217
Japan Becomes 1st Country Ever To Fire Electromagnetic Railgun From An Offshore Vessel
(www.eurasiantimes.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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The U.S. Navy hasn't declassified their tests so there is no official record. Japan was the first to openly do it.
Uhh, I dunno how much declassification you're looking for but here's the US Navy's Youtube channel with a video of some test firings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk
IIRC, the problem wasn't that it didn't work but that the barrels wore out too quickly to be useful. I suppose they could have put this on a Zumwault like originally intended but that would just be a PR stunt when the main problem was throwing the gun away after 10 shots.
I think there was an episode of Evangelion where they posed the same problem and solved by having multiple guns to switch to. I guess it's common knowledge of thermal dynamics? IDK
If the JMSDF has gotten to this phase of development, I’m gonna have to assume they’ve either made some advances in material science that deal with the extremely accelerated corrosion/ablation in the rails/barrel, or have come up with a reasonable way to quickly swap the wear components out. Who knows - maybe it’s as simple as a spool of conductive wire/metal strip runs down the length of the barrel and gets refreshed with every shot?
Maybe they just a ton of lube, butter that bad boy up before a big battle and let a rip!
This is talking about firing from an off shore vessel though. They declassified the test firing on land years ago.
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