'Chinese Navy ship seen carrying railgun'

[Auto-Didact]

China says its navy is taking the lead in game-changing electromagnetic railguns

China’s landing of a rover on the far side of the moon grabbed headlines around the world this week. Less noticed, the country’s state media reported on progress in another arena: game-changing naval weaponry.

The state-run Global Times said on Thursday (Jan. 3) that Chinese warships will soon be equipped with electromagnetic railguns that fire projectiles with “incredibly destructive velocity,” and that the underlying technology was based on ”fully independent intellectual property,” rather than designs copied from other nations. It cited a report that appeared Wednesday on China’s CCTV.

Rest of the article is on the site. The news is available on multiple news outlets, including pictures on Twitter.

I recall the US Navy was developing a railgun a few years ago, while Russia was still in the R&D phase a year ago...

 

[BWV]

I thought the issue with rail guns was not that they are difficult to build but that the power requirements mean that only a nuclear powered ship was capable of housing one. The navy seems to believe they are the future - longer range, more on-ship ammo storage and no risk from storing explosive material

 

[russ_watters]

I thought the issue with rail guns was not that they are difficult to build but that the power requirements mean that only a nuclear powered ship was capable of housing one. The navy seems to believe they are the future...

Google tells me the USA is having an issue with firing rate (4.8 rounds per minute vs a required 10), which may be a result of not enough electrical power available. It does seem like a pretty fundamental problem.

 

[Drakkith]

Google tells me the USA is having an issue with firing rate (4.8 rounds per minute vs a required 10), which may be a result of not enough electrical power available. It does seem like a pretty fundamental problem.

Clearly they just need to add a few more batteries.

But seriously, I thought the major hurdle was wear and tear on the barrel. Has sufficient progress been made on that end to turn rail guns into viable weapons (minus the power problems)?

 

[nsaspook]

Looks like the US 'railgun' program is history.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...y-railguns-and-deck-guns-killed-off-in-budget

Earlier this week, The War Zone was first to report the U.S. Navy's program to develop an electromagnetic railgun appeared to be all but formally canceled in its proposed budget for the 2022 Fiscal Year. Now, it has also emerged from that service's budget request that it plans to stop working on the specialized, high-speed, multi-purpose projectiles for that weapon, versions of which were also being developed for use in other more conventional guns, at least for the time being.

Looks like the physics and engineering were pretty solid. Possible, Yes. Feasible, No.