Japan Becomes 1st Country Ever To Fire Electromagnetic Railgun From An Offshore Vessel::Japan has successfully test-fired a medium-caliber maritime electromagnetic railgun from an offshore platform, as it continues to advance its defenses in the face of burgeoning regional security threats.
I could have sworn that the US navy has had experimental railguns on carriers for a while. I don’t think they ever intended them as actual functional weapons, but I was pretty sure they had at least done some tests with them.
The U.S. Navy hasn’t declassified their tests so there is no official record. Japan was the first to openly do it.
Uhh, I dunno how much declassification you’re looking for but here’s the US Navy’s Youtube channel with a video of some test firings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk
IIRC, the problem wasn’t that it didn’t work but that the barrels wore out too quickly to be useful. I suppose they could have put this on a Zumwault like originally intended but that would just be a PR stunt when the main problem was throwing the gun away after 10 shots.
I think there was an episode of Evangelion where they posed the same problem and solved by having multiple guns to switch to. I guess it’s common knowledge of thermal dynamics? IDK
If the JMSDF has gotten to this phase of development, I’m gonna have to assume they’ve either made some advances in material science that deal with the extremely accelerated corrosion/ablation in the rails/barrel, or have come up with a reasonable way to quickly swap the wear components out. Who knows - maybe it’s as simple as a spool of conductive wire/metal strip runs down the length of the barrel and gets refreshed with every shot?
Maybe they just a ton of lube, butter that bad boy up before a big battle and let a rip!
This is talking about firing from an off shore vessel though. They declassified the test firing on land years ago.
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From what I see, it looks like they never actually put the thing on a boat. All the testing was on land.
And after years of R&D the US Navy put the project on ice recently. Apparently they don’t think it’s worth the cost.
Funds shifted to hypersonics
We have on land. They just suck up a lot of power and missiles do the same job but better
I think I’ve only ever seen tests from land, but I’d be shocked if a ship didn’t have one, but I wouldn’t be if they were quiet about it
You’re thinking of EMALS. It’s a catapult for aircraft, not a gun. Pretty close in concept though. Had some teething issues, turned out larger than expected, but works just fine now.
The GAO says it still has reliability issues that won’t likely be ironed out for about a decade.
yeah transformers rise of the fallen featured a navy ship with an EM gun… but none that we have today are unclassified. Japan’s was first!
It was classified there too