Navy Rail Gun to Test Rapid Fire & Move Closer to Combat

by Kris Osborn

Can shoot out of a rail gun to destroy enemy ships, vehicles and missiles at ranges up to 100 nautical miles.

The promise of this seemingly futuristic weapon system is no longer a thing of mystery, speculation or sci-fi movies but rather somehing nearing operational use in combat. The weapon brings such force, power and range that is the kind of thing which could hold enemies at risk from greater distances and attack targets with a fire and kinetic energy force equivalent to a multi-ton vehicle moving at 160 miles per hour, developers have said.

The Office of Naval Research is now bringing the electromagnetic rail gun out of the laboratory and into field demonstrations at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division’s new rail gun Rep-Rate Test Site at Terminal Range.

“Initial rep-rate fires (repetition rate of fires) of multi-shot salvos already have been successfully conducted at low muzzle energy. The next test sequence calls for safely increasing launch energy, firing rates and salvo size,” a statement from ONR says.

Railgun rep-rate testing will be at 20 megajoules by the end of the summer and at 32 megajoules by next year. To put this in perspective; one megajoule is the equivalent of a one-ton vehicle moving at 160 miles per hour, ONR information states.

“Railguns and other directed-energy weapons are the future of maritime superiority,” Dr. Thomas Beutner, head of ONR’s Naval Air Warfare and Weapons Department, said in a statement earlier this month. “The U.S. Navy must be the first to field this leap-ahead technology and maintain the advantage over our adversaries.”

The weapon works when electrical power charges up a pulse-forming network. That pulse-forming network is made up of capacitors able to release very large amounts of energy in a very short period of time.