PRC/PLAN Laser and Rail Gun Development Thread

[ougoah]

Phalanx has a maximum effective range of 9 km. I'm sure Russian and Chinese counterparts might do slightly better. I really don't see the point of putting a multi-million dollar coilgun turret to CIWS use.

Unless they have proximity warheads and with shotgun effect or guided rounds, it's obviously a very poor CIWS system. Like the Chinese saying, using a cannon to shoot at a mosquito.

 

[kurutoga]

As they always say, railgun would be the offensive weapon and laser would be the defensive weapon. In a updated design of Type 055, they can co-exist and connect to the same power source. In the short term this configuration would be most feasible.

Global times, among other official media, are quoting TheDrive. This means the entire story is not a leak but an intentional propaganda like J20. The route of info:

Weibo => Chinese discussion forum => twitter => SDF => English text blogs => Chinese discussion forum => Official Chinese language media

 

[Inst]

Now we need to know whether it's a railgun or a coilgun. The picture we got reads railgun, but the picture of the cannon suggests coilgun. What to believe?

 

[kurutoga]

Now we need to know whether it's a railgun or a coilgun. The picture we got reads railgun, but the picture of the cannon suggests coilgun. What to believe?

confirmed by many as a railgun for Navy. The coilgun is a project as EM motar for PLA Army, someone mentioned it in a Chinese forum

 

[Jura The idiot]

... => SDF => ...

we that important? LOL!

 

[Jura The idiot]

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I get some 20 meters of turret with barrel length. And 9.7 meter long visible part of the barrel. And possibly even a full meter or a bit more diameter of the narrow part of the barrel.

I knew I had seen some measurement before, so I found it now; it's inside

#78 Hendrik_2000, Wednesday at 6:11 PM

 

[hkbc]

It's unlikely to be useful as a CIWS because it can only engage one missile at a time. If the range at which an incoming missile is engaged is around 10km for a close to 100% hit probability, how many missiles do you think it can intercept? Once you destroyed one incoming missile, the others would have destroyed your ship. If you want to engage missiles at greater distances then your accuracy and hit probability is so low, it becomes pointless. Manqiangrexu already mentioned the obvious, once your enemy realises your EMG is good at destroying their missiles 100km out, they will make modifications so they maneuver slightly once in a while so that it makes a basic projectile from EMG impossible to hit the missile while only sacrificing range slightly. So that leaves the final few seconds where the EMG can shoot and hit 100%. But if there are more than a few coming in at the same time, EMG cannot intercept them all. This makes CIWS unlikely. It all comes down to the projectile but early days to replace existing proven CIWS.

So how is this any different than the current generation of CIWS? can any gun based point defence weapon engage multiple targets simultaneously? Guns come in varying calibres so it's logical that a EM Gun can also be made in different sizes, if you don't need to send something out to 100km but just 10 and the projectile is smaller then you'll need less power and can fire shots more frequently. Also with smaller 'barrels' a vessel can house more which can be distributed along the hull to allow multiple engagement so the technical issues then just becomes one of detection and available power.

All these absolute statements about whether a new concept can/can't do something should or shouldn't be used for something is just conservative thinking, like the Royal Navy admirals maintaining that wooden ships of the line as the way to stay in the early 19th century. When the first steam war ships appeared they still had sails because of the immaturity of the technology same with the coexistence of breech loading rifled guns and smooth bore cannons. Now there are no more sails and smooth bored naval guns are consigned to the museum.

If this EM gun and associated technologies works then it will herald the next stage of evolution in naval warfare and all the cosy certainties we assume to be inviolate truths will have to be re-thought.

 

[plawolf]

I doubted Wuhan is the best place to test the weapon. The nearby ranges are simply not vast enough to test the full range of the railgun unless the PLAN only plans to test the projectiles at an extremely lofted trajectory.

It’s extremely doubtful they would be testing the gun for the first time on the ship.

Most likely the gun itself has already been comprehensively test at one or more of China’s vast and remote testing ranges, and this part of the test is no longer about the gun, but the ship based integration.

There would be little to no need to test the gun at full range, especially not in the early stages.

It is mounted on a ship after all, once they have completed all the validation and preliminary tests, they can sail the ship and gun anywhere they want for further testing.

 

[plawolf]

Against a maneuvering missile?

What missile starts evasive manoeuvres 100km from target?

Besides, 100km against a missile is pretty unrealistic to start with given the detection difficulties.

Rail/gaus gun CIWS really comes into their own on the 5-25km range category.

Missiles will still be flying in cruise mode at such ranges, so will be flying nice predicatable flightpaths, so will be much easier to target compare to those missiles in terminal mode, where they are doing evasive and/or boosting to supersonic speeds.

The accuracy rate will be further boosted by the high speed of the projectile.

In effect, with rail/gaus guns, you can vastly extend the effective range of your CIWS to medium range missile territory.

There is nothing stopping you keeping FL2000s and laser gun based CIWS as well.

So rather than seeing them as a straight swap for traditional or laser CIWS, see them as an added bonus layer of defence.

 

[bruceb1959]

Phalanx has a maximum effective range of 9 km. I'm sure Russian and Chinese counterparts might do slightly better. I really don't see the point of putting a multi-million dollar coilgun turret to CIWS use.

I dispute your 'maximum effective range' figure - firstly maximum range and effective range are generally very different, and secondly the Vulcan Phalanx has, I believe, a maximum range of 5-6 km, and an effective range of maybe 2/3 of that. My apologies if I'm mistaken. by comparison,Kashtan-m 30mm cannon have a reported maximun range of of about 4- 5km.