PRC/PLAN Laser and Rail Gun Development Thread

Jura The idiot

Jura The idiot

General
kurutoga said:
...

Back to your question, yes the test railgun with 32MJ muzzle energy can not match the best of the existing naval guns. It is all very experimental in nature and this experiment can still fail. For most people the excitement came from the fact that things get done, and arguably China beat US in his own game.
Click to expand...
LOL noticed you then enhanced your post

one more thing about the energy: something like a shipborne THAAD would be a butcher Jan 14, 2018
Jura said:
... I add a thought:

a THAAD kill vehicle would deliver ginormous energy (I couldn't find the weight, am guessing 300 kg as one third of the missile
790px-Wfm_thaad_diagram.svg.png
OK?):
0.5*300*2800^2 is about 1.2 GJ (one point two gigajoules)

EDIT I set aside the cost, as it'd appear to be several hundred millions:

"... at an estimated cost of $15 billion, ... Saudi Arabia asked to purchase 44 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) launchers and 360 missiles, as well as fire control stations and radars."
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Click to expand...
 
K

kurutoga

Junior Member
Registered Member
@Jura, look at this way, the overall effectiveness of a naval weapon system will be evaluated based on the following main factors
  • Total amount of energy delivered to target, per ton of ship displacement. Here we should consider "muzzle energy" as a combination of kinetic energy and chemical energy
  • Rate of fire
  • Cost of each MJ delivered
and some minor factors such as:
  • Failure rate
  • Accuracy
  • Likelihood of being neutralized
  • Rate of technology improvement (exponential, linear etc)
  • etc
  • etc
Once you have the big utility function you can calculate laser weapon, railguns, elector-thermal-chemical guns, traditional guns, missiles, etc in various scenarios they will be used. Chinese/US navy should look at their long term goal then come up with the situations where naval force is needed, then decide which direction they want to go. It does not always have to be the same.

Unless they can make a mini railgun maybe it will not replace other CIWS. On the other hand, if railguns are successful we need to rethink if VLS is truly as necessary as they are today. I say this because railguns or others, is not an easy decision to make. So for us as observers we don't have all the info at hand. For now people just want to indulge them in dreaming about the possibilities
 
Last edited:
I

Iron Man

Major
Registered Member
IMO while the enthusiasm surrounding the unveiling of this weapon is similar to the revelation of the J-20, the actual importance of the J-20 as a weapon system is still far greater from the viewpoint of its contribution to enhancing overall Chinese military power, than is a railgun. In the overall scheme of things, the railgun is a fancy artillery piece with perhaps a couple additional applications, while the J-20 is the lynchpin of China's 21st century national air defense. I think the enthusiasm comes more from the perception that this railgun (assuming it is in fact a railgun) may perhaps represent a harbinger of things to come, being possibly the first example of a high tech military system where China has dramatically pulled ahead of the US.
 
L

latenlazy

Brigadier
Just a note on muzzle energy, what matters isn’t kinetic energy of the projectile when exiting the muzzle but the kinetic energy of the projectile when hitting the target. If the projectile bleeds energy as it travels the kinetic energy hitting the target is going to be less than the muzzle energy. I don’t know this as fact but I’m going to guess that a railgun projectile might bleed less energy than a round from a Mark 7 battleship gun. If the projectile is delivering an explosive payload then the muzzle energy is trivial relative to the actual kinetic energy of the payload itself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top