Thread: US navy has a kick ass RAIL GUN

They actually want to get the kinetic energy of the projectile up to 80 MJ if possible. The only real and unstated problem of these rail guns is energy consumption. One gun could potentially consume 60 MW of a ship's power while the ship still has to have power for radar, propulsion, etc. This will affect even the new DX line of ship (as I believe they are called). The reason is that most rail guns are a straight line design (otherwise they would be coil guns). With straight wires, it takes extreme amounts of Amps to generate a strong enough magnetic field (we're talking millions of Amps), so if the gun runs 2 million amps at 30 Volts that's 60 MW.
The other problem with the guns is materials. With currents that high, there is a very high chance of arcing which generates high temperatures and is highly destructive. Also, given the pulsed square-wave nature of the current and the size of the current, the material of the gun will be under high stress which could lead to material warpage.
-edited for some grammar

Yes and since you don't need to have the extra space for explosive propulsion, you can store (I think this is right) about 10000 rounds in the space you could store 2000 normal rocket guided rounds (which are the current method for long range, accurate bombardment).

Let me explain the awesomeness to a greater degree: The intended final rail gun will put a 16ftx16ftx16ft crater into a target at a range of over 200 mi. It will fire 6 rounds per minute with its accuracy being so great that it will place the same number of rounds on the target in 15 minutes as 5 in gun shooting 15 times a minute. Oh, and since it will travel at many multiples of the speed of sound, you will see it hit and then hear it go by you. I wonder what it will sound like. Maybe a loud screech so they could call the Banshee?

I did some research for a paper last quarter. It's all on the web in published papers from researchers and higher ups in the navy and the like.