Railguns: The Kinetic Future of Warfare
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- As seen in XCOM.
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its basically the next technological tier of throwing a sharp stick really fast
It pretty much all variations on that theme.
Caveman go OOGA OOGA Good stik
a bullet is basically a short sharp (or blunt) stick...
sharp rock. metals are just purified rock
Look, baby, the future is not in ‘sticks’! It’s in ‘rocks’! Come on, ignore that heavy metal copper, let’s just rock it!
Just for the sake of comparison on barrel life to keep things in perspective: The barrel life of an Iowa-class battleship's 16" gun was around 300 shells, more or less depending on how many full or partial powder charges were put through the gun. Although, the 5" guns the same class carried had barrels that last for 4600 full charge firings.
That's a really intresting peice of information 😊
Bigger diameter, faster weardown?
To clarify a few things: the life of the 16"/50 Mk 7 guns is actually the life of the *liner*. The barrel is made of multiple layers with the liner being the innermost and thinnest. It is the liner that has the rifling and is subject to wear with each shot. Originally most of the wear was not caused by the friction of the shell but gaseous erosion - the heat and chemical action of the propellant gases. Improvements in propellant ultimately gave the Mk7's liner a life of ~1500 shots. After that the barrel would have to go back to the factory to have the liner replaced, a time consuming and expensive process.
@@JonMartinYXD agreed and during the first and second world wars, the British navy was constantly on the hunt to make sure enemy ships didn’t solidly hold territory as well as protect the supply ships when coming within range of the mainland. I just realized as well that if it’s not the friction from the slug itself but the gas, removing the explosion completely gets rid of the gas and the barrel life would probably be worth more shots since the friction would probably tear the barrel down very slowly.
@@danielduncan6806 who knew, not everyone knows everything
The railgun reminds me of the huge sniper in Evangelion where they used all of the elctricity in Japan just to fire the gun
True, but that one was a particle accelerator firing a stream of antimatter.
Particle *Accelerator?* *Railgun?* Welp, I guess I haven’t left “A Certain Fandom” then (my beloved fandom; if you know, you know).
@@Homcomru you stop it.
Just finished Accelerator yesterday, and going back to Index. Trying to watch a certain series' in chronological order is a mess. I also thing Index is meh. Accelerator and railgun are leaps and bounds better imo.
@@phodon129 Basically the same thing being used under Switzerland to study black holes, just shorter and in one direction.
Lucky there are no live robot-organic zoid defense system, school for particularly gifted children or magic terrorists groups anywhere in sight.
I call all wepons like this MEME guns
Simon is everything the Discovery and history channels should be.
National Geographic as well.
Im old enough to remember that Simon is what those channels used to be.
I'm addicted to pigger nussy 😸
I still haven't got over the idea that they got ?9/10? series on a hole in the ground, Oak Island.
Suggestion: How Sir Simon successfully manages his infinite number of channels... and growing daily.
Simon has almost perfected human cloning, there is a little instability though (see Business Blaze)
I think it's a Schrödinger's youtube thing
the bigger his beard is, the more powerful he grows
You know Simon is not a real person don't you? He's just an updated Max Headroom with better AI. He looks real though I grant you that.
th-cam.com/video/PaHAL2hQXzM/w-d-xo.htmlm59s he survives by letting the blaze out on his other channels randomly
One thing to note - there is already a railgun in combat service, but it's projectile are fighter jets. The electromagnetic catapult system on the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers. The side note here, is that those ships have a nuclear reactor to power the damn thing.
Another Megaprojects suggestion: The cameras that recorded the projectiles in flight.
Slow Mo Guys/Mega projects crossover!
Hadland mini-FF, about $100k.
Curious Droid did a video on his channel. Pretty interesting watch.
That's more a side project video.
And Curious Droid already did a superb video on it.
@Filip Legény mind to explain in basic physics?
1:25 - Chapter 1 - How it works
3:15 - Chapter 2 - History
7:00 - Chapter 3 - Potential problems
8:30 - Chapter 4 - Accuracy
9:30 - Chapter 5 - Modern railguns
12:10 - Chapter 6 - The future of warfare
Thx
Used a rail gun in halo 4, was meh power weapon. Perhaps they should look into a rifle that shoots beams or explosive needles
They have.
The needles were done in the 60’s see spew.
The beam weapon just doesn’t work out with physics.
@@brucebaxter6923 yes but no not without direct connection to extremely high power or stupidly dense batteries. But as of now the shits a si-fi cum bucket
I remember the Halo books addressed the whole damage to the weapon thing, it was the reason they used magnetic coils instead of rails for their MAC weapons.
enough velocity,,, explosives become pointless...... 4.5km/s
@@TbjrL
Not even that problem.
To damage a human in a reasonable amount of time, ie milliseconds before they move, the energy density ionises air and then absorbs the beam.
The next problem is beam divergence that requires a reflector that is measured in meters not mm. Etc etc
You should do an alternative to the rail gun: the coil gun. Also, please include space applications. These devices have been talked about as mass drivers for vehicle launches from the Moon.
7:49 I love how you can see the sabot behind the round, quickly losing ground, but still with a mach cone...
My dad machined a few parts gor the railgun that is much as he could tell me that he machined parts. Bless his soul as cancer stole him from this world. I hope he is up in heaven.
My condolences.
Simon: we could start launching spacecraft daily if we needed to
SpaceX: gestures broadly
SpaceX needs to get themselves a ginormous rail gun powered by renewable energy.
