Can't the navy have a slower version in the next couple of years? Need to have something to keep the Vatican in line.

With an active seeker, this thing could also have substantial ABM applications.

This isn't the first time they've fired it. They had a demonstration on "Future Weapons" way before this article. They're also developing a vehicle mounted cannon.

This is suppose to be the main gun on the Navys latest ship being built in Maine at Bath Iron works. The ship will be finished long before gun is ready. Talk about putting the Cart before the horse.

Another mass-murder tool of the American Empire.

What ever you do, do not bend over when this thing goes off. Unless of course you are gay. NTTAWWT

The Zumwalt class destroyer is being designed to accommodate the possibility of a railgun being installed. The main gun on it will be the 155mm Advanced Gun System.

chip tengler will fire this weapon

Yea traveler your correct because were going to rip your country apart with our new toy.

Warhero rember dont ask dont tell. May be if your lucky they would shove the rail gun up your ass and pull the triger shouting its was out of your mouth. lol

sounds like stargate alantis rail guns sounds cool.

Those "magnetic waves" coming out the back of the projectile look an awful lot like flames from a conventional propellant....

If you'll look closely at the first picture,the "magnetic waves" are actually in front of or beside the tip of the projectile and look like a minor distortion ring around it. What looks like bluish white flames behind it, is actually the kenetic energy caused by it moving through the air so fast. On a conventional projectile, any flames produced by the propellant would have extinguished long before it hit the target.

Actually, the "magnetic waves" in front of the projectile look like the shock wave generated in the air by a supersonic projectile. There should also be some aeroheating from moving through the air that fast that may account for the glow behind it if it isn't done intentionally (like a tracer)

Actually, the flames don't come until after impact, and of course a projectile would have HE in it. The blue in the initial pictures could possibly be electric discharge of the residual static electricity from the use of the rail gun, or maybe simply just ignition of the oxygen in the immediate area of the projectile due to the heat create from friction. Just a guess though.

How big is the projectile? Sounds like a nice way to launch a small satellite from a high altitude platform.

Those blueish white flames are likely the remnants of the vaporized fuse-link that would be at the back of the rail-gun projectile when loaded in the chamber. What happens on the basic principle of a railgun is that a large amount of current is pushed through one rail, which conducts across a fusable-link made of something conductive, like copper for example, and then conducts back down the other rail, this in turn creates a b-field (a magnetic field that is inclined to push something in a direction). At the same time the fuseable-link vaporizes due to the extreme overload of current, and the ionized, hot expanding metal-vapor, rapidly pushes forward. Since they are ionized the magnetic field literally reacts with the gases to shove them along with the non-ferrous projectile (for example, a solid piece of nickel) until the projectile leaves the barrel and the circut is broken. Some advanced high-school physics book have basic-principle designs of this in them. Its way cool stuff.

Delosworld, electronics don't stand up very well to *hundreds* of G acceleration -- which is what that thing puts out -- circuit boards flex, semiconductors crack, wires and traces break, etc. Be great if it could be made to work, though!

Now all we need is the Galactica to mount them on!

I wonder if they could scale this down to replace the propellant mechanism in the CIWS systems... I would think the increased velocity could improve engagement outcomes.

This reminds me of the MAC guns from Halo.
I was wondering how long it would take to create something like this.

Isn't it interesting how many of the scientific developments we have now, were first "created' in Science Fiction storys.

Never underestimate Human inginutiy.

TheDoctor: That's been the tune that everyone has been singing for the past 50+ years of SciFi :D I like the way you think and I look forward to the time when I can sit in a chair and fire drones at terrorist :D

Rail gun technology has been around for along time how do you think the japanese magnetic monorail works same principal on a much smaller scale with a highly increased current using an electrically charged projectile no electronics would work because of the massive amounts of residual electrical,magnetic and kinetiq energy but with laser targeting and along enough barrel the projectile would not vere off course unless something else is in the way or a much larger magnetic field is is produced to knock the projectile off course this is all theroy of course. i think they would be better off concentrating on shield technology first then things like metorite and micro metorite damage would be a thing of the past and would make any attempt at another space race far safer.
And any launch of any type of ballistic or hyper ballistic missle or projectile would be a moot point as it would be useless do you not think ? think of defense a first and attack later would this not be a prudent course of action but as is the nature of man his first recourse is to blow the living crap out stuff first and answer for it later or the old politicians recourse of plausible deniability can allways be used for any cock ups made.
Mans inhumanity towards man will be his downfall and on that note i finnish this rant lol.

