

Navy's Railgun Now a Reality – Uses Lorentz force to hurl projectiles at Mach 7+ - espeed
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/electromagnetic-railgun-launcher/

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aryastark
> “[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: ‘Do I even
> want to go engage a naval ship?’” Rear Admiral Matt Klunder

ah, yes. Because a railgun is the determining factor when considering
attacking the US Navy. "Well darn, they now have railguns. Let's call off the
nuclear Armageddon guys!" As cool as this may be, our military industrial
complex is hopelessly delusional.

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hga
Be fair to the guy and use the whole quote:

 _“[It] will give our adversaries a huge moment of pause to go: ‘Do I even
want to go engage a naval ship?’” Rear Admiral Matt Klunder told reporters.
“Because you are going to lose. You could throw anything at us, frankly, and
the fact that we now can shoot a number of these rounds at a very affordable
cost, it’s my opinion that they don’t win.”_

In a lot of domains a rail gun is a game changer.

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trentlott
If we had rail guns 30 years ago, how would history be different?

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hga
Naval gunfire would have played a greater role in the Iraq war, especially the
last one; the previous, as well as Vietnam and Korea, had Iowa class
battleships available for that role, although there's quite a bit of
difference in what this rail gun can do, 23 pound kinetic shell out to 100
miles vs. 16 inch caliber AP and HE shells 100 times as heavy out 1/5 of the
distance.

In a future serious war, imagine what one of these, with drone spotting, could
do Communist China's PLA naval forces. Note that Taiwan is 110 miles from the
mainland's coast, ships with these guns could be in the general vicinity of
the island and as long as they had sufficient reconnaissance completely
control the surface, reducing an invasion attempt to what's sometimes mocked
as a "million-man swim".

They wouldn't have to move as much, which would help with the treat of slow,
quiet submarines waiting for you to come into range.

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trentlott
I'm not sure that I've really read anything about the Iraqi Navy's grand
defense slowing us down.

And I can't really see us going to war with China any more than we went to war
with the USSR.

~~~
hga
For the former, you're evidently not familiar with the role naval gunfire
support played; if not those instances, e.g. I remember the Royal Australian
Navy(RAN) _Anzac_ using its 5 inch gun in support of the combined US and
British Royal Marine push into the Al-Faw Peninsula right flank, read up on
e.g. the WWII invasion of Sicily or D-Day, when Omaha beach had two old US
battleships dedicated to it (would have hated to be a German on the other side
when e.g. the _Texas_ used it's 10 14 inch guns to "clear" a beach exit).

For the latter, the misattributed Trotsky quote " _You may not be interested
in war, but war is interested in you._ " applies. As does the principle of
deterrence.