Space X sucks.
@@futuristica1710 HATE HATE HATE That interview with BBC urinalist priceless
SpaceX isn't a viable company. They are just grifting off taxpayers. It's disgusting. As soon as they stop paying, SpaceX will be gone. Starship, a vessel with literally no purpose or realistic market, will bankrupt them, even Elon stated it was a huge risk. The starlink internet isn't the internet, they are merely routers, hence why the service is so costly.
Not a manned space craft unless you want to kill the humans on board. No way they can handle that speed that fast.
New idea for Simon’s nested channel: Cancelled Projects
That actually sounds like a fun idea
What about “half finished then abandoned projects”. We have some of those in Australia
I suspect that what we are being shown is quite dated.
While that is true, history is also full of failed and abandoned military projects that don't come to light until declassified so there is no way to know if rail guns will succeed or not.
Actually they installed a rail gun on a Navy warship a year ago. They have also been working on this in a declassified manner for 20 + years.
Yeah the info is dated. The USA decid s d. Not to move for we are aggressively
The Chibese and Russians are
@@popuptoaster they've got one on a ship ,I believe it's in the med right now
don't think the footage is even from the military, seemed like it was test footage from that company that made them. it's also like a decade old or older now.
I highly recommend the tv series The Expanse. It features rail guns and shows how devastating they can be.
This season finale had a massive battle that showed it's power, one shot completely crippled a ship, and yet the visual damage was very small, surgical strike is the best kind of strike.
But that last shot was the best cgi I saw in a long time.
@@MihzvolWuriar it really was impressive, and that’s from a show that frequently impresses with its special effects.
Using cannons to get stuff into space? Jules Verne would be proud.
Well sorta, but not. It would be more like an electric trebuchet using magnetism instead of the counter weight... since people become rather squishy when you depart them at 20000G :P
Engineers: found miraculous ways to transform human visual information into light waves, transmit it over vast distances and then reconstruct it in tiny devices that use liquid crystals being ordered by electricity.
Physicists: built km long incredible machines with precision in the fractions of the size of a proton that measure the very disturbances of the fabric of existence.
Military dudes: still searching ways to throw rocks faster.
@@andersjjensen I know that using it for humans is (currently) out of the question because of the squishiness but the idea is related.
We've coma a long way since The Flintstones.
@@Annou7la So, Wonka Vision?
He actually missed the largest problem with railguns, and the real reason militaries are putting less time into them. *Energy transfer.*
Studying terminal ballistics taught us a long time ago that too much power in a projectile will actually reduce effectiveness. Like neutrons, the vast majority of energy is dispersed just before the object stops - if a projectile blows through an object too easily, very little of the energy is imparted on the struck object. The deck-mounted railgun was punching clean holes directly through target ships. Small arms found a way around this with hollow-point (the round disintegrates, which causes 100% of energy to be imparted on the target), but it's been an issue finding a similar solution for ammunition under the acceleration stress of rail rounds.
Railguns might retain a place in the future as they have incredible range, incredible potential energy (if the correct target is found), and practically no way of neutralizing (defending against) them. They're certainly not practical in most applications though.
The idea behind kenitic energy penetrators is to defeat armor not deliver all the energy of said projectile.
@@commenter1430 killing power is irrelevant if you cant defeat the armor. The best way to beat armor is with something hard and pointy going really fast. That's why the Abrams tank uses depleted uranium ke penetrators. The round looks like an arrow after the sabot is discarded
@@commenter1430 considering most things the size of a ship will be armord I would go for that over maximum energy transfer.
@@commenter1430 you thought processes is good when dealing with flesh targets but once you start dealing with armord vehicles it's more beneficial to actually get past the armor and on a vehicle that can be a significant amount
@@hawk6111 You’re obviously young, and not in the military. You’re talking about armour like it’s Warhammer 40k - like it’s even an issue. Weapon Strength is almost always stronger than armour; we’ve never had trouble piercing it once we know how thick it is. Once we learn something is “sturdier” we simply scale up the energy transfer slightly, or circumvent it (HESH/HEAT). There is nothing on earth that’s even close to the level of a rail gun, it would blow a hole straight through a main battle tank or battleship. Ships are actually pretty unarmoured (comparatively to MBT’s).
Secondly, energy transfer isn’t “irrelevant” if you can’t beat the armour - this isn’t the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If the armour actually stopped a rail round, the energy transfer that would be imparted on the crew inside would kill them. There’s a reason the US Army doesn’t heavily armour everything, at a point it doesn’t matter. IEDs killed a lot of people in armoured vehicles just due to energy transfer (no direct contact was made).
alrighty-- you got me with the "As seen on XCOM"
props, and watch out for grenades on your landing craft.
Thanks
Didn’t expect to see you here. lol
Wow I was literally researching this last night because I was interested in it, what perfect timing
I am continually impressed by your ability to keep to facts and avoid BS. Well done.
Finally, an announcement for an upcoming Strategic Defensive Initiative video! I’ve been dying for one on Star Wars. Such a fascinating chapter of recent history.
The rail gun to launch spacecraft is featured prominently in Gundam Seed, they refer to them as mass drivers in the show. Though they don't specifically talk about that piece of tech, you can tell that's what they are by the way they are depicted and destroyed.