Could they use this technology over several miles to propel a train? Obviously not at that speed, but would be "clean" energy vs. coal.

FUCANCHEW69, I guess we were sending in our comments at the same time! I thought there was a train system using similar technology. Thanks for the confirmation.

I do agree it would be cool if we could come up with some shield/force field type of technology, but are we there yet?

dont know if any one has seen mythbusters on descovery channle but they try to change the flight of a bullet using mags nd it took a lot of them just to change it and its only going like 1000 feet a second so i dont think anything would be able to change something going that fast

fucanchew69, there is an issue with your defense first policy that i see. the issue is: if we dont know whats coming at us how can we defend against it? i mean sure we know about shields and such granted but no one out there really rates the merit of the US government to build it. it would be great for the world to go through another cold war since it helped push science very fast, but alas no one is out there that could. this rail gun system is offense only and is the only one of its kind FOR NOW. once other countries jump on the bandwagon or we get attacked from a non terrestrial source it will more than likely remain that way. so till some one can really threaten the US in military might we wont see the cool shields like you want.

Nice. Taxpayers money well spent as usual.

wow, what a waste of money, seriously, whens the last time the US navy used a ship in military combat? WWII? they should be trying to equip this thing to Aircrafts, and APCs

The story is about a railgun, supposedly now operational and in testing, and outlandish claims of it's abilities are hailed loudly in the article...enormous range, insane velocities, etc..and there is a "video".

The video is supposedly of a test of the new "superweapon" railgun. They, meaning the Government, must be smoking crack.

A railgun is a long tube or set of rails with electromagnetic rings along the bore. These are set off and energized in sequence to accelerate the projectile within the tube to maniacal velocities..like a big particle accelerator. It would be a very big piece of hardware, quite exotic, and very modern. With a power generator the size of a 2 story building.

Presented to us in this "demo" video is an archaic US surplus 155MM howitzer carriage set up on a test range. Paint chipped rust and all. Mounted on this relic is a pretty standard looking 155 MM gun breech and cannon barrel, except there are several segments of cannon welded together and braced up with a really cartoonish stand. It's so bad it's funny. This is supposed to be the "exotic" rail gun? This is just a cannon with an extraordinarily long barrel. I know, I've seen and fired US Army cannons.

We then get some very non-professional looking "techs" wrapping a metal dart projectile in a thin plastic sabot, or "shoe" (we had rounds like this in tanks for decades)..the "techs" walk it out to the supposed "rail gun", and stuff it into the very stock breech door of the 155 howitzer.

I'm like..WTF? Is this some YouTube joke?

Then we hear a loud BOOM, and a supposed "target" goes up in flames and explodes. How does a gun with no gunpowder go BOOM???

The whole thing is hokey and just not credible. I wonder where this actually came from, because if DoD is serious, we're in far worse trouble than I ever imagined.

http://www.livescience.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=080201-railgun

Here's the vid link.
I personally think this is one of those black budget money holes Bush opened up and now that a purge is coming to Washington in November and these schmos are actually going to have to testify about where they spent about 10 billion bucks, they're scrambling to get something that they can show the dim bulbs in Congress and the people. Trust this old Army vet, that's a very old very surplus 155mm WW2 gun with 3 barrels welded together. The dart, or Sabot round, I used to fire from my tank gun 30 years ago, and with that much barrel it would hit 10,000 feet per second on gunpowder alone, causing all sorts of weird plasma effects and ionization. In fact, upon hitting a hard target, it SHOULD go molten and blow a hole through it from transfer of kinetic energy alone (our current depleted uranium tank rounds do this now-there is no explosive in a tank round)..

This IS a really lame piece of propaganda.

That gun reminds me of an CSI: Miami espiode I saw back in December. That gun viperized three gun smugglers.

