Navy: Accelerate your Railgun, RL- not as stylish as on the Lobo Options

[Riley37]

[DTFarstar]

The projectiles themselves can still be fissionable materials, not to mention who cares about making them explode when you can just put several hole below the water line and sink their asses.

Chris

[kzt]

Typically insensitive modern explosives are safer than the propellant charges.

[hobgoblin]

That's a serious limitation, if it's used in ship-to-ship combat, because it prevents all explosions on all ships, and sometimes one wants to cause explosions on the target.

rarely if ever are guns used in ship to ship these days iirc.

its mostly anti-ship missiles.

the guns are most often used for shore bombardment, or maybe taking potshots at lesser targets where a missile would be a waste of money...

[nezumi]

Drek! Somebody else thought the stupid, purple dwarf picture was too funny to pass up... Now I need to find another picture. You suck, hobgoblin!

(Okay, you don't really suck, but I still need to find another crazy/stupid avatar picture...)

[hobgoblin]

heh, if you can point me to a copy of acme magic circle paint, im willing to give it up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Fortune]

heh, if you can point me to a copy of acme magic circle paint, im willing to give it up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Heh, I have a copy of that pic on my computer, but I didn't see it among the choices available.

[DocTaotsu]

Ship guns are no longer considered the optimal way to kill other ships. Surface skimming missiles fired from a multitude of weapon systems are supposed to be pretty damn effective at killing most ships. Submarine launched torpedoes are supposed to be even more effective and that’s not even getting into things like the super cavitation weapons like the Russian Shrike torpedo. Aside from sniping at the occasional pirate/drug runner they don’t get used much. Still pretty cool though, I’ve been told that, used in conjunction with the AEGIS system, a destroyers main gun should be able to shoot WWII artillery shells out of the sky. No, I have no idea how they figured that. In that vein I’ve seen footage of Coast Guard cutters shooting the rudders off fleeing ships.

Riley, I think you misread that quote. The AGS system itself isn’t supposed to have anything that goes boom so if it gets shot it just stops working (instead of ripping the ship in half). The rounds themselves /could/ have HE heads in theory, although the kinetic kill power is supposed to be enough that they don’t need them. This weapon isn’t supposed to put holes in things, it’s supposed to be the next best thing to an orbital bombardment. High velocity .50 round rips people apart just by grazing them, I suspect that a 225 lb AGS round does something similar as it jaunts back to Earth after a brief stint in the upper atmosphere.

In all the literature I’ve read and stuff I can find on the internet the AGS turrets on the DD-1000 are specifically designed for shore bombardment. One article says that the two turrets working in concert can provide the same weight of fire as 18 M-198 howitzers. Looking at some stats it looks like a single AGS should be able to provide twice to 5 times the rate of fire, at least 4 times the range (6 if the get the LRLAP’s to work properly), and draw upon a 300-600 round automated magazine. I’m also seeing that they might be able to resupply and reload these magazines while firing is underway. Currently the only glaring negative (besides the fact that it hasn’t been fielded or combat tested yet) is that the rated accuracy is 50 meters circular error probable. Of course if you’re throwing 10 of these in a minute at the same target that probably isn’t going to be as big a deal. Also I can’t find any firm numbers on destructive capability. I’ve read in the past that the kinetic kill strength was equivalent to a cruise missile. But this was also back in the day when it was going to shoot 200 dollar non explosive rounds (the price is now upwards of 35k a pop).

Basically the long and short is that it shoots real far, real fast, and accurate enough for government work. Given the proper funding and development I’m sure we’ll see it tossing GPS guided, penetration=yes, Doom Bringer rounds

A word on militaries lying about their capabilities. There really isn’t all that much a point in lying about the capabilities of a weapon system you’ll be fielding publicly in a couple of years. First off, it’s artillery, it’s not like it’s some secret weapon that our enemies don’t have a defense against because they’ve never heard about it. Secondly, this is a ship weapon system which means that the people responsible for maintaining, loading, and firing the damn thing are 18 year old enlisted service member. If you don’t think you can’t bribe/finesse a guy fresh out of highschool to slip you a few technical specs on the gun he went to school for 3 months to learn, you probably have very slow Shadowrun games. The parts that you’ll notice conspicuously absent in all the tech briefs are the specifics on how it works. No word on what materials are used in the barrel, how capacitors are installed and rated, or any of the info you’d need to make your very own AGS.

Besides, deterrent force isn’t very effective if the enemy isn’t clear on how thoroughly you can kick the crap out of him. Releasing all the fun facts on how far, how fast, and how badly you can hurt your enemy only lets him now how far behind the power curve he is.

By the way, I’m a big fan of the AGS program. Nothing says “Support The Troops� like timely and effective offshore bombardment.

[DocTaotsu]

Oh yeah, and the DD-1000 uses a traditional destroyer power source, gas turbines. The particular engine planned for the DD-1000 is a navalized version of the rolls-royce jet turbine mounted on the 777. Turbines are more fuel efficient than traditional boiler power plants and a whole hell of a lot safer. My understanding of boiler power plants is that you throw fuel onto a very hot plate and try to strike that balance between generating a sustained fire and blowing a boiler shaped hole through the bottom of your boat.

Nuke power is limited to subs and carriers. They're kinda a pain in the ass to man because the school for an enlisted nuke tech is a little over a year long and it takes almost 2 years before they get to a ship, you also have to pay them more. Also it makes making port visits a pain because most countries are antsy about letting us park a nuclear pile in their backyard. Japan in particular has a ban on nuke ships using their ports. That's why we have the monsterously old carrier Kitty Hawk in Yokuska. I think they might make an exception for us when we finally scrap the Shitty Kitty but for now, no nukes. I think the Navy built a couple of smaller keel nuke ships back in the 70's but I'm pretty sure we don't field any of them today.

[Riley37]

The original quote says it prevents ALL explosions on ALL ships. I was making fun of the bad writing. I find it highly implausible that a railgun on Navy Ship A in the Atlantic prevents firecrackers from going off Herring Ketch B in the Pacific, or a fuel explosion on Luxury Yacht C in the Indian Ocean, or Strongbad exploding your head on Ferry D in Puget Sound.
Sure, I realize that one use a railgun to shoot chemical or fission warheads, and that kinetic energy alone would do plenty of damage, varying with specifics of the projectile, eg expensive alloy rounds designed for max penetration, vs cheap lumps of iron.

[DocTaotsu]

Ha! My bad, I totally missed that. Chalk that up for my entry in the next edition of "Pandas eats, shoots, and leaves."

I'd also like to think we aren't going to start tossing fissionable anything into a weapon that shoots 10 times a minute.