A group of Chinese navy engineers claim to have built an electromagnetic rail gun that can swiftly fire a multitude of projectiles without sustaining damage. There were older photos that China had mounted a full-sized railgun onto a navy ship.
IF the China’s navy railgun breakthrough claims are true then China has a massive lead with working railguns. The guns will out-range regular US Navy guns by 120 miles to 16 miles while being able to shoot hundreds of shots.
The US had worked on railguns for many years and tested them at land based facilities. The US canceled it railgun program because the US could not prevent too much damage to the railgun barrel.
The China Navy railgun reported the ability to achieve continuous firing. The weapon retained a remarkable level of shooting accuracy while rapidly firing. The shells shoot out of the barrel at 2km per second (mach 5.8 which is hypersonic speed and about 2.5 times the velocity of regular Navy guns), which means any target within 100-200km can be hit.
In comparison, regular artillery shells usually have a limit of tens of kilometers and have a muzzle velocity of about 805 meters per second. A US 15 inch naval gun has a muzzle velocity of about 2640 feet per second and a range of 16 miles or 26 kilometers.
In one of the tests, the Chinese rail gun proved its mettle by firing off 120 rounds – or close to what some of the artillery in service today can do. The entire railgun system remained intact.
“Similar work has never been publicly reported before,” the team with the National Key Laboratory of Electromagnetic Energy at the Naval University of Engineering said in a paper published on November 10.
The new china navy railgun has a very sophisticated measurement and diagnostic system. The system is capable of collecting and analyzing data from more than 100,000 component points simultaneously. That is nearly 10 times the number of sensors on a modern aircraft. The many sensors have AI monitoring and control. Lu’s team said this clever system had saved the pricey weapon three times already. And with every little problem found and fixed, the electromagnetic gun works smoother. In the last 50 shots, there had not been a single glitch.
Back in 2011, the US had spent four years shooting off 1,000 test shells. By 2018, they were aiming high – building something that could fire 1,000 rounds easily. But engineering, tech and money got in the way. The US military gave up on it in 2021, and some critics warned that China could use this as an opportunity to catch up and maybe even surpass them.
China’s researchers also want to make larger electromagnetic railgun like systems for boosting larger rockets to space. These would replace the first stage of rockets and could increase the payload fraction. Normally, multistage chemical rockets only get about 1-3% of the total mass of the rocket as payload.
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How much sense does this range and projectile speed make for ships considering the curvature of the Earth will put targets under the horizon? I.e. after 20km will targets sit 31m below the horizon.
The hypersonic speed will not allow for a short, ballistic trajectory but shoot over the top of the target.
A hypersonic missile with an on-board guidance system might do a better job than anything still relying on a barrel to be shot out of.
ramjet artillery (eg Boeing Nammo 150km range 155mm shell) will be way cheaper and probably more effective. Larger caliber ship guns would have far greater range with ramjet artillery shells. 155mm barrels with maneuverable shells can last many thousands of shots vs 10’s or 100’s for rail guns with plasma ablation of rails.
Europe is also working on this technology:
“All seven partners from four European countries working together on this study agreed that significant advancements in the three key areas of electromagnetic artillery were made. This progress sets the stage for the future of advanced electromagnetic weaponry.”
See:
https://armyrecognition.com/weapons_defence_industry_military_technology_uk/europeans_electromagnetic_railgun_project_surpasses_expectations_in_view_of_future_artillery_systems.html
The Japanese are also working on this technology:
“Japan says it successfully test fired its medium-caliber maritime electromagnetic railgun via an offshore platform. According to its Acquisition Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA), this was the first time any country had accomplished such a goal. The test would be an important step forward for the technology, with Japan aiming to utilize it both at sea and on land.”
See:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/japans-railgun-performs-first-test-firing-at-sea
The article doesn’t claim the system fired 120 rounds per minute.
It fired 120 rounds without destroying itself.
That’s still a big improvement, though not ready for deployment.
The really interesting part of the story is that they claim they achieved this by putting a lot of sensors on the thing and having AI integrate all that information. They don’t say what they did with that information, but I suspect it just means they fixed each problem before firing again.
They do note that they fired 50 times sequentially with no problems, possibly due to improving the gun from the knowledge gained.
The linked article is behind a firewall. I wonder: is it actually a rail gun? Or could it possibly be a coil gun, instead? It’s hard to imagine a rail gun shooting 120 times in quick succession with no damage. But a coil gun should easily be able to avoid damage.
Not surprising, old legacy companies here have become complacent on some new technologies. I think it takes scrappy newer companies like Anduril to shake things up, and make the old dogs try harder.
This isn’t great news for Tiawan, with China being just 80 miles of their coast, these guns could pound them hard, before China even has to send any planes, ships, or boots.
Yeah, legacy companies in the US are not actually interested in doing what is good for the country. They just want to grab from the pork barrel.