That episode was hokey too (like ANY of them aren't-I'm just waiting for DavidCaruso to do a scene upside down after backing into the shot). That was a portrayal of another DoD experiment / money hole, a multi barrel gun where the rounds are stacked on top of each other in the barrel, giving it the ability to fire a thousand rounds at once. Unfortunately for the contractor, a claymore mine will do the same job for 1/100 the price. I remember that episode. Caruso will, eventually, need to speak out the side of his head at some point you know.

That video has nothing to do with a Navy rail gun other than tacking a bit of footage onto the end. Look at the target they shoot at with just an + in the middle than suddenly theres a navy target afterwards, and the personel don't exactly look regular Navy to me.

The videos on the oh gizmo and navy sites along with the high res pics are much better than the link link to the fake vid listed here in the comments.

Also the whole weapon looks a bit different in real, than in that video:
http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=34718

Roberts, What you are describing is infact a coil gun, not a rail gun. There is good set of differences between the two designs. I would do some reading. O_o

Having actually worked for a DoE/DoD contractor that developed a variety of 'products' (lookup the history of 'Physics International" formerly owned by Olin, then Titan PSD, now L-3 Communications) for said agencies (like the AAWS-M warhead) I can say, that

(a) it's not typically DoE/DoD/military personnel involved in the design and development of the 'products'. DoE/DoD/military create the criteria/milestones, write the checks and are supposed to monitor progress.

(b) most R&D is done using OTS (off-the-shelf) components when possible. If OTS components aren't available/practical then something must be developed. If you can use the barrel of an existing gun as part of your design, you save on costs and development. If it's not practical, you develop something similar.

The guys working in the video look typical of the kind of folks that develop this stuff. They looked like the same kinda guys that had fun at the Tracy Test Facility (http://tinyurl.com/yr5jgn) blowin' stuff up. The test platform in the videos look similar to other setups I've seen over the years.

To robert, the vid u posted is a fake, it's exactly what u say it is 3 old ww2 howitzer barrels put together. About ur stacked rounds comment, Metal Storm Weapons in Australia has built a 'gun' that fires 1 million rounds a second using electronically detonated stacked rounds and patented the technology. They have also applied it to handguns and mortars, look it up. There 'access denial system' maybe more expensive than claymores but they dont incur any clean-up costs and are not a threat to innocents. As for fucanchew69's comment about shields... the best defense is offense dude.

Well, I have to admit the pictures can be quite deceiving as well as this video.
http://www.livescience.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=080201-railgun
I viewed the video frame by frame and this is what I found...
First of all, it's two completely different videos that have been spliced together. The first part appears to simply be a test of the projectile itself in a conventional gun. If you'll look closely at the "target" which shows the "Naval Rail Gun" sign in the top left corner, you'll also see a cross drawn in the center of the target board which is where the projectile actually hits.
The last part of the video may actually be footage from the rail gun test firing but, it's out of order if you watch the time stamp at the bottom (which isn't even on the first part).
All the shots that show huge plumes of red-orange flames behind the projectile take place after it penetrates the target (and in this shot it shows the actual "Naval Rail Gun" sign being hit dead center) which would indicate to me that either an HE round was used or the target itself was loaded to make a more dramatic impact for the camera.
The shots of the projectile before it impacts the target show the bluish white tail which is exactly what I'd expect to see from something moving through the air at such a great velocity. To better understand this, look at pictures taken of U.S. fighter planes just as they break the sound barrier (which if I remember correctly is about 750 mph) and notice the plume of what looks like smoke just in front of the engine exhaust when the plane does this close to sea level. Now imagine a small dart shaped projectile suddenly moving at 5,600 miles per hour. I can only imagine what kind of trail we'd see if they ever actually get the thing up to 10,000 miles per hour.