After spending many months worth of time working on my own small scale coil/railgun projects, the thing that I noticed that most folks fail to mention is that unlike using conventional chemical explosive energy to power the projectile, In the case of the linear motor, the higher the mass of the projectile, the more efficient and energetic the launch tends to be. I will refer to my experience with my simple single stage coil gun. The projectile is a highly magnetic steel slug. The more massive the slug is, the more mass there is to be effected by the magnetic field. You can easily feel this effect with your hands. Use a permanent magnet and feel the force exerted on a small chunk of iron, compared to a more massive piece. So I think an alternative approach to weaponizing an electric gun may be focusing on using a higher mass projectile, instead of the current approach of going for ridicules' velocity. For longer ranges I think lasers are a more practical way of expending that huge electrical charge. Battery and capacitor technology will need to improve before we can replace gun powder for the bulk of our weaponry. Despite the artificially inflated price of ammo currently in the US, it's quite cheap to produce.
Having been in some special places in the Military, I will tell you that current tech is typically 25 to 30 years ahead of what the public is aware of and sometimes as much as 50 years. Some tech would have you think "Magic". The less you hear about a project, the more likely it is successful. The more you hear about it, the higher the likelihood it is propaganda.
What about transportation tech?
@@qjtvaddict Tech is tech.
A suggestion - how ultra-fast technology developed. Gradually frames-per-second increased - starting at the bog-standard 30fps that recorded simple motion to the mind-boggling techniques used to film those rail-gun projectiles moving at thousands of m/s.
Tracking ultra-high speed targets is usually done using mirrors
That is indeed an interesting subject, including the early million frames per second camera's that could only take a handful of pictures....
@@DreadX10 For the atomic bomb tests, they had a super light gas in the enclosure of the cameras so the armature could move fast enough. Really cool stuff.
do-you-think-you-got-enough-hyphens-in-your-comment?
@@thefolder69 Not really. If you comment, at least try and say something intelligent and related to the clip.
Everybody gangsta till someone makes a stationary beam magnum from gundam.
I mean, a Minovsky reactor would give just about anything stealth and ECM capabilities.
Lets hope they actually get these things small enough to fit on ships.
The removal of propellent storage would be great.
Let's hope we get one small enough so we can fire them ourselves
Great! More holes in me ship. Will this madness never end!?!!
Yes. Magazines are protected as best as possible but the right hit from an enemy shell if it can't detonate the magazine directly the subsequent fire may detonate said magazine. I don't think any warship can sustain a magazine explosion. Please correct me if I am wrong. (Edited because of auto correct.)
@@tylerjackson4168
Thats pretty accurate.
Ironically it’s rarely the shells that detonate on a magazine hit, Its primarily the propellent that starts the explosion. And 9 times out of 10 if a Main magazine goes off then the ship it was on is a loss.
The main benefit to rail guns is that it gets rid of the risk of a Magazine from going off when hit as there is no longer propellent and most if not all Rail gun shells are purely kinetic.
What about the extremely high energy fuel that needs to be used to create the electric power to fire the gun. There would need to ba a lot of that.
"Two things you can say about the NAZIs, they were ambitious and D***S!" your greatest line ever!
It has become known that Germany distributed meth amphetamine to its elite Panzer corps & even to its citizenry but has anyone ever heard that that their scientists possibly ran on this stuff, too?🤔
He keeps saying that ‘human technology’ isn’t there yet. Does he know something about alien technology that we don’t yet? 🧐
Secret dolphin technology
I will say a few things
Exotic matter, with what is understood (but not confirmed) to be able to catalyze an exertion of force mathematically identical to gravity
Magnetic fields that are sustained at full strength wirelessly by exotic matter fueled generators
An unknown material similar to both ceramic and aluminum, which is atomically structured like a crystal and has the properties of a perfect insulator
now excuse me i have a government to run from
Well we’re all about to know about it as that last American stimulus Bill said they release all info in 180 days. So in about 3.5 months, get ready legends!!
No, he's just saying humans are still stupid
@@LeoStaley not dolphins. Crows.
Simon! I have been flying and missing your vids. Glad to see you're still doing what you do best.
US: We have a railgun....
China: Oh yeah we do too! We have them on all our ships
US:...but they arent very practical for warfare so we wont be using them
China:.....yeah...we dont like them either.......because the thing.... right?
"We have perfected a method of repeating everything BAE developes."
The American way!
BAE == Big And Expensive :)
Whatever happened to that railgun that was supposed to be tested on a ship?
- That's classified!
See my reply comment to Kevin Murphy below.
I didn't work so it was removed and the aircraft carrier catapult using the same princepl not so hot
No, you dummies. It's a reference to the Transformers movie. You see, the ship that "doesn't have" a rail gun, shot the alien robot off the Giza Pyramid.
Jill Valentine used it on Nemesis
@@id104335409 Lol, i got that one. I was surprised i got it and opened comments to be loud and proud about it. Nice one. :D
In 1983, I was one of the avionics techs on the early ASAT project for the F-15. I worked in the shops of McDonnel Aircraft at Edwards AFB, CA.
One day my boss asked me to go to the lab upstairs and assist the guys there. I found I was helping, as more like a laborer with electronics knowledge, with trying to get a laser on the F-15. I was told the power supply would need to be carried in a C-5 as it would need to be huge.
In that job I was involved very quickly in both trying to figure out lasers AND another time I assisted in checking he wiring of the F-15 pylons to see if they could be adapted to nukes.
In Robert A. Heinlein's 1964 book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" they used a similar device to launch cargo from the moon to the earth.
Except that they were coil guns. Also electrically powered, but simpler technology. Nice subject for Simon.
