Killer Drone Builder General Atomics Builds Killer Electromagnetic Rail Cannon

Killer Drone Builder General Atomics Builds Killer Electromagnetic Rail Cannon

One of the more intriguing new technologies spotted at this week’s Navy League Sea-Air-Space Expo was General Atomics’ electromagnetic rail cannon. The company has been working for a number of years with the Office of Naval Research on a 200 nautical mile gun system. In a parallel effort, they’ve been developing a smaller, pulse-power technology demonstrator, called the “Blitzer,” for ship defense against anti-ship cruise missiles and small boat swarms.

Two million amps launch a guided projectile at twice the speed of a conventional gun, but at much lower cost than the usual surface-to-air missile systems outfitting most naval ships. General Atomics is working on a cannon that can launch an airburst round at a rate of one per second. Each round dispenses sub-projectiles, so its equivalent to firing 14,000 rounds a minute, which is a higher rate of fire than the Phalanx close-in weapons system, says Tom Hurn, General Atomics director of advanced weapons systems.

– Greg Grant



unhappycamper comment: There's an interesting discussion at the end of this short article.

It is the "green" super cannon. :)

The electricity comes from someplace!

And if you put one on the moon, it could be used as a massdriver cannon for either supplying material to build space stations, or for bombarding Earth with artificial meteorites.

I forget what sci-fi novel it was, but it was a story about colonizing asteroids and using mass drivers as a means of propulsion .

Mass drivers in science fiction

In the computer game Descent 3, the mass driver is a weapon that can be attached to your ship's hull which fires a lethal projectile at its target. A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Descent³ is the third and final game in the line of Descent computer games, well known for the use of six degrees of freedom and true 3D rendering technology. ...


In the novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress mass drivers are used by Lunar rebels to launch artificial meteorites in an orbital bombardment of the Earth. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress cover The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about a lunar penal colonys revolt against rule from Earth. ... Orbital bombardment is the act of attacking targets on a planet, moon or other such object from orbit around the object, rather than from an aircraft or a platform beyond orbit. ...


In the game Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War a mass driver was used to send supplies to the Arkbird. The Arkbird is a giant superweapon from the Playstation 2 video game Ace Combat 5. ...


In the Babylon 5 episode The Long, Twilight Struggle, the Centauri Republic used mass drivers in violation of their treaties in their final attack on the Narn homeworld. Babylon 5 is an epic American science fiction television series created, produced, and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. ... The Long, Twilight Struggle is an episode from the second season of the science-fiction television series Babylon 5. ... For other uses, see Centauri (disambiguation). ... Andreas Katsulas as GKar in Babylon 5 The Narns are a race of humanoid aliens in the television series Babylon 5. ...


In the Japanese anime Gundam Seed mass drivers are used to launch warships into space. This was prominent in the Battle of Orb. Title of the series Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (or Gundam Seed) is an anime television series from Japan. ... Spoiler warning: In the Cosmic Era alternate universe of Gundam, the Bloody Valentine War is a war between the Earth Alliance, an alliance of four major governments on Earth, ZAFT, a nation of space colonies located at L5, and the Clyne Faction, an alliance of Earth Alliance and ZAFT defectors...


In Tekkaman Blade II & Teknoman they are used to launch the blue earth into a high orbit, where the blue earths engines can take them either into space or around the planet. Tekkaman Blade II , literally Space Knight Tekkaman Blade II) is a 6 episode Original Video Animation. ... Teknoman is the English-dubbed version of the Japanese anime Uchuu no Kishi Tekkaman Blade (宇宙�騎士テッカマンブレード Star Knight Tekkaman Blade). This series was intended to be a revamp of the original Tekkaman: The Space Knight anime, though these shows ultimately shared little in common besides the armoured hero concept The original...


In the game Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption the Zann Consortium uses mass drivers as a weapon on many of their starships. The Zann Consortium is a criminal organization depicted in the computer game Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption. ...


In the game Xenogears, the main characters use a mass driver to expel a cure for a disease into the atmosphere, saving the planet. Xenogears ) is a console role-playing game developed and published by Square Co. ...


In the novel The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P. Hogan, a Maskelyne mass driver based in the Sea of Tranquility is used by the TITAN supercomputer to easily destroy a lunar ridge that needed to be cleared for the construction of a second mass driver site. The name James P. Hogan might refer to: The science fiction writer The film maker This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The Sea of Tranquility of the Moon. ...

In the game Masters of Orion II, the mass driver is a weapon that can be equipped on ships; its damage does not decrease with range.

More:
http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Mass-driver#Mass_drivers_in_science_fiction


Mass driver
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mass driver or electromagnetic catapult is a proposed method of non-rocket spacelaunch which would use a linear motor to accelerate and catapult payloads up to high speeds. All existing and contemplated mass drivers use coils of wire energized by electricity to make electromagnets. Sequential firing of a row of electromagnets accelerates the payload along a path. After leaving the path, the payload continues to move due to inertia.

A mass driver is essentially a coilgun that magnetically accelerates a package consisting of a magnetisable holder containing a payload. Once the payload has been accelerated, the two separate, and the holder is slowed and recycled for another payload.

Mass drivers can be used to propel spacecraft in two different ways: A large, ground-based mass driver could be used to launch spacecraft away from the Earth or another planet. A spacecraft could have a mass driver on board, flinging large pieces of material into space to propel itself. A hybrid design is also possible (see coilgun, railgun, or helical railgun).

Miniaturized mass drivers can also be used as weapons in a similar manner as classic firearms or cannon using chemical combustion.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

He used it as a weapon in his novel (yes, I'm that old. LOL I'm surprised it was still stuck in my brain after all these years). And I probably picked it up as a means of propulsion, from another source, since

I haven't played any of those games, but I may look into some of them now.

Cheers! Thanks for the info.

Maglev trains & fuel-saving hybrid drives for ships. It's not all about war and killing.

development during the mid 80's. It was a research project at a major engineering university funded by the Raygun "Star Wars" program. We were trying to build rail guns for use in low earth orbit to knock out ICBMs while they were venerable during their sub orbital phase of their trajectory. They work on the principal of expanding gases from the arc plasma generated by high voltage arcing between 2 conductive metal rails. They generate orders of magnitude more force pushing the projectile than gunpowder does. In our experiments the idea was to simply use a lead object as the projectile (not an explosive round) to knock down the missile while in flight fired from an orbiting satellite platform. I suspect something of this nature my be the payload of the recently launched super secret unmanned mini-space shuttle that was sent into low earth orbit last month, just guessing.

Looks like they have now found a more "practical" use for them on ground or naval based systems.

when my older brother graduated and they had a prototype railgun. It was nine feet long and could produce 100,000-Gs of acceleration. Their power source was a very large electric motor they used as a homopolar generator. They also had a pipe-welding machine that could butt two pieces together as the kinetic energy was converted to amperage. The result was seamless welds, even with thick-walled stainless steel. The copper busswork attached was impressive! :D

While I'd like to see a large reduction in military spending, it's much better to have the technological advantage than to not have it.

Powder magazines explode, gunpowder burns...I'm certain the Navy would be REAL happy to get all the gunpowder off its ships. Side benefit: they could reclaim some of the space in the powder magazine (some of it will be taken up by the generator for the electromagnetic gun) to hold more projectiles.

:thumbsup:

I'm a card-carrying member of the National Railgun Association.