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 US Navy Rail Gun prototype being tested What's this about? This thread is intended to be a place to share and discuss articles and other news sources pertaining to the military and the defence industry. Hoping to have a thread full of discussion of new developments in the areas of foreign policy, breakthroughs in technology, the history of defence, tactics, or really anything else along these lines. Interesting news from the past month The Economist article on the US Navy's railgun project U.S. Military Proposes Challenge to China Sea Claims Chinese Military Strategy white paper outlining a new policy of “active defense” Tests show Lockheed F-35b at home at sea RAF jets scrambled to intercept Russian bombers ISIS as an ordinary insurgency
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Jun 9, 2015 20:06
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So is there any reason to think that drones won't make manned military aircraft obsolete in the next couple decades? I suppose that having a human in the cockpit is theoretically important for making certain high level decisions but from a purely military standpoint wouldn't a drone be superior in pretty much every way?
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Jun 9, 2015 22:18
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Helsing posted:So is there any reason to think that drones won't make manned military aircraft obsolete in the next couple decades? I suppose that having a human in the cockpit is theoretically important for making certain high level decisions but from a purely military standpoint wouldn't a drone be superior in pretty much every way? Within the next couple decades maybe not, but definitely in 50-100 years I would suspect we'd be witnessing the phasing out of the manned aircraft in favour of unmanned aircraft. It's difficult to put time constraints on these matters though. F-35B may be the last aircraft that is designed with the pilot in mind, as this Economist article supposes. However, the area of sea battle is constantly changing, especially with China's new commitment to active defence of its waters and the US's railgun project. The railgun promises over 100 nautical miles of effective range, effectively making any inland sea (Baltic, parts of the Mediterranean) a choke point, and it's set to be in active deployment by the next decade. It's almost WWI-esque, with railgun equipped ships mirroring the rise of the dreadnought. I wouldn't be surprised to see another rise of the battleship as a result.
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Jun 9, 2015 23:21
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Helsing posted:So is there any reason to think that drones won't make manned military aircraft obsolete in the next couple decades? I suppose that having a human in the cockpit is theoretically important for making certain high level decisions but from a purely military standpoint wouldn't a drone be superior in pretty much every way?
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Jun 9, 2015 23:35
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Despot posted:Within the next couple decades maybe not, but definitely in 50-100 years I would suspect we'd be witnessing the phasing out of the manned aircraft in favour of unmanned aircraft. It's difficult to put time constraints on these matters though. F-35B may be the last aircraft that is designed with the pilot in mind, as this Economist article supposes. However, the area of sea battle is constantly changing, especially with China's new commitment to active defence of its waters and the US's railgun project. The railgun promises over 100 nautical miles of effective range, effectively making any inland sea (Baltic, parts of the Mediterranean) a choke point, and it's set to be in active deployment by the next decade. It's almost WWI-esque, with railgun equipped ships mirroring the rise of the dreadnought. I wouldn't be surprised to see another rise of the battleship as a result. Don't ships already have cruise missiles which much longer range and greater payload?
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Jun 9, 2015 23:36
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^^^ the railgun would be for shore bombardment I suppose since a chunk of metal cost less than missile avionics. Rent-A-Cop posted:So far combat drones have only operated in super-permissive environments. They're going to have to get a lot smarter if we want to use them against anything that fights back. Also might want to address the 'Iran can jam the signal and steal them' problem.
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Jun 9, 2015 23:36
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Raskolnikov38 posted:^^^ the railgun would be for shore bombardment I suppose since a chunk of metal cost less than missile avionics. So it's not a game changer, at best just possibly a slight cost savings.
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Jun 9, 2015 23:40
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Helsing posted:So is there any reason to think that drones won't make manned military aircraft obsolete in the next couple decades? I suppose that having a human in the cockpit is theoretically important for making certain high level decisions but from a purely military standpoint wouldn't a drone be superior in pretty much every way? Advancements in virtual reality will make that problem completely irrelevant.
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Jun 9, 2015 23:40
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tsa posted:Advancements in virtual reality will make that problem completely irrelevant. I agree, once we're all jacked into the Matrix 24/7 you won't even need drones.
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Jun 10, 2015 00:39
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Bip Roberts posted:So it's not a game changer, at best just possibly a slight cost savings.