@@charanvantijn541 True, but still ahead of his time and a great read.
Yes, and another example of science fact “borrowing”from science fiction (and probably taking credit for the idea)
@@ronskopitz2360 Sometime in the late 60s or early 70s I saw a clip of a soviet film on TV that showed what looked like Heinlein's lunar catapult. I've been trying to find the clip or the movie it came from ever since with no luck.
Neal Stephenson, an admitted fan of Heinlein, mentioned the concept of space-launched 'rods' in his excellent novel 'Anathem'.
Railguns are AWESOME. We tried to build one to fire pennies in one of my lab classes once.
Do the Sears Tower in Chicago. Lots of history and cool stuff.
I thought they had?
Willis Tower guy, changed like almost twenty years ago, wtf you been.
Named after Bruce Willis. ?
@Robert Sears naa bra, it's just you desperately clinging to any resemblance of coolness or prosperity... Mind you, that's coming from someone born in eyesight of it, oh yeah, also worked out of it. Not getting any ego stroking or sympathy here. 🏙️
@@SuperUsergame it will always be the Sears Tower to Chicagoans.
A pertinent observation: The material stresses of steel are already pushed to to their limit with chemical guns, and most of the energy goes straight into the projectile anyway.
The problem of the rails breaking after each use will be hard to fix because it's the same limit of steel that is limiting regular guns.
New materials are a thought.
@@maccurtis730 No.
One of the sad realities of the modern era: Very few things are stronger than steel.
@@JoshSweetvale They have billions to millions of dollars they can afford the other materials must not be enough created.
@@maccurtis730 Again, no.
There is no Mithrill.
Steel is the best you've got. Only possible future upgrade is steel with carbon nanotubes in - on a macro scale, which is on the same tech level as curing cancer.
@@JoshSweetvale
Steel is a really active area of development. If you want to learn more, look up nano-structured bainites. To keep it simple, they're about 4 times the strength of a lot of common steels and have very high ductility. These two things combined means they can absorb a lot of energy before fracture (less before deformation).
Not sure about their electrical properties...
"Two things you can say about the Nazis. They were ambitious, and they were d*cks" - Simon Whistler 2/26/2021 :D
ducks?
@@panzerveps docks?
oh... decks...
Well it has to be 1 of those 3 words since nothing else works.. hmmm🤔
@@WKRP187 and dacks isn't a word..
I used to support engineers who were working on a Railgun for the Navy (I did IT support for a Defense Contractor). Some of the videos of test fires were crazy.
The fact that no one has tipped their hand tells me they are trying.
The fact that they installed enough extra power on the Zumwalt Destroyers should say a lot.
@@Kenneth_James All that means is that when they designed the Zumwalt's they hoped the gun technology would eventually catch up. The better indicator is what is going in the ships being designed today, eg. the Constellation class.
Jon Martin its the cost of the special ammunition that shut that down I had heard. But yes I believe the Zumwalt was basically designed around the gun BaE had developed, I could be wrong but I'm sure I read somewhere the "shells" were almost a million a piece or something crazy like that.
(Edit: the ammunition is called Long Range Land Attack Projectile or LRLAP and according to some sources each round was $800,000-1 million to procure)
@@Morris2182 When I said "gun technology" I meant railguns and beyond that would use the Zumwalt's 78 MW of power generation. The 155 mm AGS guns were supposed to be the zero risk technology for today. As you say, the guns worked just fine but the LRLAP ammunition was unaffordable. It was pretty stupid of them to not make the AGS compatible with the existing array of 155 mm ammunition used by the US Army, Marines, and dozens of other countries.
Simon on my new feed on a never ending amount of channels thus mans accent really does pay the bills
The SGC had them over 10 years ago.
Of course, when you inherit the technology of a race with at least a millennium of
technological advances, I bet rail guns became child's play, since you're building intergalactic ships too.
Great video Simon. Nice work as always 👌👍
Maybe it's just me, but I enjoy hearing Simon say "Maaahk"
The way you described HPV's sounds like a railgun-launched missile/bomb.
I think there's a better chance of Simon changing his shirt than us seeing a working railgun.
th-cam.com/video/fKEaDhDTciQ/w-d-xo.html
@Annas R Zulficar many great inventions were created with no goal in mind then applications for its use are usually refined and adapted to suit abd this takes time and money eapecially when dealing with high energy levels.
Lol but you just saw one. Seriously though, I think we're closer than is being let on. Do I think we'll see guided munitions in the near future? Not at all. At the end of the day though, the sheer penetration and speed of the round could make it extremely useful even with the low firing rate in certain situations.
Maybe it will initially be used as coastal defense of some sort. Possibly mounted on top of mountains/hills to help with engagement range for say firing at landing craft without needing the guidance system to account for curvature of the planet. Or possibly as an additional system to counter ICBM threats. Using it something like a KKV (kinetic kill vehicle)
But what do I know? Answer, jack shit.
Uh, they already have it. We’re you watching the video, or just mesmerized by Simon’s shirt?
they have big ones installed already on battleships just they never show them goverment classified n what not id guess
Love these type of videos! Thanks Simon!
Star Wars Rail Gun: “Bite the power you must, going off rails I am...”
Strive for the world record of most channels with 100k viewers. You're so close Simon! Be the boy with the blaze all the time
This is a certified quake 2 moment
Suggestion for channel. Leant the difference between voltage, current, and power. In the 1920's 100 MW was a large coal plant and hard to do with a Naval Oil Boiler. In 2006 an couple GE LM2500 gas turbines are small enough to fit on a fighter plane, and can give you more than 100 MW to power a rail gun. The Arleigh Burke class is 1988 gas turbines, propulsion only - and runs 80MW.
