One of the big selling points of the Navy's new destroyer is that it can rain a whole lot of hell -- 20 rocket-propelled artillery shells, in less than a minute -- on targets up to 63 nautical miles away. Fully armed, two DDG1000s should have the firepower of an entire, 640-man artillery battalion, the Navy promises.
But really, that's the start. The ship's real power will come when it moves away from chemical powders to shoot its projectiles -- and starts relying on electromagnetic fields to shoot projectiles almost six kilometers/second, instead. With an electromagnetic rail gun pushing the rounds out so quickly, the number of rounds fired per ship would jump from 232 to 5000, Navy planners believe. (Military.com has a great primer on how it works.) Because they travel so fast -- nearly Mach 7 -- the destructive force those rounds deliver would more than double, from 6.6 megajoules to 17. And they would fly almost five times farther -- up to 300 nautical miles. That's enough to put 100% of targets in North Korea "at Risk" from a single battleship, a Navy briefing notes (right, sorry for the crappy scan).
No wonder the Office of Naval Research just handed General Atomics Aeronautical Systems a $9.6-million, 30-month contract for the preliminary design of an electromagnetic launcher, Defense Daily reports.
But don't expect to see a rail gun around North Korea any time soon. The destroyer program is in flux. And the Navy isn't looking for a "full-scale demonstration" of the rail gun until "around 2014," DD notes. "If the acquisition community decides to place it on a ship it could be done around the 2019 time frame."
Look out.
(Big ups: Haninah)
© Copyright 2024 Military.com. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Military.com, please submit your request here.
