China, Japan, US Race to Perfect and Deploy Railguns

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China’s Navy researchers have claimed to have solved issues to make military relevant and useful railguns. China has mounted a single test railgun on a ship since about 2018-2019. China has talked about 32 megajoule power range tests and plans and future 100 megajoule systems.

The US is now working with Japan to develop and produce railguns. Japan released video of a railgun mounted on a ship performing test firings.

Japan ATLA’s medium-sized electromagnetic railgun prototype can fire 40 mm steel projectiles weighing 320 grams each, judging by the weapon’s specifications. ATLA intends to eventually run its gun on 20 megajoules (MJ) of charge energy. Japan’s railgun experiments are at lower power than the older land based railgun experiments of the US and China’s claimed experiments.

The US performed a lot of land based railgun tests at the 32 megajoule power range.

The recent claim of success for China’s railgun work gives more credibility to Ma Weiming (top naval designer) plans. Ma Weiming has talked about hyper advanced nuclear powered aircraft carriers and mass deployment of railguns.

China’s Navy has more ships than the US but only a few have nuclear propulsion. China has 7-10 nuclear powered submarines. China’s current small aircraft carriers are not nuclear powered.

This means that the US nuclear powered aircraft carrier and submarines outnumber China’s nuclear powered ships by about ten to one.

High-powered Railguns will need a lot of electrical power. This topic of how to power energy hungry railguns and combat lasers was addressed in the Ma Weiming plans.

What would be the actual military advantage of railguns over missiles and regular navy guns?

A regular navy gun has a firing range of about 13-16 miles. China, US and Japan electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) projects envisioned to propel the HVP (high velocity projectiles) to speeds exceeding Mach 6 to a range of 100-120 nautical miles. Hypersonic speeds are considered anything above Mach 5.

Individual rocket assisted (60 mile range) rounds cost nearly $200,000 each and the U.S. Navy cancelled the program in 2008.

The HVP/GLGP does not rely on a rocket assist and uses only the ballistic energy transferred by being fired out of a gun barrel. The HVP/GLGP’s estimated cost is about $85,000 per round. The Evolved Sea Sparrow missile that the GLGP (Gun-Launched Guided Projectile) may one day replace for some air defense applications cost nearly $1 million each.

Fired out of a conventional 5-inch gun using chemical propellants instead of electromagnetic energy, the U.S. Navy believed HVP (high velocity projectiles) could achieve speeds of roughly Mach 3, about twice the speed of conventional ammunition, and a range of 40 nautical miles, substantially greater than the 5-inch gun’s current 13 nautical mile range. Since hypersonic speeds are not achieved when fired out of a conventional 5-inch gun the version of the HVP round that will be used in that role is called Gun-Launched Guided Projectile (GLGP).

Ships can carry hundreds of artillery rounds but many fewer missiles. U.S. Navy destroyers have about 90 launch cells to carry a variety of missiles, and cruisers have 122.

The advantage of real working railguns would be ten to one hundred times the number of shots with 10 times the range. Also, there would be less chemical explosives in the missiles or rounds and less explosive chemicals to fire the weapons. Ships loaded with chemical explosives can get hit and have fatal secondary explosions.

Nextbigfuture believes that IF China’s railguns are military useful then the first military railguns would be deployed on land to keep the US Navy away from the South China Sea and over 100-200 miles from China’s coast. This is already enforced with missiles but railguns would further improve deterrence.

Powering the Railguns and Ships

China’s main navy ship builder has talked about a breakthrough for nuclear powered ships which they could start building in 2027. There are no specific details on this. However, China has built a land based 210 megawatt pebble bed nuclear reactor that is operating and providing commercial power. They have two 105 MWe units. China is working on many other small and large land based nuclear reactor designs.

China has published a plan that explores a very advanced navy with nuclear powered ships, large amounts of lithium ion batteries and large flywheel energy storage to power the demanding power requirements of manu railguns and electric aircraft launchers.

The electromagnetic catapult system of the USS Ford aircraft carrier uses flywheel energy storage, which can provide 200 MJ of instantaneous energy in 2 seconds without affecting the aircraft carrier’s power system. The nuclear fusion test device of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute uses an inertial energy storage element with a capacity of 215 MV·A, which can provide a peak power of 160 MW within 30 s. In April 2022, the 10 MJ flywheel energy storage project of Qingdao Metro Line 3 participated by Hubei East Lake Laboratory was successfully connected to the grid and operated, using magnetic levitation flywheel technology with completely independent intellectual property rights.