TL:DR - in 2100's you can mount 4 jet engines for propulsion. And on a cruiser you can easily fit an extra 4 jet engines at 35MW each - that's 140 MW dedicated to weapons. That enough to light up half a city, or to melt your rail gun with more electrical power than the rails can handle. Most naval specs are asking for 25-50 MW for rail guns. Realistically you can power a few on a modern naval ship. Heck, these days a large cruise ship runs 50 MW of gas turbines.
Point is, in the 1980's the Advent of marine gas turbines basically changed the face of ship engines and gave more than enough power for rail guns to happen
A little physics and Engineering reading can go along way to better understanding and explaining the technology.
Simon is a deepfake, that’s how he can literally do all the things on TH-cam.
he's one of the first successful communications AI that they've got working in science education, like bill nye back in the day, or someone like kyle hill now.
It is not that hard when all you have to do is read and not understand.
It is actually Daven in all the videos.
The nearest railgun/railcannon tech that we could see and experience were at the guise of these two to three pop culture references:
Bandai Spirits/ Sunrise's Mobile Suit Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny, in the guise of the ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam's MMI-M15 Xiphias Railguns and its successor; MMI-M15E Xiphias 3 Railcannons equipped on the ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom Gundam
The other, would be from an experimental US Naval Warship equipped with a Railgun that nearly totalled Decepticons Devastator, The Fallen and Megatron in Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen...
I do agree that there are a multitude of problems regarding Railgun and Railcannon Technology plus R&D:
. Unlimited Power Supply, which should never strain both the Ship's/Bases' Powerplants, Power Conduit Cables, and related tech- Nuclear Fission Reactors may be drained or overload (God Forbid) because of the process; perhaps Fusion and/or Arc Reactors fielded by Stark Industries, Gundam Franchise, Star Wars, and Star Trek if not others fit:
The drawback: we need to go Interstellar to source out Rare Terrain Metals and Minerals for both the Reactors and the Railguns/Railcannons themselves...
And needs be miniaturized to power both bases/ships and the railguns/railcannons themselves- plus its backup safety shutdown systems- should the railguns/ railcannons be overused
. Armor Material and Armoring Technology- let's admit- we have dried up the Earth's Terrain Metals for both the excesses of humanity brought about by wars, technology, and ideology-fuelled ambitions; leading to massive technological backlogs and drawbacks
If ever we find materials far durable than Vibranium and/or Adamantium: within and/or outside Earth Sphere/Solar System, good- if paired it with further Pop culture inspired Armoring Tech like beam deflectors and energy armoring like or beyond Variable Phase Shift, Psychofield, or Trans-AM armor (all are Gundam related), Star Trek, Star Wars, and Marvel Comics' S.H.I.E.L.D./Stark Industries/ Avengers- level Armoring Tech: better, yet a long way to achieve such
.Heat Sinks, Stabilizers, and Shock Absorbers- these are important since We do not want the enemy to outrun, outsmart, and have us detected due to the sheer heat exchange and emission such railguns/railcannons make, the sonic-boom noise it makes, and most importantly: WE DON'T WANT THE SHIP NOR THE BASE TO BE DEFEATED- Because they can't endure such weapon's feedback
Therefore, aside from the pop culture inspired tech references- perhaps the realest/nearest tech center to go to is at Los Alamos, CERN- Large Hadron Collider Complex, and NASA, with do respect
.Explosives, Ballistic Ordnances: both the bullet round design, armor material make-up, armor penetrating capability, ammunition round durability and the explosive materials' durability/endurance from being energy charged within the railgun/railcannon- without detonating whilst charged, and will not detonate prematurely upon reaching its target
Plus- since Nuclear, Thermonuclear, Hydrogen- based explosives may be a bygone tech should Omni-level Electromagnetic Pulse/Repulse and Neutron Jammer Canceller- equipped Omnicompact Nuclear- Deuterion (Deuterium Ions) Fusion Reactors/ Solar Energy Drive Reactors Exists...
Omnicompacting Quintessence/ Quantum Energy and utilize them as Quantum Explosive Warheads/Devices (Explosives capable of destroying entire planets, planetary sun's, and even an entire galactic system... Please refer to both Star Wars, Star Trek, and Marvel/DC Comics for reference, respectively) may be the new normal beyond future warfares
Should these be far-fetched and absolute madness beyond existential comprehension- pardon me and I stand to be re-informed and corrected
After all: wars brings out both the yearning and the lust to Command and Conquer- whatever it takes despite the sacrifices made and costs...
And the will to survive- and that's a fact._
END OF TRANSMISSION._
Post Script Note:
Applying railgun/railcannon technology to space flight would be far lethal than the space flight disasters that both the Saturn V Lunar Rocket and the Space Shuttle had experienced
The nearest application would be as Mass-Drivers: using both ship propulsion and the Electromagnetic Panels utilized as guided catapults/launch runways.
Like railcannons, Mass-Drivers are required to be maintained and have enough power to propel space vehicles at all times, might as well as the space vehicles must indure Advanced Mach and G-Levels- ensuring that the crew within these vessels won't be crushed by Gravity, far grievous and lethal than that experimental Nazi Jet Plane that crushes its pilots to their deaths, because of the intense Mach and G-Levels it reaches because of its flight speed and propulsion, respectively.