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Jun 10, 2015 00:57
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Rent-A-Cop posted:safer than a traditional gun.  Bush did 4/19
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Jun 10, 2015 01:19
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Helsing posted:So is there any reason to think that drones won't make manned military aircraft obsolete in the next couple decades? I suppose that having a human in the cockpit is theoretically important for making certain high level decisions but from a purely military standpoint wouldn't a drone be superior in pretty much every way? tsa posted:Advancements in virtual reality will make that problem completely irrelevant. The technological obstacle to replacing manned aircraft with drones is not telepresence but bandwidth limits and anti-satellite weapons.
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Jun 10, 2015 01:55
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Bip Roberts posted:So it's not a game changer, at best just possibly a slight cost savings. I'd say it's a bit more than slight, although we're wasting so much money in other areas on military hardware it probably wont make a huge difference overall. http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21650519-americas-navy-wants-arm-its-ships-electrically-powered-superguns-rail quote:But the biggest advantage, says Commander Fox, is cost. A single ship-launched missile can set the navy back well over $1m. Current estimates for railgun projectiles are around $25,000 per shot. Even given the tendency for costs to swell, that is a dramatic saving. And not even America’s military budget is infinite.
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Jun 10, 2015 03:39
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MaxxBot posted:I'd say it's a bit more than slight, although we're wasting so much money in other areas on military hardware it probably wont make a huge difference overall. For 25,000 do you get the same range, accuracy, and payload as the million dollar missile or is 25,000 for the unguided version and what they'll actually use are million dollar gps guided rail shots? I mean it sounds like expanded capability on a number of ways but I don't see how it can be a dreadnaught style naval paradigm change.
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Jun 10, 2015 03:56
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Dilkington posted:The technological obstacle to replacing manned aircraft with drones is not telepresence but bandwidth limits and anti-satellite weapons.
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Jun 10, 2015 04:08
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Despot posted:Within the next couple decades maybe not, but definitely in 50-100 years I would suspect we'd be witnessing the phasing out of the manned aircraft in favour of unmanned aircraft. It's difficult to put time constraints on these matters though. F-35B may be the last aircraft that is designed with the pilot in mind, as this Economist article supposes. However, the area of sea battle is constantly changing, especially with China's new commitment to active defence of its waters and the US's railgun project. The railgun promises over 100 nautical miles of effective range, effectively making any inland sea (Baltic, parts of the Mediterranean) a choke point, and it's set to be in active deployment by the next decade. It's almost WWI-esque, with railgun equipped ships mirroring the rise of the dreadnought. I wouldn't be surprised to see another rise of the battleship as a result. The thing about Dreadnought's is that they were, at least in theory, supposed to fight head-to-head with other Dreadnoughts, and I have trouble imagining how that would actually happen with rail gun equipped capital ships. While I suppose that capital ships will always be useful for international dick waving contests or for intimidating smaller countries how much sense do they make from a tactical standpoint? It seems like offensive power greatly outstrips defensive power right now so wouldn't a capital ship be a big and expensive floating target if two countries with blue water navies ever went to war with each other? Maybe counter measures are better than I realize but it seems like in any real conflict large ships would be sitting ducks. rudatron posted:Could you end up with an interesting situation of drone operators being placed fairly close to drone aircraft to ensure good communication? So you have fast moving drone aircraft having to protect slow moving operator aircraft/ships/whatever?  
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Jun 10, 2015 04:23
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rudatron posted:Could you end up with an interesting situation of drone operators being placed fairly close to drone aircraft to ensure good communication? So you have fast moving drone aircraft having to protect slow moving operator aircraft/ships/whatever? That's the basic gist of this CSBA report on Trends in Air-to-Air Combat. Guided missiles have gotten so capable that if you're within range of a modern dogfighting missile, i.e. within a few kilometers and a bearing where the pilot can point his helmet mounted site, you're basically dead. The best counter is stealth, and taking the enemy out at the maximum possible range. The future of air combat looks like large subsonic stealth motherships with huge bays full of missiles surrounded by a shell of sensor carrying drones. The author is pretty obviously laying the justification for the Long Range Strike Bomber and an Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, and the tactics used by the opposition in the example encounter are pants on head terrible, but he makes some decent points about the current dependence of US airpower on relatively vulnerable force multipliers like AWACS and aerial refueling, and the possibility that future strike missions will have to be more self-sufficient. Most hilariously, if he's right, the F-35 is even worse than anticipated, because the design compromises payload and signature in order to get fighter-like speed and maneuverability.
