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"The Navy now believes it has a design that soon will be able to fire 10 times a minute through a barrel capable of lasting 1,000 rounds." So the barrel lasts
by zellyn 10y ago
"The Navy now believes it has a design that soon will be able to fire 10 times a minute through a barrel capable of lasting 1,000 rounds."
So the barrel lasts just over an hour and a half?
- aljones 10y agoIs there more to your question than is my math right?
- zellyn 10y agoI was astounded at the low number of shots per barrel. As the other replies to this comment show, it's actually quite good. Surprising!
- RhysU 10y agoNotice no details on the barrel. Everything is about making it last. That many shots from a high power rail gun is nuts.
- saulrh 10y agoDuring their service in WWII, the 16-inch guns on the Iowa-class battleships had a life of about 300 rounds. They didn't reach their current 3500-round lifetime until we figured out polyeurethane bags in the 70s. So 1000 rounds is solid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armament_of_the_Iowa-class_battleship#Turrets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armament_of_the_Iowa-class_bat...
- lobster_johnson 10y agoI assume WW2 ships simply stocked a bunch of gun barrels to replace the ones they wore out?
- GunboatDiplomat 10y agoHave you ever seen, in person, the scale of a 16 inch 50 Caliber gun? They're not field swappable. The barrel is about 67 feet long and weighs 120ish tons.
- dgacmu 10y agoThink of it instead as: The ship can fire 10x as many rounds before needing to resupply as it can with today's technology. The resupply also happens to involve replacing the barrel. Today's 5" guns have to have their barrel replaced every ~7000 rounds anyway (source: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-62_mk45.htm http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-62_mk45.htm ).
- jessriedel 10y agoIn terms of firepower and reusability, you should compare these to missiles rather than guns. (Each round could sink a ship.) The barrel is an expendable component.
- dredmorbius 10y agoWhat's the scenario in which a vessel would be faced with 1,000 targets (per barrel) in an engagement? I suspect the Navy have some records on firing rates achieved in actual battle situations. The relationship between theoretical firing rate and actual firing rate is often distant. You might find it more useful to read this as a weapon capable of firing not more often than once every six seconds, and having an effective barrel life of 1,000 rounds. Those 1,000 firings could well be spread over months or years.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoIt's kind of like with automatic weapons - some of them are capable of firing so fast that they'd eat through your magazine in a second or less. That has little to do with how they're actually used though.
- m-i-l 10y agoMight a bigger challenge be the power source? If each firing requires 25MW, then 1000 shells would require 25GW, which is equivalent to the output of several large nuclear power stations. Edit: Apologies, basic mistake, mixed up power with energy. Thanks for correcting.
- malisper 10y ago> If each firing requires 25Mw, then 1000 shells would require 25Gw That's not how power works. Power is energy/second, so if one each firing requires 25Mw, firing every round requires 25Mw. Edit: Although after doing some calculations, firing 1000 shells would require 22 billion joules of energy, which is about the same as the energy released during nuclear fission of three grams of uranium.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- madmax96 10y agoHow plentiful is Uranium? I'm not a nuclear engineer, so the 3 grams metric isn't meaningful to me -- is that a considerable amount?
- Roboprog 10y ago3 grams is between about 1/6 and 1/8 once. Of course, only a small portion of uranium in a reactor core is converted to something else. After that, they replace the fuel as its output drops a bit. Disclaimer: I don't know enough to check the "grandparent" post's math. I'm assuming the calc is right in that it's the fission energy, and not total destruction of matter E=mc^2 / matter-antimatter style.
- m-i-l 10y agoThanks. That helps with my original question - how portable will this be? If it just needs a very small nuclear reactor with a tiny amount of fuel, then they should be able to have a power source "that generates 25 megawatts" and can "fire 10 times a minute through a barrel capable of lasting 1,000 rounds" on a ship. But what about a truck? Having a weapon with a 125 mile range isn't necessarily all that great if it is too big and heavy to get within 125 miles of most of the things you want to shoot at.