I'd pay real money, to see Simon react to the original Star Wars trilogy.
How much and when do you want him?
assuming he hasn't already seen them
My father( who was a tanker for 15 years) now works at Picatinny arsenal (where the navy does development work on the us rail gun) and says that it's truly awe inspiring how much power these things have
Railguns: So damn powerful we aim at the atlantic ocean from the middle of new jersey because we dont need to give a shit about hitting Aircraft or civilian infrastructure.
@@F14thunderhawk negative we shoot it into the side of a granite mountain, trust me picatinny has enough issues with stuff "leaving the reservation" I believe any of the costal testing was done at NWS Earle
And then, the creation of Estovakia's railgun, the Chandelier.
and the rail gun on an Erusean submarine,the Alicorn
@@gunnargunnarsson5963 ONE MILLION LIVES!
Your comment about using this tech as a space launch mechanism reminded me of playing ace combat back in the day.
After some googling: ace combat 5 mission 6 is protecting the "mass driver" which seems to basically be a rail gun launch system. Ironically, it is used to launch a giant space laser.
"Shocking... Positively shocking..." -James Bond
I love your reference too the current Starships(5:48). Good design🤓😂🤜🏼🤛🏼🇦🇺🍀😎
I'm trying to fit a kitchen feels like a mega project from here
David Hill's Kitchen: A Remodeling Project that May Never End.
Did a project on railguns for a Navy ROTC presentation and found out my college was doing railgun research. Manage to get the professor in charge of the research to do a lecture for my class and he brought a table top model. Definitely a doable idea once they can shrink everything down.
IMHO The rail-gun is an over-exestuation of current tech without a more compact power source. Nuclear is still the best bet.
They already have enough power on the Zumwalt Class Destroyers. We built 3. If its anything its material science that is effecting this tech.
@@Kenneth_James doubt
@@Kenneth_James Yeah, power is not the most immediate limiting factor anymore, rail life is. It is all fine and good for the US military to say they have done hundreds of shots with a set of rails; I want to know how much repair and refurbishment was required between each shot.
After the rails you have to keep the projectile alive. At 3.3 km/s (~Mach 10) frictional heating will raise its surface temperature to >3000 C and it will be enveloped in plasma, doing exciting things to electronics and absorbing any radio transmitted guidance instructions. Pro: that also means it will be invisible to radar. Con: it will look like a supernova to anyone with an IRST system. Check out the Sprint missile (3.4 km/s) from the '60s to get an idea of what Mach 10 at low altitudes looks like: th-cam.com/video/msXtgTVMcuA/w-d-xo.html (yes, that is their real speed shown)
I could see it scaled down to the size of a tank. Tanks already carry a huge engine to move that much weight. So you switch that engine over to a generator and drive the tank like a diesel-electric locomotive. Then when you want to shoot, you use the generator to charge a capacitor bank. Limiting factor is how quickly you can recharge the capacitors.
That leaves the question of barrel life, but M1 Abrams only carries 55 rounds anyway. So barrel life might not really affect how long of an engagement a railgun tank could fight. You would need to have something like a quick-change barrel and make barrel changes part of your standard maintenance procedure.
@@tippyc2 Or just use coil-guns instead of railguns. A properly designed coil-gun will, in theory, have little or no barrel wear at all.
I first learnt about railguns from a shooter game called "Red Faction" where you had a hand held "Rail Driver" that fired Alumnium Slugs (and could penetrait almost any wall or surface which was annoying when bots got them).
I'm still waiting on them to be fielded in combat in one way or another (be it on a ship or land based vehicle)
I learned about em in metal gear solid way back when lol
Can you talk about the Mars rover missions
I remember the testing at Dundrennan! I remember all the power cuts.
So fast you couldn't even say "Donald Duck!!!" before he became pink mist... :P
I wouldn't tell him to duck.
Not quite the Railgun I'm used to but it certainly was interesting to watch.
Season 3 Episode 3 of "The Expanse" was pretty epic in this regard.
Yeah!
First thoughts went to the *ROCINANTE* too...
😆🤣🤣👍🏼
You have a seriously warped sense of humour, but it makes the story that much more "captivating". Well done
The future of warfare is here! Let me introduce the weapon of tomorrow- cocaine robot soldiers! Millions and millions of cocaine robot soldiers!- quote attributed to General Simon Whistler, Supreme Allied Commander
Sounds like the next Business Blaze video 🤣
That might work, we can make the enemy OD by shooting coke clouds at them.
DARPA have allegedly been experimenting with aerosolized cannabinoids as a way of incapacitating enemy combatants. It's hard to wage war when your troops just want to munch Doritos, watch Netflix and discuss the amazing existence hands... you know... duuude... like... hands are like feet, but for your arms.
I had not known as much about the military applications, but I had done a HS thesis on non-military uses in about '81 based mostly on public NASA documents on mass drivers in a public university repository. I was looking at transportation and orbital launching. (way more environmentally clean). Some amusement rides like the one vertical Superman amusement park ride was the first commercial use of the linear accelerator technology. Weapons require other tradeoffs.
Funny how some people say space exploration is waste of money when we spend hundreds times more on weapons
To be fair money for space wouldn't be needed if we were all on the same playing field.
I myself would rather see my tax monies go toward killing Communists before they kill us. Call me crazy but "space" won't matter to any of us Free Peoples if we're as enslaved and as caged as the Christians, Buddhists and Muslims of China, all now being harvested for their organs.