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Jun 10, 2015 04:39
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I think distance and counter-measures like ECM/ECCM is probably going to be more useful/economical, than quote unquote stealth, when you're dealing with large aircraft filled with drone optrators, that is also a powerful radio transmitters communicating with drones. There's no way you'd bring the operator aircraft into any kind of close range situation (like arming it with a lot of missiles), because one missile is probably going to bring it down anyway. edit: Actually, with anti-ship missiles coming along, naval combat is probably also going to have to adopt this model - you have a swarm of disposable, small units that eat up fire/actually attacking versus larger support ships way up in the back, that refit/refuel/whatever the little dudes. rudatron fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 05:11
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EfbBip Roberts posted:So it's not a game changer, at best just possibly a slight cost savings. The Economist posted:A single ship-launched missile can set the navy back well over $1m. Current estimates for railgun projectiles are around $25,000 per shot. America Inc. fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 05:24
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rudatron posted:edit: Actually, with anti-ship missiles coming along, naval combat is probably also going to have to adopt this model - you have a swarm of disposable, small units that eat up fire/actually attacking versus larger support ships way up in the back, that refit/refuel/whatever the little dudes. Which also brings up a point from a previous thread - when nobody's actually dying in war anymore, at least for advanced countries, will developed countries still avoid war with each other as much as they do today? If the US and China could settle a territorial claim militarily without any loss of life, would they still bother with diplomacy, if not for more than just to avoid economic fallout? America Inc. fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 05:37
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LookingGodIntheEye posted:This might just be the future of war in general - as automation continues we might just have machines do most of the actual direct fighting on land, air, and sea. War is politics by other means and being able to physically threaten your opponent with actual real damage is the whole point. Human lives are always going to be at risk because the coercive element of war is absent if they aren't.
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Jun 10, 2015 05:46
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Fojar38 posted:War is politics by other means and being able to physically threaten your opponent with actual real damage is the whole point. Human lives are always going to be at risk because the coercive element of war is absent if they aren't. I'm imagining advanced countries seeing territorial disputes as mere economic matters, and fighting over territory the same way the US and China might fight over technological advancements or other economic assets. The real coercion would now be economic coercion, not physical coercion.
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Jun 10, 2015 06:03
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How important is ammo capacity? Do US ships ever come close to running out of missiles?
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Jun 10, 2015 06:09
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Aliquid posted:How important is ammo capacity? Do US ships ever come close to running out of missiles? Not really, they have plenty. But then again, having more ammunition and a higher rate of fire also means that you're more willing to fire more often. For example, a musketeer didn't have ammunition issues either - but obviously they needed a lot less ammo than a machinegunner. The most important element with the railgun concept is making sure that it can be used with precision, since that also allows it to be used far more often. Modern militaries already have plenty of artillery that they can barely ever use since it is too powerful to be used without pinpoint control.
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Jun 10, 2015 06:42
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LookingGodIntheEye posted:Little bit more than slight: The 25,000 vs 1,000,000 comparison is between the ammo for the railgun and the ammo plus launcher for the missile. It's not a direct comparison. If you have to replace the barrel every 100 rounds and make 10 shots to hit a target you hit 80% of the time with a cruise missile then the savings go away.
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Jun 10, 2015 07:08
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I think the railgun's importance is that currently that there there are no counter measures against it. That isn't to say it'll be a one-hit sinker of ships, but your only hope is to sink the other ship before it sinks you. 10 Kg of likely tungsten with some explosives packed in there being launched at 2.5 km/s produces an incredible amount of KE, is pretty hard to see coming and nearly impossible to intercept. The implications on infantry combat are also huge as an artillery piece, if I remember correctly the US Army has stated that it wants to start testing railguns in the near future as well. It's likely we'd see Darpa's EXACTO technology also making its way into the railgun scene, making them deadly from almost any range once perfected.
