big right now but I see how this can get better in the future
this is just a lab article to test the electromagnetic part of the gun, in service it would use a loading system similar to the one used on the 5 inch currently in service.
@superdupe8 Maybe the fact that it could shoot through you, 48 of your friends, your high school and still have enough velocity left to kill a tank. Not to mention that it uses no powder charge. It is all electricity that powers and fires the weapon so there is zero recoil and zero smoke (which makes detection of the weapon very low).
In outer space you don't need a rail gun since you are already in orbit and therefore going even faster. You just need to use a tether to slow down enough to fall from orbit into the right trajectory to hit whatever you want.
People wearing headphones-- the naval rail gun's first casualties
It seems to me that the biggest advantage of a rail gun is the velocities it is capable of firing projectiles. When mass moves at hyper speeds normal rules of penetration do not apply.
Therefore I was a bit shocked to see that they were firing this huge projectile rather than a smaller lighter one that could have done alot more damage.
Best Mass Effect 2 line :)
Great logic there
@theeyeofthestorms what would be pale brown? I think tungsten is a silver colour...
Indeed DEPLETED uranium retains very little radioactivity(though not entirely null, we're talking a tiny fraction of what is necessary for a nuclear reaction to take place.... under very specific conditions). However depleted uranium is extremely dense as David said as well as being hard and tough(as in not brittle). It's a landmark of science fiction dealing with coilguns and railguns for that reason, sometimes as a saboted penetrator. See U-238 upgrade for Marines in Star Craft c.1998.
i watched the vid before replying yes, enjoyed it as well :)
@superdupe8 Maybe the fact that it could shoot through you, 48 of your friends, your high school and still have enough velocity left to kill a tank. Not to mention that it uses no power charge. It is all electricity that powers and fires the weapon so there is zero recoil and zero smoke (which makes detection of the weapon very low).
is the crack we hear the projectile breaking the sound barrier or the sound of it hitting the target? Or both.
@HelmutVillam
While we're at it add some longsword fighters to her decks and a few metres of AAA class titanium plating. Don't forget the archer missiles and nova warheads.
hey, just like the huge early computers, this thing is huge. over time smaller yet more powerful ones will be developed.
No, just something that doesn't look like some obscure off-the-road auto repair shop in Alabama. I worked on our high school float in a building almost identical to that one... Minus the railgun (sadly).
Maybe something more like at white sands, or a big facility of some kind, or at least something with some security, but whatever, just not something that looks like where I built a high school float. Where they assemble rockets, for example, is similar but much bigger, and more clean and gleamy
@brunohm1 Yes, one could say that modern firearms today has evolved from cannons, so its a good possibility that other fancy stuff will come in more practical sizes eventually.
If this is the most recent proto then you're mistaken, these things are used to launch projectiles into space.
I thought it would be more like the one in Transformers 2 lol but that's still cool as fuck