Photos tweeted from Dafeng Cao and many other appears to show that China has mounted a railgun onto a landing ship.
Above – Type 072III landing ship tank (LST) Haiyang Shan, #936, would be the world’s first railgun-armed warship. Its small size and lack of combat features means that it will likely be used to test and validate the technologies of the railgun. Da Feng Cao
There is new turret installed on its bow, replacing the H/PJ76F 37mm anti-aircraft turret. There are also three shipping containers. The shipping containers would hold batteries and power systems for a railgun.
The US Navy had been considering installing a prototype railgun onto a navy ship but had delayed that demonstration. The US Navy and army have a land-based railgun that they were testing.
The entire railgun on the chinese naval ship measures roughly 65 feet from turret rear to barrel muzzle, with the barrel itself about 33 feet long, and 12-20 feet in diameter.
Its barrel length makes the Chinese railgun similar in size to the BAE 32 megajoule railgun built for U.S. Navy testing. The BAE system is designed to fire 22-pound projectiles at Mach 7 speeds to more than 100 miles.
A sharper one, is that a typical railgun barrel? pic.twitter.com/qppawHPSB0
— dafeng cao (@xinfengcao) January 31, 2018
Il me semble que cette date il y a quelques jours, à confirmer… pic.twitter.com/zUgRopEs5s
— East Pendulum (@HenriKenhmann) February 4, 2018
US landbased railgun
The Chinese gun appears to match the size and shape of the US landbased railgun.
SOURCES -Twitter, Youtube, Popular Science
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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