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Jun 10, 2015 07:25
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But is there really a cost-effective counter measure to missiles? The systems they use to shoot missiles down are way more complex and expensive than the missile themselves, so you just launch them in batches.
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Jun 10, 2015 07:30
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rudatron posted:But is there really a cost-effective counter measure to missiles? The systems they use to shoot missiles down are way more complex and expensive than the missile themselves, so you just launch them in batches.
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Jun 10, 2015 07:41
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Bip Roberts posted:The 25,000 vs 1,000,000 comparison is between the ammo for the railgun and the ammo plus launcher for the missile. It's not a direct comparison. If you have to replace the barrel every 100 rounds and make 10 shots to hit a target you hit 80% of the time with a cruise missile then the savings go away. It's a direct comparison since they're both comparing the unit cost of the device. The launcher is part of the missile unit, it fires only one missile, and it is not reusable. At that price differential you could fire 40 shots for the cost of one Tomahawk.
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Jun 10, 2015 07:42
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Kaal posted:It's a direct comparison since they're both comparing the unit cost of the device. The launcher is part of the missile unit, it fires only one missile, and it is not reusable. At that price differential you could fire 40 shots for the cost of one Tomahawk. Except it's not at all for the reasons I mentioned. If you have to buy a new million dollar barrel after those 40 shots then the price isn't the same. There are hidden costs in this (on both sides of the equation) besides the physical price of the munition fired.
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Jun 10, 2015 07:53
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It's also important to remember that railgun projectiles are inherently safe to handle. They contain no explosives and require no propellant. Having a railgun instead of a traditional naval gun eliminates a lot of damage control concerns. Railguns do not require magazines, complex ammo-handing systems, or specialized fire fighting apparatus.
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Jun 10, 2015 07:59
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Does a railgun barrel sustain anywhere near the wear-and-tear a traditional gun or missile launchpad?
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Jun 10, 2015 09:21
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At the moment the railgun barrel gets hosed up in a big way. Erosion of the rails is one of the major issues with the concept.
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Jun 10, 2015 09:26
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Magazine explosions are much more dangerous. Eroding rails aren't nearly as much of a hazard.
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Jun 10, 2015 09:34
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I presume somebody has run the numbers on when the "savings" of railguns vs. missiles would pay for the R&D?
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Jun 10, 2015 14:02
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Sunken costs versus initial costs: if the R&D adds up, that just means you need to up unit production by going to war! Think of the savings! Pay by credit card, and get an increased approval rating ABSOLUTELY FREE!
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Jun 10, 2015 14:06
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Bip Roberts posted:Except it's not at all for the reasons I mentioned. If you have to buy a new million dollar barrel after those 40 shots then the price isn't the same. There are hidden costs in this (on both sides of the equation) besides the physical price of the munition fired. Nope. Again, the issue is comparing unit costs. If you want to compare life-cycle costs where you consider the cost of all wear and tear, gallon of gas, and training man-hour, then you should find the appropriate study. Beyond that, you're conflating prototype issues with operational qualities. American railgun prototypes are already capable of firing hundreds of times prior to replacement, and are intended to be capable of firing thousands of times before replacement. Your talking point that railguns are just as expensive as cruise missiles is simply unsupportable. Oh and by the way if you had to buy a million dollar barrel after 40 shots (which they won't) then the comparative cost would still be hugely in favor of the railgun since the unit cost would be $50,000 per railgun shell rather than $1 million per missile. Kaal fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 14:41
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Kaal posted:Beyond that, you're conflating prototype issues with operational qualities. AKA "throw more money at us and maybe we can figure out a way to aim these."
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Jun 10, 2015 14:46
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rudatron posted:edit: Actually, with anti-ship missiles coming along, naval combat is probably also going to have to adopt this model - you have a swarm of disposable, small units that eat up fire/actually attacking versus larger support ships way up in the back, that refit/refuel/whatever the little dudes. Same with aircraft really. Something as capable as a manned aircraft is going to be roughly the same size and shape as a manned aircraft and probably cost even more. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Jun 10, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 20:10
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SedanChair posted:AKA "throw more money at us and maybe we can figure out a way to aim these." but enough about LockMart, development costing money is normal even without ridiculous amounts of pork barrel spending and graft
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Jun 10, 2015 20:11
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!