At present, the power level of magnetic levitation flywheel energy storage systems has gradually developed from the original small and medium power to high power. High speed and high power are one of the key development directions of flywheel energy storage.

Considering the safety of large-scale lithium battery applications, Naval Engineering University has carried out a development route from high-rate lead-acid batteries to ultra-high-rate lithium iron phosphate batteries, achieved a leap from 6 C to 50 C, and successfully developed at 75 C, a lithium iron phosphate battery with a pulse discharge life of 30,000 times and an energy storage density of 80 W·h/kg.

The United States subsequently adopted a similar technical route. On July 2, 2014, the US Navy awarded K2 Energy an $81.4 million contract to conduct primary energy research and development of battery energy storage systems for shipborne electromagnetic railguns; on April 20, 2016, the US Navy Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division announced that it has awarded a contract to battery designer and manufacturer Saft America Inc. to develop energy storage modules for electromagnetic orbital weapons.

At present, the lifespan of capacitors with an energy storage density of 2.0 MJ/m³ produced by the American GA company reaches 10,000 times, and the lifespan of capacitors with an energy storage density of 2.4 MJ/m³ reaches 5,000 times; while domestic pulse capacitors have poor performance in terms of energy storage density and lifespan indicators. There is a big gap with foreign countries, and the lifespan is only half of it under the same energy storage density. To this end, the National Natural Science Foundation of China’s major project “Scientific Basis of Electromagnetic Energy Equipment for Extreme Conditions” led by the Naval University of Engineering has specifically set up research content on capacitor energy storage dielectrics, aiming to increase the energy storage density of capacitors to 4 MJ/ m³ , the life span reaches 10,000 times.

Pulse Power Supplies

The energy storage capacity of the pulse power supply equipped by the US Navy at the Dahlgren Surface Warfare Weapons Center reaches 100 MJ. This power supply provides energy for the electromagnetic launch device, with a peak current of up to 5 MA. The British Ministry of Defense built a 32 MJ capacitive energy storage pulse power supply system for the 90 mm caliber electromagnetic rail gun, which can output 3.6 MA current. The system consists of 29 modules that can be independently triggered and store 1.1 MJ of energy. In 2003, the German Ministry of Defense established a 30 MJ capacitor energy storage power supply system at the Rheinmetall test site for electromagnetic emission research, consisting of 24 1.28 MJ capacitor energy storage units. Russia has developed two sets of capacitive energy storage pulse power supply systems for electromagnetic launch research, with a total energy storage of 9 MJ, consisting of 96 94 kJ energy storage modules. The Naval Engineering University has successfully developed a pulse energy storage module that can store hundreds of kilojoules of energy per unit. It can be combined in a ” building block” style, and the total energy storage can reach hundreds of megajoules.

Electromagnetic orbital launcher

The electromagnetic track transmitter is an extremely special linear DC motor. It has no brush structure and only a pair of magnetic poles. The excitation winding and armature winding are both in a special single-turn form. It is essentially a unipolar linear pulse DC motor . The electromagnetic rail transmitter carries a large current of several MA levels during a few milliseconds of operation, with a current density as high as 10 billion Amps per square millimeter, resulting in extreme electromagnetic and thermal strong coupling and strong impact conditions. Due to the The existence between the pivot rails, Sliding electrical contacts with relative speeds of several km/s brings major challenges to the performance design of guide rails, armatures and their interfaces.

The key technologies involved include extreme condition rail materials and armature material technology, electromagnetic thermal multi-physics modeling technology, pivot rail high-speed current-carrying matching technology, rail rapid cooling technology, large-size low-modulus high-temperature-resistant insulator technology, and internal ballistic launch. Dynamics technology, muzzle arc ignition/arc suppression technology, etc.

In terms of guide rail form, the launching device can be divided into three types: flat, convex and concave.

