Thread 63907546

Wouldn't railguns be perfect for shooting down missiles?

>>63907546 (OP)
No.

in their terminal approach, yes.

probably the cheapest per shot.

>>63907546 (OP)
Yes assuming your targeting system is top-tier. Otherwise a less expensive (than the one you're trying to shoot down) missile is the next best thing, since lasers aren't all-weather (something every lasertard seems to forget) and don't work well against really fast missiles like hypersonics which are becoming more common.

>>63907546 (OP)
No. Modern missiles will maneuver during terminal approach to make interception by other missiles more difficult; this coincidentally makes non-maneuverable railgun projectiles completely worthless at hitting them.

>>63908458
We have had guided shells for 30 years now. Get with the times, grandpa.

>>63908458
Railguns have a muzzle velocity of mach 10. I don't think the missile will have enough time to dodge.

>>63907546 (OP)
are we taking into consideration that there is only one missle because from all the test frie videos ive seen it looks like the barrel tears itself apart.I apologize in advance if i'm wrong.

>>63909253
Hey dingus, the missile isn't going to dodging the shot. It's going to be maneuvering regardless. So it's going to be out of the way from the last track the CMS gives the shot.

>>63908458
>terminal phase maneuvering
They aren't going to be maneuvering at hypersonic speeds I think

>>63909291
At the same time, if the shot arrives before the missile can meaningfully change course then it doesn't really matter.

>>63907546 (OP)
Only as a desperate attempt if hypersonic missiles become resistant to lasers.
Or as a system to intercept dumb but heavy shells shot at you on ballistic trajectories.

To shot down missiles (and drones) I'd put all the money on lasers.
Right now they are cumbersome, waste half the power as heat and are fragile.
But given the potential, we are one breakthrough away from everyone else wondering: "What the fuck? Why don't WE have lasers already?"

>>63911518
Just to be clear, I'm not saying airborne laser is the future.
Forgot to mention that it was impressive enough they could put a laser on an airplane. On a warship it would be no trouble at all.

>>63907546 (OP)
That's the idea.
https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/naval-warfare/japan-successfully-fires-electromagnetic-railgun/

>>63907546 (OP)
no, railguns are best used for shooting down meteors and other debris

>>63911518
>But given the potential, we are one breakthrough away from everyone else wondering: "What the fuck? Why don't WE have lasers already?"

People have been saying that since the 80s. The truth is lasers attenuate quickly in atmosphere due to water vapor, and space-based lasers are expensive.

>>63907552
/thread

>>63911518
>I'd put all the money on lasers
*blocks your path*

Since HARP there was always a hope that railguns would be able to shoot down ballistic missiles. That's why their barrel life issues were never really addressed, it didn't matter. They only need to shoot down a single ballistic missile to be worth building so it wasn't an entirely unreasonably proposition, and the US navy in particular tried them in the same Capacity as HELIOS.

I can't tell you exactly what the issue is but probably that the launch platforms aren't good enough to stabilise ballistic counter munition, and rocket platforms were preferred on land because their mobility needed to match SCUD.

Some people will tell you rail guns were intend for tanks or against meteors, maybe they tried that but I don't think it was ever the intended use

>>63912454
We've also said that for a lot of stuff that outpaced our wildest expectation once we had the tech-level to actually make them
We already have warship mounted lasers, it's only a matter of improving the tech until it destroy million dollar missiles 200km away.
Aside, we don't need a space-based laser to reach satellites, be it 300km up, or eventually thousands of kilometers up, it's just a question of energy.

>>63912462
At the level of energy we are talking about, it's not a cloud that will negate it.
Clouds also impede airfighter operation in the first place, pilots do NOT want to "dive into a cloud to hide". So even with our current cheapass lasers, it's more cost-efficient to have them in the long therm. Just not as your only method of interception.

The advantage of railguns isn't how fast the projectiles go, it's that it's the logical conclusion of the development of insensitive munitions. They don't need to add additional capability over existing weapons, they just need to be broadly comparable while eliminating the potential for a magazine explosion.

>>63912739
Railguns still needs tons of fuel ~100 tons of very flammable capacitors per gun.
ETC are better and smaller, they don't need conventional propellant easy to combust or a capacitor bank as large as a railgun.

>>63912753
>There's no point in minimizing the amount of rocket fuel and high explosives in your ship because capacitors can technically burn too

>>63908458
nah, they don't do it on terminal; that's when they slow down to put on their seekers and go straight to target. they'll have a terrible cep if they don't do this. this is when you can shoot them down with the most success.

new hypersonics maneuver mid-course and prior to terminal to make high and mid altitude interception hard.

