[Fury]

I stumbled upon this in an another forum.

Perhaps the most revolutionary system is the electromagnetic (EM) railgun, which could deliver a strike similar to that of a meteorite.

Holy ****...

[ZylonBane]

"Mass drivers?!"

[IceFire]

Originally posted by ZylonBane


"Mass drivers?!"

ROTFLOL!!!!

Yeah I read about that on Janes. Also talking about a megawatt (or was that giga?) laser that could be used to shoot down planes, missiles, and small boats.  Heck, one company is making a laser pod for the F-35 so that it can hit targets with a laser weapon.

The problem with lasers is the damage it can do to friendly and enemy retinas.  I doubt it will be very humane to blind the eyes of everyone nearby.  They stopped testing sonic weapons because of the massive damage to the hearing that they caused...not sure what will happen here.

[Styxx]

Hmm... Free Electron Lasers. Gotta love that.

[Redfang]

Sci-fi weapons coming to real life! Yay!
 

 
Wait... I wonder if that's good, after all.

[Knight Templar]

Rail guns are the ****.

I was watching a show on the discovery channel (the third time I turned on my tv in the last two weeks) last weekend. Had a show on government futuristic weapons, including lasers on helicopters, stun beams, Rail guns, and the such.

They have a working railgun, but aparently it takes an electromagnetic generator the size of a house to work properly.

soon my pretties

[Shrike]

Hehehe.

*ZOT*

FELs rule.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
They have a working railgun, but aparently it takes an electromagnetic generator the size of a house to work properly.

soon my pretties

mmh? I've read about stuff like that something like 3 years ago. By that time one would think they've improved the system?

[CP5670]

This system looks quite neat and offers a number of advantages over the conventional explosive propellant, but the problem is that it requires a crapload of energy to operate; I think that's the main reason this has not already come out fifty years ago. When a practical fusion power plant comes up, these things will become the weapons of choice.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
They have a working railgun, but aparently it takes an electromagnetic generator the size of a house to work properly.

[color=66ff00]Ahhh you have been misinformed my friend. I with my own eyes have seen Arnold Schwartzenegger handle not one but two rifle sized railguns on his own! The only problem with the things is that they can't really tell the difference between an enemy and a cat which may adversly affect the cat population should these railguns go into full production...




What?
[/color]

[Stryke 9]

It doesn't NEED to know the difference between an enemy and a cat. A regular rifle doesn't, either, and unless you're a dumb **** enough to stick a motion sensor on the thing, all you really need to worry about is the operator knowing the difference. They're more ideal for AG artillery, anyway, so it'd be a moot point.


Railguns rule. Any advanced MDW you can make in your garage with a few bits from Radio Shack, a generator, and the local scrapyard rules.

[01010]

Originally posted by StrykeIX
It doesn't NEED to know the difference between an enemy and a cat. A regular rifle doesn't, either, and unless you're a dumb **** enough to stick a motion sensor on the thing, all you really need to worry about is the operator knowing the difference. They're more ideal for AG artillery, anyway, so it'd be a moot point.


Railguns rule. Any advanced MDW you can make in your garage with a few bits from Radio Shack, a generator, and the local scrapyard rules.

If I had a motion sensor I'd put it on a cat.

[Stryke 9]

And it'd take a two to three-hundred pound projectile to do significant damage (and below which mass it'd likely burn up in the atmosphere, in an orbital system), and launching ammo for a giant space railgun would be so expensive it'd really be cheaper and better to rely on our existing stockpile of nukes, which do a bit more damage anyway, at a slightly greater radiation cost.

Stick a hypervel railgun on a helicopter platform, I might be impressed. Star Wars II is just too extravagant and silly for me to ever believe it'll get off the ground.

[Bishop Gantry]

computers where the size of houses just some decades ago...

[Martinus]

The projectiles on current USN designs are launched at M7.0-8.0 into the exoatmosphere, allowing them to "go in excess of 200nm" in about six minutes.

[color=66ff00]Uhhh, have I missed  something? 200nm is like 200 *10E-9 meters. If it travels that distance in six minutes it would be blimmin slow!

I hope they just misquoted the guy or the US military might not have the weapon they think they have.
[/color]

[LtNarol]

Nuclear fussion in my opinion is the last thing you want to install on a ship, one good hit and you can lose containment, lose containment and the ship any anything remotely near it is heated to the temperature at the surface of the sun  Not pretty.  

Cold fussion on the other hand is something that might be possible in eight or ten years.

[Corsair]

that stuff has been in the making for a few years now. I read about it in Popular Science (magazine). It's part of the USN's Navy after Next idea, and they think that they'll be mounted on huge trimaran warships.

[Knight Templar]

Originally posted by Maeglamor


[color=66ff00]Uhhh, have I missed  something? 200nm is like 200 *10E-9 meters. If it travels that distance in six minutes it would be blimmin slow!

I hope they just misquoted the guy or the US military might not have the weapon they think they have.
[/color]

The one on Discovery had the gun at 2.25km a second.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]2.25km a second sounds a bit more reasonable. (Who the hell am I kidding? Reasonable? More like insane! )
[/color]

[Knight Templar]

And it pierces heavy tank armor Budda'