PRC/PLAN Laser and Rail Gun Development Thread

[by78]

Isn't US railgun supposed to fire guided munition? IIRC said munition (HVP) even survive longer than the railgun project as it is repurposed to be fired by conventional artillery. I doubt smart projectiles are incompatible with railgun if they put some effort in it.

All versions of HVP have been cancelled. The guided variant can only be fired at Mach 3, less than half of what the railgun is capable of. When powdered guns (155mm howitzers) are capable of firing rounds close to Mach 3, there is little point of using fancy and expensive railguns to achieve the same results.

I suspect the Chinese are also running into the same technical constraints. Until they can be overcome, it's far more economical to use guided rounds from traditional guns.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Why would that be the case? It seems to be straightforwardly a better naval gun.

From what I've read performance wise you can achieve the same with WWI era battleship guns, without the fancy electrical system.

 

[PeoplesPoster]

Electronics and the sea water don’t mix. I wonder how exposed to the environment a rail gun needs to be to operate, a traditional gun is much more robust.

 

[gelgoog]

It is hard to make electronics for gun launched projectiles because of the velocity and stresses in a gun. The operating environment in a railgun is even worse than a regular gun. Gerald Bull proposed to use guns for satellite launch for example but they had to give up on it because of that.

 

[sferrin]

No, I think they will be launching HGV and HCM with Rail Guns, Global Times already described it the perfect combination of technologies.

Apples and oranges. HGV and HCM have nothing to do with the rounds fired from railguns. May as well be thinking tanks are going to be launching boost gliders.

 

[Richard Santos]

From what I've read performance wise you can achieve the same with WWI era battleship guns, without the fancy electrical system.

EM guns can in theory achieve much higher muzzle velocity and higher rate of fire than is practical with conventional tube artillery

 

[siegecrossbow]

EM guns can in theory achieve much higher muzzle velocity and higher rate of fire than is practical with conventional tube artillery

In theory, yes, but in practice the scatter is a lot worse than conventional artillery.

 

[jvodan]

Regarding smart projections fired from a rail gun. I suspect if would be near impossible on account of the electric and magnetic fields involved which would fry any electronic components.

So any naval rail gun on the 55 would be firing dumb projections.

 

[sferrin]

Regarding smart projections fired from a rail gun. I suspect if would be near impossible on account of the electric and magnetic fields involved which would fry any electronic components.

So any naval rail gun on the 55 would be firing dumb projections.

Not necessarily.

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Obviously they either harden the electronics or the sabot doubles as an EM shield. (Or likely both.)

 

[kriss]

All versions of HVP have been cancelled. The guided variant can only be fired at Mach 3, less than half of what the railgun is capable of. When powdered guns (155mm howitzers) are capable of firing rounds close to Mach 3, there is little point of using fancy and expensive railguns to achieve the same results.

I suspect the Chinese are also running into the same technical constraints. Until they can be overcome, it's far more economical to use guided rounds from traditional guns.

Didn't know these details before and they surely explains a lot.

Though does that also mean guided munition's major obstacle is not the electrical components under the affect of EM field produced by railgun but rather higher acceleration than compared to tube artillery. And we know EM launching technology would be able to smooth the acceleration curve which naturally means a railgun would potentially be able to fire the same smart munition at a speed considerably higher than tube artillery. It's close in HVP's case but it doesn't have to be that way. And eventually new breakthrough would be achieved providing smart munition able to sustain higher acceleration capitalizing railgun's vast advantage.

So I believe railgun still could achieve a much better performance with smart munition in short terms. And in long terms it would be a magnitude better than any traditional guns in almost everyway.