Comments on: Railguns – Electric Future Rail Gun – Military Raligun

By: Clayton

Clayton — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:06:45 +0000

“Me” is right on about the projectile melting on impact due to friction at the velocities generated. I encountered data clear back in about ‘91 regarding a test with a rail gun. A 1cm projectile fired into a .25″ plate of mild steel basically vaporized a hole you could stick your head through! Velocity was 15,000 feet per second, so the kinetic energy per unit of weight was about 25 times that of, say, a .243 rifle…..a very small long-rod penetrator at that velocity would have an incredibly flat trajectory and a frightening terminal effect, probably several times that of an equivalent weight of HE. Keep in mind that the velocity of the projectile would exceed the speed of sound relative to the medium through which it passed, even steel, and weird things start happening then — none of which are pleasant for the recipient.

You can’t get something for nothing, though; It takes an enormous amount of energy and an efficient “through-put.” Man-portable weapons of this sort are difficult to conceive.

By: Me

Me — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:33:42 +0000

Nope, ever thought that at such speeds, the “metal” projectial would melt possibly, and fragment at some point after entry? they would make specialized rounds, just life everything else dipshit
Besides, its obviously not going to be used in an urban conflict, who cares if you hit a couple extra enemy targets, seriously?
I think its amazing, and theres obviously some aspects not shared to the general public, I’m sure they’ll manage to make it … The Us has a history of making, “future” things to kill eachother with…
Look at the m16 when it was made, it looked space aged, look at the M1 Abrams, nothing before even resembeled it…
The Us will invent a working rail gun, and before you know it, its the thing of the past, and theirs new varations and versions of it… man kind will never stop in the quest to kill thy enemy, each time more effective then the next

By: fr0sty

fr0sty — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:48:02 +0000

The one slight problem I see with this, apart from the fact that they are trying to create something new, but with the same output as the old; is; who is going to handle the weapon and what targets would you really point this gun at, sure some may say, “To take out a target”, but then whats on the other side of that target… and with the speeds these guy’s are pushing for, you would need a way for the projectile to stop before they go and hit a few dozen more targets.

By: B!aZeN

B!aZeN — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:42:52 +0000

The technology for a magnetic pistol has been created however for a railgun pistol it has not. The concept of a railgun is fairly simple however to achieve the results that the government is looking for a railguns main function will be that of long range cannon fire NOT small arms use. The pistol technology is worthless at the moment because it requires too much energy to output a projectile at speeds even close to a regular firearm due to the fact that it uses coil technology that simply cannot bring the projectile even close to the speeds needed to come close to a regular fire arm. So the question is not “do we really need something like this in modern day?” but rather how to more effectively harness enough energy to make the use of small arms railguns usable in combat?

By: Serph

Serph — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:15:00 +0000

It could work, but there trying to make it too advanced. The simple concept has already been sized down to a pistol the schematics for which you can find in magazines. If they were “Dumb” projectiles it would already be in use, but then the question arises, what do we really need something like this for in modern day?

By: Justin Asher

Justin Asher — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:16:23 +0000

Yeah ok thats gonna work….not rofl jk good idea actually