BuShips said:
I can see the title of a future history book even now:
"Death From Above: Railway Guns to Rail Guns; A complete history"
:wink:
Now for something more ominus to consider. Those that knew of Gerald Bull's "Supergun" whos origin dated back to the WW2 German veangence weapon called the V-3 can now imagine that what Iraq failed to do with Mr. Bull Iran can do with railgun technology :shock: . Don't think that the Israelis aren't considering what this technology would mean to their safety and to world peace in general. We all might be playing the equivalent of the first video game of space invaders for real some day :roll: .
I have no problem recommisioning the four Iowas as railgun platforms and the faster the better. :idea:
Wasnt that guy assassinated by Massada(sp?) That was the one with a range of like 600 miles? I heard of it before.
As for the Iowa's, are they still useable? I would think they would be rusty and all decrepit and stuff, and it would probably cost more to recommission them(including the cost for replacing non-working parts and getting it back into ship-shape) than to just build 4 NEW Iowa's with the necessary nuclear powerplantS(the S is important, the more you have, the more railguns it can handle) and stuff part of the initial design.
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A 3 kg piece of iron flying into a building and we get... a hole in the building with occupants gazing in surprise at it. WHy? Because the impact itself will minimise the damage to the target, the slug will just fly through without doing any significant damage to the structure itself unless it'll accidently fly along the supporting wall
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Sure, will be efficient against vehicles/aircrafts (providing the system will be capable of hitting any of those), and even ships when hitting them below waterline, but as a bombardment means it'll be nearly useless.
Incorrect. A railgun is a kinetic weapon. The damage would be extreme. In addition, at the speed the projectile would be flying at, all of the occupants of the building(or at least those on the same floor) would be ripped through the exit hole in an extremely violent and bloody manner, regardless of whether or not they were hit by the projectile.
The rail gun is just a means of propelling the round. There's no reason you could use explosive shells with it. At least, no reason I understand. Roll on the physics professors to prove me wrong...
Except that at the speeds it would be moving at, and the presence of a magnetic field would probably cause the projectile to explode before it left the barrel. Thats bad, mmkay? I might be wrong, but, oh well...
Erm am I missing thing, if it fires in that high an arc pretty much the only impact it will have is the shells mass falling at terminal velocity i.e. all the energy would be expended in the going up portion and all we'd have is a falling lump especially if used at shorter ranges???
I pretty much said the exact same thing. If youre missing something, I am too.
And fired by hundreds of thousands just because this kind of weapon needs an extremal precision, unachievable at even fractions of this distance.
Incorrect, yet again. The Railgun isn't like your gunpowder artillery weapon, it follows a much straighter, much more accurate, much more calculatable flightpath than a gunpowder shell would. In addition, provided the ship doesn't move, it could keep the gun at the same elevation and expect to hit the same exact spot again and again.
Iowa class battleships were made to be immune to 18.6" projectiles which any ship-to-ship missile would only aspire to in its dreams Wink . Warships of today use light alloys in their superstructures which basically ignore any thought of protection. In other words boys, they made 'em tough back in those days. I'm not saying it would be impossible to sink an Iowa (oh heck, no) but it would be hard!
So then why was it that aircraft posed such a threat to the BB?
Anyway, does anyone else here just want to see what happens when you aim this thing at a mountain? I just keep getting these images of a battleship-like vessel sitting out at see and unloading its guns, and then all of a sudden it cuts to the view of a silent, peaceful mountain and BAM! out of nowhere a shitload of dust and dirt and smoke and large chunks of rock come flying off of the side of it leaving a ginormous impact crater, and many very confused-looking onlookers who cant figure out what just happened...
It appears that an F-15E might be able to eventually carry 20 of these on a single mission. I'm impressed! :!:
. First, there is no rust as when they are "mothballed" critical components are sealed from the environment and dehumidified. The hull has a low-voltage current passed through it to resist organic growth, so the ships do store quite well. The method of their construction is far superior to any ships being built now as AP projectiles were many times more damaging than cruise missiles. For example, in WW2 a kamikaze hit the side of the Missouri (a serious mistake on the pilot's part) and after hosing off the deck the only damage was paint. These ships have paid many times back what it cost to build them, as in one of their comebacks in the 1980's the original cost of the ship was less than the refit bill. These ships really are a "breed apart" from anything anyone builds today. 
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