Well, I have to admit the pictures can be quite deceiving as well as this video.
http://www.livescience.com/php/video/player.php?video_id=080201-railgun
I viewed the video frame by frame and this is what I found...
First of all, it's two completely different videos that have been spliced together. The first part appears to simply be a test of the projectile itself in a conventional gun. If you'll look closely at the "target" which shows the "Naval Rail Gun" sign in the top left corner, you'll also see a cross drawn in the center of the target board which is where the projectile actually hits.
The last part of the video may actually be footage from the rail gun test firing but, it's out of order if you watch the time stamp at the bottom (which isn't even on the first part).
All the shots that show huge plumes of red-orange flames behind the projectile take place after it penetrates the target (and in this shot it shows the actual "Naval Rail Gun" sign being hit dead center) which would indicate to me that either an HE round was used or the target itself was loaded to make a more dramatic impact for the camera.
The shots of the projectile before it impacts the target show the bluish white tail which is exactly what I'd expect to see from something moving through the air at such a great velocity. To better understand this, look at pictures taken of U.S. fighter planes just as they break the sound barrier (which if I remember correctly is about 750 mph) and notice the plume of what looks like smoke just in front of the engine exhaust when the plane does this close to sea level. Now imagine a small dart shaped projectile suddenly moving at 5,600 miles per hour. I can only imagine what kind of trail we'd see if they ever actually get the thing up to 10,000 miles per hour.

Ah Hah! The real video footage is at the Oh Gizmo link below the original article or here...
http://www.ohgizmo.com/2008/02/01/navy-test-fires-10-megajoule-railgun-holy-cow/
This is much more realistic and what I'd expect to see.

This is the real FUTURE.

yeah traveler, the USA is an empire. However we dont show many similarities to the European Empires that existed 300-400 years ago, which would still be around had their power not declined. You have no right to make false, ridiculous claims, its hipocritical.

The only problem I see with that is how in the world do you make bullets that can go that speed without flattening out. It's kinda like look what I made, it's a weapon, called a bow. Well what does it shoot. I don't know yet.
I wanna see Neo dodge these.

Maybe one day this technology will launch satellites into space. However, as with most modern technology, the sad irony is that it will be developed to kill people first. Maybe 50 years down the line they will actually use it for something useful.

"A railgun is a long tube or set of rails with electromagnetic rings along the bore. These are set off and energized in sequence to accelerate the projectile within the tube to maniacal velocities.."

You're thinking of a coilgun or a 'Gauss gun'.

Hmmm, you must realise that most new technology, not just modern technology, has been used for offensive purposes before peaceful applications.

For example, new methods of metallurgy such as copper, bronze and iron working were used for making weapons centuries before they found use in agricultural implements.

We aleady have a small arms version of a transister and gas powered Straviti designed laser weapon, supposedly used in limited fashion for experimental trials in Iraq, wonder when they will have a rail gun for ground forces like in the Schwartzeneger movie. I forget the name, but that is what the future rifle was. a rail gun with state of the art weapons sites.

@ sgt. smith: that will not happen due to 2 reasons:
1) the power required for a railgun is far too high to be able to store in a battery small enought for a person to carry. Only very big vehicles such as ships or stationary platforms would be able to generate the required power.
2) The recoil from that kind of weapon is really REALLY strong. Consider the explosion seen in the video and then remember it is only caused by the mere impact (not from explosives), and then realise that exactly the same amount of force would be applied to the one pulling the trigger. The poor dude would fly half a mile in the other direction! This also points towards stationary platforms or heavy naval ships.

To those who can't understand why there are flames behind the projectile or why it exploded on impact this link is informative: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20080202-9999-1n2gun.html
(should be noted that a pretty strong target has to be aimed at or the projectile would just cut right through it not causing the explotion)

The best defense is the possibility of retributon from an overpowering offense. Mutually Assured Destructon was ridiculed back in the days of the Cold War. But it worked. look around you. We're still here.
It is imperative we continue to develop our weapons technology. The days of a serious threat from the bear are past but there is a mighty dragon just over the horizon. I am of the opinion they will be an even greater threat.

Those arn't 'magnetic waves', its the distortion from a supersonic munition simply being supersonic. The flame behind the round is from the round traveling so fast and encountering so much friction so fast that the air it passes through simply burns. These rounds require NO HE warheads as the force of a round alone is enough to cause an explosion on impact. Thats how kinetic energy rounds fired by English/American tanks work. They are simply darts of metal hitting something so hard they explode.

Also, there is no recoil at all unless rounds are explosively injected between the rails. A revolutionary weapon, but its only drawback is the power source. The capacitor banks alone fill an entire warehouse.

