Natural News – by Highly destructive weapons that were once the subject of science fiction movies are fast becoming reality in today’s high-tech world, and that’s not necessarily a good thing for the survival of Mankind.
One of the technologies that the U.S. Defense Department has been working to develop, along with the militaries of a few other great powers, is laser weaponry; currently, the U.S. is leading that race with defensive systems mostly aimed at knocking out incoming ballistic missiles like the Army’s THEL — Tactical High-Energy Laser — and systems that have been developed and deployed on U.S. Navy warships.
‘It’s not science fiction’
Speaking of the Navy, one of its signature accomplishments is the railgun, which the service plans to formally unveil at the San Diego Naval Base in July. According to published accounts, the Navy plans to hold a static display of its $500 million electromagnetic railgun prototype aboard the Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket, the same ship on which the Navy will perform its first maritime test-firing of the weapon in 2016.
“The American public has never seen it,” said Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, in a recent telephone press conference.
“Frankly, we think it might be the right time for them to know what we’ve been doing behind closed doors in a Star Wars fashion,” he added. “It’s now reality. It’s not science fiction. It’s real and you can look at it.”
According to published information, railguns use an electromagnetic force, called the Lorentz force, to launch a projectile between a pair of rails. A high-power electric pulse is sent to the rails, where a magnetic field is then generated. The result is that a 23-pound projectile can be hurled at speeds as high as Mach 7 over a distance of up to 100 miles. Navy bean counters will like it because each projectile is relatively cheap at about $25,000, or a fraction of the cost of a conventional missile, said Klunder.
The Navy has been excitedly developing its railgun concept for a number of years. The first prototype program was launched in 2005, and between then and 2011, the service spent some $250 million on continued development. Navy officials say they will likely spend a similar amount between 2012 and 2017.
Klunder called the weapon a game-changer whose time has nearly arrived.
Efficient killing is best
Currently, the Navy has two prototypes; it will test one of them in 2016 on the USNS Millinocket — a noncombatant catamaran vessel that is intended to carry cargo and troops — because it has a broad flight deck with plenty of space for the weapon, which consists of the gun mount itself, power supply and three additional major pieces. The following year, the Navy will begin studying how best to integrate it into the fleet.
“I really think it will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go, ‘Do I even want to go engage a naval ship?’ Because you are going to lose. You can throw anything at us, and the fact that we can shoot a number of these rounds at very affordable costs — it’s my opinion that they don’t win,” Klunder said.
Currently, Navy destroyers and cruisers — the primary surface combatants — carry between 96 and 122 vertical firing tubes for launching Tomahawk and other cruise missiles. By comparison, each railgun would likely be accompanied by hundreds of the smaller projectiles.
Efficient killing, it seems, has become a prerequisite these days, thanks to a growing mountain of spiraling debt caused by a bloated Big Government with a voracious, insatiable appetite.
What’s next — humanoid military robots? Actually, yes: NaturalNews.com.
Yesterday’s sci-fi is today’s killing reality.
Sources:
http://www.utsandiego.com
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044824_railgun_US_Navy_military_technology.html#ixzz2zi37RKpa
Rail guns will be the next weapon of personal choice , when they go and dry up all the public ammo like they are doing, soon someone will design and build a useful and compact rail gun and than the fight will start with them being a fire arm or not, or weather or not they can be owned by the public or some such shi^
there are people showing their inventions on you tube, soon someone will nail it and it will be off and running
I’ll believe it when I see it. Personally, it seems a little far-fetched to me that any projectile can be moved 100 miles at mach 7 by any electromagnetic force.
“It’s now reality. It’s not science fiction. It’s real and you can look at it.”
Is this an admission that they’ve been trying to scare us with their fictitious high-tech weapons in the past? I’ve caught them at it several times, and this “rail gun” could be more of the same. The fact that they announce these fantasy weapons that don’t really exist on a regular basis is good reason to take it with a grain of salt.
The projectile is relatively cheap, but the launch tube must be replaced
every shot as it self destructs. At least that is what I read a couple weeks ago.
As Li-Po batteries(fast charge extremely fast discharge) get better these can get smaller to the point as Tom said about being personal weapon of choice. 5 years ago a supercap( a type of capacitor where it can act like a battery for extremely long periods of time or be discharged instantly depending on load) was a myth and only extremely rich universities had one or 5. Now I can get them surplus in the under 100 fed notes range.
Bullwinkle Iv never heard of the rail/barrel destructing but I could see how taking 23 elbows of aluminum/whatever mix and sending it mack 7 within what is my guess less than 20′ could do that. Ill stick to washers.
People use to try making them by oscillating the polarity of magnets but then after going back and asking “what would Tesla do?” they realized they just need to energize the electromagnetic field( a hover state) and adjust the frequency(induces a difference of potential on a single axis). By doing this in one direction the projectile flies out the desired end. Do it the wrong way and you get a hole in your shop wall…or the cat.
This will be neat to see if it turns out to be real. If it does, perhaps we should have a rail making party of our own.