Re: Jane's on Naval `electric weapons'

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 10:57:19 MDT

  • Next message: Mike Lorrey: "Re: Jane's on Naval `electric weapons'"

    --- JAY DUGGER <duggerj1@charter.net> wrote:
    > On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 12:32:46 -0700 (PDT)
    > Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@yahoo.com> wrote:
    > >Railguns can certainly shoot projectiles beyond the
    > >horizon, more than
    > >two times further, in fact, than current chemical gun
    > >technologies.
    > >
    > Umm, this might not hold true. When I left the US
    > Navy four years ago, descriptions of rocket-assisted
    > rounds for 5" inch guns had just started to appear in the
    > professional literature. The material suggested ranges of
    > about sixty nautical miles (~68 miles or ~110 km) for
    > surface targets. Bear in mind, I didn't see these fire.
    > Military contractors deserve their reputation for
    > exaggerating their products' abilities.

    Any projectile that a cannon can shoot, a railgun can shoot, so any
    rocket assisted round that extends the normal range of a 5" gun will
    also extend the range of a railgun that itself has greater range than a
    conventional 5" cannon.

    Using dumb warheads as a comparison, the largest gun, the 16" used by
    the now mothballed Missouri-class battleships, had a range of 24 miles.
    This was the longest range chemical propelled gun in the US Navy
    arsenal. A 5" gun with dumb warheads has a range of something around 12
    miles or so. These ranges are with full bore rounds. Using saboted
    rounds will extend the range a bit more

    The only maritime guns of longer range than the Missouri-class 16" guns
    were the 18" guns aboard the Yamato and Musashi superdreadnaughts of
    Imperial Japanese Navy, thought to have a range of about 28-30 miles.

    For longer range guns, you'd need to look at either the WWI and Nazi
    era railroad based guns (the Paris Gun, for example). Otherwise, look
    to the gun research of Canadian Dr. Gerald Bull between the 1960's and
    his 1990 assasination by Israel's Mossad.

    He designed the "Baby Babylon" gun owned by Saddam Hussein and capable
    of a range of 110 miles (since dismantled), and had designed the
    "Babylon" gun that was designed to put payloads into orbit witha 36
    inch bore. The pieces of this were intercepted by British customs,
    labeled as pipe for oil work, just prior to the first Gulf War.

    Bull used to have two research centers, one on the Vermont/Canadian
    border (where he had the only private border crossings into two
    countries in the world), and one in the Carribean where he did research
    for the US military. He had welded together two 16" bore barrels, end
    to end, to achieve higher exit velocities, and researched saboted
    rounds intended to reach the limit of space.

    In the 1980's, he engaged in commerce with the US and Canadian
    intelligence agencies, supplying Angolan forces fighting against the
    Cubans and their clients with enhanced artillery rounds. US congress
    prevented export of US warheads to Angola, but the Canadians did not.
    Bull bought surplus US warheads, shipped via Burlington, VT, emptied
    and remachined them to his specs, filled them and shipped them out via
    Montreal. When this project came to public knowledge, they (the intel
    agents) left him swinging in the breeze and he spent a year in prison,
    after which, the only work he could find was working for Saddam and
    South African military concerns (he designed the mobile artillery
    vehicle known as the "Kalahari Ferrari").

    =====
    Mike Lorrey
    "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                                        - Gen. John Stark
    Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
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    Pro-tech freedom discussion:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom

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