>>63912769
More like: the railgun isn't the only way to achieve that, in fact there're better alternatives.
Of course, if your objective is having a magazine with 10 times smaller because the ship is full of capacitor banks then that's ok, lol

>>63912779
The ammunition is also ten times smaller because it's just a penetrator with no propellant charge, so it cancels out.

>>63912769
>If I put the word technically in front of something then I can downplay it for free.
But I honestly know very little about capacitors.

>>63912792
Allow me to inform you: they're not nearly as flammable as high explosives.

>>63912785
>it's just a penetrator with no propellant charge
"penetrator" are you forgetting the bursting charges of those shells? or are you talking about shots without any chemical filler...
Italians mounted a modified naval 3" auto-cannon on a tank chassis, can you do the same with a railgun (without using a freight train), good luck with the mediocre RoF because you can't add enough railguns and the magazine is full of useless shots instead of real rounds and missiles.

>>63912808
Propellants aren't HE, and you need ~100 tons of capacitors for each railgun (plus more tons of fuel), those are mostly PP with some paper and oil. Less flammable and smaller capacitors (using PVFD) are way too expensive, short lived and inefficient (the capacitor bank needs liquid cooling).
100 tons of burning plastic will cause some damage.

>>63912824
What existing railgun has a bursting charge? The US Navy railguns are purely kinetic.

>>63912839
>those are mostly PP with some paper and oil
This retard really thinks the Navy is building 32+ MJ railguns with electrolytic capacitors.

>>63912859
>The US Navy railguns are purely kinetic.
Because those railguns were too early to even need munition actually effective, you can't destroy real targets without HE, especially if the projectile is a dart moving at 1.7-3 km/s to reduce aerodynamic drag, pic rel.

>>63912870
>This retard really thinks the Navy is building 32+ MJ railguns with electrolytic capacitors.
Nobody uses electrolytic capacities dipshit. The government funded the development of advanced BOPP+Metallized Kraft Paper capacitors between the late 1970s and early 2000s, that in current year only General Atomics makes them (CMX capacitors) mostly for science experiments like NIF but during the 1990s the Navy began testing them for railguns because compulsators were too complex.
A proposed alternative are capacitors using PVDF instead of BOPP but they have serious problems besides cost, so those GA CMX are the only usable ms-class power capacitor in current year.

>>63912859
>The US Navy railguns are purely kinetic.
They had a small amount of explosive to fragment the shell.
https://home.army.mil/wsmr/application/files/7016/2742/4435/AdvancedGunfire_EA_20180411.pdf

>>63909253
Do some back of the envelope math my guy.
Thats said, the shells would obviously be able of some maneuvering.

>>63912753
ETC is marginally better than conventional guns and is not worth the increased complexity and power draw of adding a pulse forming network.

>>63914713
It's more energetically efficient than railguns, it enables the use of more energetic and insensitive propellants and can be used in current vehicles because they don't weight 100 tons, the 120mm ETC gun achieved +2km/s using a gun comparable in size to a Rheinmetall 120mm. 2-3 km/s is perfectly viable with current tech using new propellants and ETC.

Dang railgun shots are pretty fast I wonder if there is another futuristic AA option thats even faster, you know light is pretty fast how about you concentrate light into a beam that can burn down the missile instead? you can call it lightgun (tm)
Sounds cheaper and safer than having to change barrels every other shot and hurling tungsten all over the sky

>>63912739
More or less. The capacitors and transformers can explode pretty violently. And will cause electrical and fuel fires (coolant from the transformers set alight) as well as the explosion.

>>63916177
BOPP capacitors are only mildly flammable due to containing castor oil. They're safer than most other weapon systems.

>>63907546 (OP)
No, because it runs into the Ornithopter Fallacy. The Ornithopter, an aircraft which produced lift via the movement of its wings, raises multiple mechanical and engineering challenges:
1. You have to design a wing that is able to produce lift by flapping and not snap while doing so
2. You have to design engines and motors that are able to maneuver said wings effeciently and precicely enough that they can fly the aircraft effectively for long enough to warrant their use.
3. By the time you have developed both the above, these technologies would be better served in regular, traditional aircraft like helicopters and jets.

By the time you create a barrel that can survive regular use in a railgun, you can just switch them to a regular ship's gun. By the time you create a power-system that can fire the railgun, it is better suited to be used doing anything else. By the time this technology can be used to power man-sized railgun weaponry, they're going to use them in some other, more effective capacity.

>>63917713
>he doesn't know Ornithopter work on scientific principle that make them better than rotary turbine
Next you'll tell me we will never make mecha

>>63917713
A railgun barrel and a conventional gun barrel are completely different technologies.
Any other directed energy system that can use the same power system has tradeoffs. Nothing will be the overall best weapon system. And honestly, directed energy will have abysmal performance against hypersonics for decades.
Man-sized railguns and directed energy weapons are fantasy disguised as near-future sci-fi.

