I’m no expert, but I could imagine rail-guns would be a huge advantage on nuclear powered vessels. For one the ammo doesn’t explode if hit by enemy fire.
Comment on China Uses Giant Rail Gun to Shoot a Smart Bomb Nine Miles Into the Sky
School_Lunch@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I wonder how much more energy it took to accomplish that compared to just shooting a rocket. Last I had heard railguns weren’t really feasible because of the absurd amount of energy they would require even with perfect efficiency.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 months ago
EvilBit@lemmy.world 4 months ago
They might also have a much smaller launch signature, meaning harder response to a first-strike launch. But I’m not a physicist or nuclear deterrence expert or anything.
APassenger@lemmy.world 4 months ago
When it’s not an experiment:
- Do we know where it is?
- Is it mobile?
UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 4 months ago
It’s not the absurd amount of energy that’s the problem. It’s the absurd amount of energy that has to be STORED AND RELEASED within a fraction of a second in a controlled fashion.
If you wanna go electric, you would need a stupendous amount of capacitors and a gun that won’t get destroyed due to the immense energy release.
If u wanna go chemical (like an actual gun), u r faced with the same problem of the gun exploding.
The only approach that MIGHT work is the Spinlaunch thing, where u essentially store this energy as angular momentum in a THICCC carbon fibre rod. Spinlaunch is still yet to demonstrate anything remarkable, so there’s that.