Electromagnetic coil gun

Electromagnetic coil guns have very wide military applications in future high-tech warfare, not only at the tactical level, but also at the strategic level. The US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is vigorously promoting research on the 120 mm caliber electromagnetic mortar laboratory demonstration project, specifically developing a vehicle-mounted non-direct sight electromagnetic mortar for the next generation of “future combat systems”. The goal is to use the 120 mm caliber electromagnetic mortar The mortar shell accelerates to 420 m/s. It can be seen that in the field of coaxial coil electromagnetic propulsion, the United States has continuously conducted basic and key technology research for nearly 40 years, and has now entered the prototype trial production stage.

Naval Engineering University has overcome a series of problems such as large-diameter high-magnetic-density coil design and manufacturing technology, compact pulse power supply technology, etc., and has achieved a hundred-kg-class integrated electromagnetic projectile with an exit speed of hundreds of m/s. It is currently developing high-quality Mach number (1000 m/s) electromagnetic coil emission technology.

Vehicle Mounted and Small Railguns

The Naval Engineering University completed the lightweight design of the launcher and power supply, realized the vehicle-mounted integration of the electromagnetic gun weapon system, implemented the bullet hub matching and electromagnetic spin-up technology, effectively improved the shooting accuracy, and carried out a launch test with a long range of several kilometers in the field. , the bullet exit kinetic energy is tens of kJ, breaking through the current range and kinetic energy limitations of firearms in the world.

Railguns with power systems have been too big for army deployment. The military advantage would be accurate fire and longer ranges. China claims progress to making more compact railgun systems.

Navy Supership Concept

The advancement of super ships is reflected in two aspects: first, the application of the integrated power system of nuclear energy ships, which can convert nuclear energy that cannot be used as weapons in conventional warfare into usable strike energy through electromagnetic energy; second, the shipboard high-energy The use of the weapon system can be used as a supplement to the capabilities of anti-ship missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, torpedoes and other weapons. It uses a combination of electromagnetic guns and laser weapons. Electromagnetic guns are used at long distances, and laser weapons and high-power microwaves are used at close range. The ammunition cost is low and Carrying capacity is greatly increased.

7 thoughts on “China, Japan, US Race to Perfect and Deploy Railguns”

  1. China Claims Breakthrough in Cooling Combat Lasers
    August 15, 2023 by Brian Wang.
    With the announcement on the 120 shot railgun and Brian’s previous reporting on the laser system achievement, it seems like China’s military has made a breakthrough in keeping their capacitors cooled. It looks like the breakthrough on the laser has been transferred to the railgun. Our legacy defense manufacturers need to get some pep in their step.

  2. The problem here is the same as the laserdisc: great tech being applied to wrong problem.
    At this time, we do not have the ability to fire 32Gj rail guns numerous times. Why? Materials for the rail can only handle 1000 shots or so. So we do not have ability to replace our big guns. But that is not the best use of a rail gun.
    Swarms of Drones are the biggest problem today. We have phalanx on destroyers and carriers, but they are not just expensive, but their large expensive ammo does not work well against drones. Why? Because it is CHEAP to make and send drone swarms.

    Low energy rail guns that can fire small rounds with say 1-5Mj and only able to fire say 1-10km, BUT at high rate is what is needed. These can also be used on tanks, troop carriers, etc or anywhere that we would have electricity . Just change those vehicles from LICE to series hybrid, but with 2-4 generators per vehicle. Fuel is far safer and easier than ammo. And these vehicles could then carry a great deal more railgun rounds than shells.

  3. A missile or a drone is better for shooting over the horizon. Getting within gun range of an enemy is unlikely in modern warfare.

    • They are better sure, in some regards at lest, but they are more expensive. Like lasers, electromagnetic weapons fire order of magnitude cheaper in most cases. And for things like invasions and defense against invasions the quantity of shots matters more than other considerations (assuming targeting is still a possibility, which it is). Aside, one can have both.

    • It is the cost per shot and the number of shots per platform. Also the reduction in risk of the inventory of unfired shots exploding. This is what I made clear would be the military difference. The range is helpful and effects how the opponent has to behave to manage dealing with the firing range.

      • Thanks Brian. Will you be doing an article on the supporting infrastructure for these types of weapon systems (Rail, Coil, Lasers perhaps)? Seems there is at least as much development needed for super capacitors and power to edge (more so with mobile applications other than perhaps the US Navy with nuclear powered ships) as with the kinetic bits.

  4. Old fashion guns need to change the barrel quite quickly , son 5000 or 10000 cycles battery is more than fine

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