Suddenly just hit me how depressing it is the world is spending billions on the best way to hurl explosives at each other / intercept those explosives, instead of literally anything else besides that.

>>63917713
Please delete that sir, you're hurting their feefees

>>63907546 (OP)
Theoretically yes.
In practice, not so much.
A few issues off the bat :
- Air defense is very time-sensitive, and a rail gun takes time to charge up it's capacitors, so it can release all of its energy built up in one go.
Being quite slow, makes it really impractical to shoot down fast moving objects.
- Another problem is the kinetic nature of the ammo. You need to score a direct hit on the incoming missile. I don't know if you realise how precise you would have to be to manage that with a high rate of success.
Railguns are not currently capable of being that precise at such extreme ranges.
Which leads into the next point :
- The wear and tear of the railgun.
Railguns are not nearly as economic as people think.
You don't just replace the round, you also replace the rails very often, because the immense energy used to propel the projectile gets discharged into the rails.
Old railguns would last only 10 shots or so, now with the new materials they can last up to 400 shots before needing to be changed, but there's still the issue of loss of accuracy after each individual shot.
Railguns are not precise enough off the bat, but they lose a significant amount of accuracy at long ranges after each shot, as the rails are degraded and become a tiny bit warped.

So yeah, cool idea on paper, but a fucking nightmare IRL.
Railguns are much more suited for bigger slower/immobile targets.
Air Defense Railgun will never happen unless some miracle technology comes out of nowhere and solves all of the current problems with it.

>>63907546 (OP)
what a fucktard, imagine the railgun shots falling in some neighboring country, fucking shit up later xD

>>63914244
I don't think they'd need to. At mach 10 they'd be crossing 3.4 km every second. That's about 3x the muzzle velocity of the M61 vulcan used on the CIWS and CRAM so we should expect about 3x the range.

It also makes more sense to used timed airburst rounds. The whole premise is that railgun rounds are cheap so let's follow that principle and using the cheaper option. With luck we could hit multiple missiles with single shells. Perfect if we're concerned with a saturation attack.

>>63907546 (OP)
Only if the gun says RAILGUN GOD. after you shoot down 20 missles in a single battle

>>63907546 (OP)
No. Guns are inherently more limited by physics than missiles

>>63922417
But missiles are far more expensive than guns. If the enemy is trying to overwhelm you with cheap cruise missiles does it make more sense to use expensive AMMs or cheap guns?

>>63907546 (OP)
Guided missiles are the prefered interceptors because aiming a gun finely at a fast moving missile is extremely difficult and beyond the precision available, which is why CIWS fire a large burst of bullets and not a single shot.

>>63922660
Counterpoint, airburst.

>>63922669
Airburst only will be an effective range of 10m vs 10cm. You are asking for thousanths of a MOA accuracy at a target >30 seconds in the future.
You have the same problem as WW2 flak gunners, the time of flight is significant as is the uncertainty of if the target will even be in the aimed zone. Also, unlike a level bomber it is coming down vertically at extreme speed so there's very few chances of success.

>>63922753
Railguns have a muzzle velocity of about 3.4 km/s so accounting for some loss for air resistance we're looking at a range of 90 km. That's on par with some ABM systems at a fraction of the cost.

But seriously, shooting only a tenth that range is more practical.

Where does this myth that railgun rounds would be unguided come from?

>>63922828
You are still ignoring the necessary precision and rate of fire needed for a likely kill probability.

>>63922868
While there were plans to make guided railgun rounds it ended up making the rounds just as expensive as missiles and kinda defeated the whole point of a railgun. The guided rounds ended up being repurposed for GPS guided artillery.

>>63922892
Rate of fire is dependent on what power plant you hooked it up to and at mach 10 a single lead ball bearing would tear right through a cruise missile, deforming and splitting as it does.

The current research into railgun's is Japan using them for land based cruise missile defense. You could plug them into the national power grid.

>>63922894
The cost delta of different guidance systems is minimal. HVP is still around $100k and SM-2 is $2.5M.

>>63922467
>>63922669
Missiles can intercept at longer distances, so you can fire more interceptor, can maneuver better, and are better at carrying large warheads to reduce how closely you need to place the interceptor.

>>63923047
It was more that the seeker needed to survive the acceleration rather than the guidance package it'self.
>>63923067
>better at carrying large warheads to reduce how closely you need to place the interceptor.
Not really. Missile warheads NEED to be big because most missiles don't have the speed to penetrate the target. APFSDS rounds don't even have a warhead and manage to kill targets.