I know one way rail guns generate electricity is through an explosion impacting a piezo electric generator. So there's a big explosion remote from the rail gun that sends a pulse of electricity. Doing it this way allows one to create a larger explosion away from the rail gun cannon for less recoil and accelerates the projectile better than conventional expanding gas from the big explosion in a conventional canon. Alternatively the other explanation for the explosion is that you have to remember that anything that exceeds the speed of sound creates an explosive sound that 's what they sometimes call a sonic boom. When you light up gunpowder in the open it creates expanding gas that is below the speed of sound so no sonic boom and no explosion. But pack gunpowder in a container, the gas pressure builds up and then the container bursts with gas exceeding speed of sound and you get your sonic boom or the explosion. Basically, any projectile that exceeds the speed of sound is an explosion with flames and boom noise.

@Mjolnir73: Yes, there would still be recoil on the rails (or their mounts) since the magnetic Lorentz force propelling the slug is also affecting the rails in the opposite direction. That, and the power supply, are probably the only reasons an effective railgun or a coilgun couldn't be made man-portable. Why there's flames coming out the back of the target afterwards could be due to it being a sand-filled metal box (The sand quickly catches fire, and I bet there was pieces of glass in it afterward). Lastly, a question: anyone know why there's that fork-groove on the back of the slug in the video from Hamster's posted link?

Not really sure this is even a rail gun as I understand the definition of it, but even if it were, it's nothing new. There's been an operational prototype rail gun blasting the crap out of hills (and sheep so I've been told) in Kirkudbright for at least 9 years now- and I mean, c'mon, we (Scotland)have been playing around with this thing for 9/10 years and now some Americans are trying to turn it into propaganda? Next we'll have some tosser saying the television was invented by George W. Bush and not John Logie Baird...

Defense and Shield technology? The US already has that. I mean, wasnt it the FBI who stole Tesla's papers on the so called Death Ray anyways?

it seems many of the commentators are confusing the rail gun with the coil gun (gauss gun). Consecutive magnetic ends used to "pull" and "push" a projectile, similar to the magnetic mono-rail, seems to be what ROBERT is talking about. This is a coil gun. They've been around a long time, and they have hand held versions.

ROBERT wrote "A railgun is a long tube or set of rails with electromagnetic rings along the bore. These are set off and energized in sequence to accelerate the projectile within the tube to maniacal velocities..like a big particle accelerator." This is a coil gun.

THIS IS NOT A RAILGUN. Those who made this mistake need to look it up.

A railgun uses the same physical properties of the homopolar motor. This is called a Lorentz Force. A wire carrying an electric current, when in a magnetic field, experiences a force perpendicular to the direction of the current and the direction of the magnetic field. Without going into the math, the larger the charge, the larger the perpendicular force.

This is a PHYSICAL PROPERTY OF ELECTRICAL CURRENTS and not an alternating magnetic acceleration.

So by dropping 10 MEGAJOULES (7,375,621 foot-pounds) of energy into this, it will accelerate anything lined along the rails that COMPLETES THE ELECTRICAL CIRCUIT.

As far as what the Navy is doing, this is nothing new: railguns have been around for quite a while. Just never on this scale, or using this kind of energy levels.

What you need for a rail gun is a wacking amount of energy. The ship mounted one could work as the on board nuclear reactor could provide power. However, how is the vehicle one supposed to work? You'd need a hell of a capacitor to build up energy from the vehicles engine.

Oh, and if you want to build a rail gun (not that hard to do) just look on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gun

My physcis teacher demonstrated one in my A level physics class, shooting aluminium rings across the class room.

Oh and back to what Delosworld said, this was considered as was shooting satellites out of a giant gun (this is what the Babylon gun was based on). However the acceleration is far too high for the delicate instruments on a satalite to survive. Also the amount of energy required to shoot a satellite of several tons would be huge.

is anyone afraid of this it's the fricken plot of Metal Gear Solid. forget about bipedal tanks worry about the stealth nukes

chuck norris invented the rail gun,,silly navy guys..

The UK have had a Rail gun in operation for over 10 years now. This stuff is not new. The latest railgun has been delivered to the US Navy, built by british defence contractor BAE Systems :)

This particular system is not useful for putting things in orbit as the G forces would destroy anything other than a solid projectile. To launch masses into space you need very long rails (kilometers) so you can accelerate them at a g force that will not damage the payload.

shremedy at 12:24 PM
You would be wrong, we've been launching electronics out of cannons for the better part of 60 years.