@@utopiaOKC nah def still need space money for stuff like o neal cylinders and other such space archologies, why worry about population density, waste heat and pollution when you can build dyson swarms.
@@ezekielbrockmann114 alright, crazy.
@@derpherp2360 I'm implying we'd for sure spend our money on war. Everybody always wants more
Superb video. I kept expecting you to say it would require 1.21 gigs watts to fire ✌️
I could see this technology on a ship, for sure, or possibly a tank. Small arms? I'm skeptical.
Watched a video in the past that I can't recall the name of, but it discussed how the only way to incorporate it into small arms would be for the projectile to house the power supply. Think high output battery bullet. The obvious draw back is that it would be extremely expensive to use your power supply as the projectile.
I suppose you could build a back pack to house the power supply and the transformers with a thick wire to the hand gun, venting the heat is going to be a problem though. I far prefer the coil gun technique over the rail gun system.
@@ForgeMasterXXL nah. Too impractical. That would likely be 50 + pounds, not to mention the rest of their gear. It would have to be a self contained system.
As someone with firsthand knowledge, the two main drawbacks to this weapon are 1: power draw - even on a ship, it would be hard to power this thing, and 2: weapon durability. This thing has a tendency to rip itself to shreds when it fires.
@@lukematney7062 I know. They he said that in the video.
US Navy has halted further development and rollout of electromagnetic railgun launchers on USN platforms. Existing prototypes could shoot projectiles at MACH 6/7. But further development and rollout stopped on the basis of limitations with: (1) range (110 miles) (2) fire rate (3) system durability (need to replace prototype rails after 12-24 shots). USN R&D focus is now apparently on hypervelocity projectiles (can be fired from existing gun systems)
Also, I understand that the Bechtel Corporation A1B reactor plant, which will provide propulsion and electricity on the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, will have a total thermal power output of 700 MWth. This output is apparently 25% higher than that provided by the A4W reactor plant (that used on the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers that the Ford class will replace). This raises the possibility I suppose that new weapons systems that fully or partially rely on high electrical input could be fielded on the Ford class ships.
meanwhile in the Metal Gear universe: launching nukes using rail-guns.
thats not unique to metal gear, the fatman in fallout MIGHT be a rail gun, or it might be a slingshot i dont remember
@@Christian24583 it a slingshot system
@@Christian24583 The Fatman in Fallout is based on the real life Davy Crockett recoil-less gun prototype from the 50s. If you look at the "ammo" they used for it, it even looks like the mini nukes in Fallout.
that was interesting, informative and a very complete overview! Thanks!
The military Vsauce
@5:01 Shouldn't have been drinking my soda. TOO FUNNY
I'm so environmentally conscious I even fight wars electrically.
On pc? 😅
@@shades9723 If that sooths your mind
as if something could be worse for the environment than rare earth mineral mining.
@@tsmspace my guess is that a nuclear war would be a tad worse for the environment due to the fallout than all the mining in history would be even if taken together
@@trueriver1950 I suppose burning the entire environment to ash would be worse. but that's not on the list of current events.
Wow, great content and really cool, subscribed!
Also you could do a bit about space lasers - the only means of countering ICBMs (because a lasers ballistic potential, especially in a vaccuum is limitless)
Could shift the balance of power very quickly
The problem with our unquenchable thirst for innovation is our tenuous impulse control and our burning desire to ‘shoot stuff’.
Are you comparing us to orks? HERESY!
1 minute and Simond got my hopes up
Did he just say ... "streets ahead of the allies" :O A certain Mr Hawthorn is dancing in his grave right now.
I think he said "streaks ahead" which seems to maybe be a british phase? Early googling is inconclusive though, maybe we're all just streets behind of Simon on the hot new catchphrases.
There is now a portable rail gun that is around the same weight as an assault rifle, it fire's a projectile that is lethal up to 300 metres and using full power can fire up to 200 projectiles before needing recharging. It does have an adjustable power setting so you can reduce the distance and fire more projectiles. It has been around for over 2 years as I watched a show on it over a year ago and they already were selling them in the USA.
Expensive fireworks in military parlance: Shock and Awe
I stumbled across Biographics and thought cool, then I started watching different channels and started seeing this man in all of them 😂
The thing with the railgun spacecraft launcher is that once it’s deployed almost certainly people will use it for orbital kinetic bombardment weapons.
Meh, there's already no such thing as an unarmed spaceship once you reach a certain level of tech and delta-v capabilities.
total non-issue. It will just make it cheaper to put things in space. What exactly people put in space will be the same no matter how they put it there.
Or a suborbital version to launch ICBMs to save on the rockets. With a HE or nuke warhead the KE becomes less of a factor, but the muzzle velocity is needed to get the range.
@@tsmspace
I think you missed the point that the Kinetic Energy adds one more source of lethality to all the other nasty things that you can put in space to use as a weapon.
@@tsmspace you see, currently it’s just not feasible to deploy orbital kinetic weapon since it takes a lot of energy and rocket boosters can’t be infinitely large. With a surface to space launcher it’s much more feasible to supply that amount of energy in a gradual but sustained way to launch heavy stuff into orbit.
Build one as "science project" (end of studies)
It required way more researches, fixes, and i've struggled more than i tought setting it up !
I've used massive capacitors and ...quite a budget, all of this to launch a nail through a lab table ! WORTH IT !
Imagine you're grabbing breakfast and all of a sudden robbers at a bank 6 miles away fire their railguns and it hits you...