And Mr Roberts, seriosly, that's an big FAIL right there buddy.

This could be the solution of the problem with American cars that people don't buy. Chop them up in 20 kilogram pisces, and slam them into some smaller country. If you could fire about 50 in a second, how many guns would it take to solv the GM Ford problem?

If they keep developing this thing it would replace nuclear weapons. The amount of kinetic energy they have is incredible. Lets say they build an orbital railgun they could level cities with it with no radiation, There is a treaty which disallows WMD to be placed onto a satellite in space, but an orbital railgun is not a WMD (Nukes literally destroys mass, which railguns dont).

Clearly an interesting topic, the americans have problems with wear & tear, DSTL have had a trials gun operating 10 plus years and with a British contractor supplying the navys rail gun, doesnt it make sense just to get the British to sort it out if they want it done properly? Just for comparison\interest, Currently Challanger 2 (MBT) fires a long rod penetrator on high pressure charge travelling at 1998 meters per second, not bad for an old dog!No power station needed iether.

I thought the impending threat was from terrorists with suitcase nukes.

Sounds like a strategic mistake to allocate billions of dollars towards a weapon which isn't a clear "game changer", and real threats are addressed by making people take their shoes off at airports.

About the former existence of these guns, CORRECT railguns are not a new idea but the material science required to actually build one that would last for more than one or two shots is just reaching maturity so the technology is classified
CORRECT BAE Systems has built railguns, but so have other companies not based in the UK or even US (I, a proud American, have the untmost respect for British engineering)
INCORRECT this is not propaganda, research into railguns is a logical step forward in the chain of scientific discovery
CORRECT railguns would primarily be used by navies
INCORRECT it is not impossible to have a man portable railgun, though such a system would likely require a team, similar to the Javelin anti-tank system which requires two pesonel
INCORRECT The US Navy used fire support in both Vietnam and Korea and, with a 200 mile range, a railgun could provide fire support well inland
CORRECT not completely a game changer, but as stated, it is a logical progression

I would like to continue with this but I am in need of a nap. I'll finish by saying, I still think Metal Storm is much cooler. (It also has the advantage of not needed a massive power plant)

P.S. ROBERTS, I recommend psychiatric help.

The US navy and General Dynamics were testing railguns over 20 years ago and had a working prototype mounted in a ship. The trick is in making the compulsator small enough to be used in things like tanks, which I believe is also being done. With velocities that could punch a hole in a tank with a paper envelope, these will soon replace most large caliber guns (like on ships and tanks)

About the flames. Those are created by the shell itself literally melting from the air resistance at the mega muzzle velocity.

Wowee! Imagine the worlds most greedy, violent and extremist terrorists having this thing mounted on their little "defence" ships! (yahuh, that wud be YOU yankee doodah). Your nation sickens me to the core, the creation of this device is further proof of the utter hypocrisy infecting your politicians and civilians. I hope son-of-bin-laden hijacks one of these and goes to town on your country. I will be cracking a beer and laughing my ass off.

You could have ended world starvation. You could have eradicated preventable disease. You could have created free-for-use, non-polluting renewable energy. But instead you've got your redneck cowboy ass a new gun a bit bigger than the one you already had. Bravo, morons.

Clearly "MAKE PEACE, NOT THE USA" has no idea how many people want to attack a country as large as the U.S. just because we are powerful. We create weapons to defend ourselves because everyone wants a chance to beat up the big kid on the school yard for bragging rights. In another note, we are not creating alternative fuel because in order to do that, we would have to close millions of our current gas stations nation wide and make new ones to support the fuels we create. Then after that, who says the older cars will support said fuel? We may need to make new automobiles just to use it. Too much trouble, and it is much easier to create a weapon to scare away all of the psychos trying to build nukes and destroy us. Way to use your derogatory words to demonstrate how much more superior your country is than ours.

One of the things this is being developed for is an anti ballistic missile system. It could also be used as the next generation of AA guns, and maybe even for hitting targets in space. Anyone remember the missile launched at a satellite? I doubt that any heavy-duty railguns will ever be mounted to aircraft due to the potential for the magnetic field to disrupt electronics. However, if that were not a problem, it would likely only appear on the biggest planes, such as the B-52, although a small one could potentially replace the machine-guns on fighters.