Like superman flying through a office building
lol if they could afford this they wouldn't be robbing a bank.
6? 60? 600?
you go over 4kms,,, the thing becomes a meteor
The key to this article is the comment about the large scale projectile. As stated, there have been small scale variants developed. Some of which are such that I'm sure there already exists a rifle sized variant for use by special forces as a silent rifle or a small hard to spot launcher using grenade sized projectiles.
Dunno if Railgun technology is practical for the thing I will mention or not but......
Could this enable "The Return of Battleships"? or a similar class in the modern era?
Hmmm...
Maybe not, because naval missiles are still more accurate then guns. This will replace those standard cannons on ships nothing more nothing less.
Unless we are going to spacebattleships era😁😁
@@madkoala2130 yeah pretty much, it was:
Naval artillery/cannons ---> Missiles & Carriers which already manifested during WW2 that killed the Japanese Imperial Navy (US carrier fleets won over them after their mistake of losing carriers at Midway Island) and then in the Cold War which missiles almost replaced long-range artillery and completely killed the battleship era.
Also, there is the problem of size if you want to go all-out sized battleship like Iowa class sized, it's both a big target and more easily detectable by many kinds of modern detection instruments.... but then again, monstrosities such as USS Gerard R. Ford exists.
If at least, just an example, build one of these, from my perspective:
- Greater emphasis on stealth
- Modern missile systems would be still be implemented
- If stealth is a main feature, then at least make the size of it as large as cruiser classes or fast battleships of WW2
- Accompanied similar to a modern carrier escort fleet even if it's not as large as something like a Yamato-class or Iowa-class
- VLS pods would be preferably be still installed
- Modern Detection and Electronic Warfare instruments installed.
*- smart artillery ammo, this exists now BUT warrants that the normal artillery ammo should all be smart although compared to older systems, computerized guidance systems are already automated and very accurate compared to the best WW2 counterparts. Why smart artillery? indiscriminate or inaccurate bombardment of targets, either by distance or it's just that dumb artillery ammo cannot change direction compared to missiles
Basically, it's an enlarged stealth frigate but larger and with at least three turrets with 2-3 cannons each accompanied by an escort fleet at all times.
This is just bare minimum if a comparable Iowa-class sized Railgun Battleship or slightly smaller class could even operate safely on a modern naval battle.
@Robert Sears they went away because a single missile costing a fraction as much as them could reliably oneshot them from outside their range, and could, if need be, be fired from a small freighter.
New and better battleships stopped being developed before that, because the only job they had that a carrier or cruiser couldn't do better and/or cheaper was "utterly unfair costal bombardment", while submarines and planes, both launching torpedoes, already presented the same issue, if less so, that missiles later would.
The reasons everyone (except Kind Of the USA last I checked) gave up on cruisers (except for the occasional, not always seaworthy, flagship here and there) were partially the same, partially the fact that, with modern weapons and manufacturing, destroyers were basically interchangable with light cruisers save for (no longer effective) armour and how often they needed to top up their magazines from a supply tender. Neither would run out in a single battle anyway. Add in that at this point barely anyone had both the need and capacity for cruisers any more, and those that did had carriers (that were better at the job by this point) and that was the end of them.
None of that's really changed by the introduction of the railgun.
Sufficiently good defence against torpedoes and missiles Might eventually see destroyers that are heavy cruisers in all but name and armament, eventually, but that's about it.
Unlikely Railgun range currently sits around 100 - 200 miles. So missiles are still better.
Battleships lose in range and durability was proved ineffective vs nukes.
Nukes are not something we should really use any more, but something with similar explosive potential would do the same thing.
Think Moab but optimized for use underwater
i could see this resulting in smaller battleships
maybe no missiles but faster and smaller
you don't need the massive ammo stores I think
but what do I know
What Simon was talking about was a very basic explanation of a rail gun as there are multiple ways of doing it they are very similar to a linear motors which is what is on hyper loop and maglev trains. The US navy already us a magnetic launch catapult on the USS Gerald ford for launching jets. Turkey is also in the development on a rail gun and has had a few test fires. To give one an example of how much power is need a launch rollercoaster might use a linear motor which will draw alot of power if this power wasn't supplied through captors then it could wipe out the power for a city ( this has almost happened somewhere..)
The Railgun: In case Perseverance finds something on Mars that we need to start shooting at from earth
It's already got a LASER.
So, if it finds oil that needs some freedom.
I mean, hostile aliens
@@adamd5849 Oil is just decomposed organics.
@@robertkesselring and perseverance is searching for ancient, probably dead, life.
and now they've killed railgun projects entirely. Got this video in just in time. RIP Railguns.
Chinese - we got a railgun!
Americans - that's cute. We've got phasers.
Well, the Chinese might have phasers too.
You are forgetting the Jewish space laser🤨🤪
China wont get anything till someone else invents it and they steal it.....poorly i might add
@Robert Sears
No, it's real. The Chinese have a distinct advantage in some technical areas over the US.
@@k.t.1641
Biggest bullshit ever.
If you look for it and have a few thousand dollars to spend there's a hand held railgun that's a little bit bigger than your standard assult rifle, and the other factor that comes into play is the newest version of a laser, a unit that weights in under 3 hundred pounds and not very big, but it can knock out aircraft and missiles in flight, and even take out artillery before it can hit. There's currently a couple of platoons of LAV's in the US Army that are armed with these weapons and another interesting point you don't see the beam and it can destroy a fair amount of targets of different sizes.