Weapons

Powering the Navy’s railgun

U.S. Navy researchers needed energy storage technologies to help develop a long-range shipboard weapon that fires projectiles using electrical power instead of chemical propellants. They found their solution from battery designer Saft America, who will help Navy researchers develop non-propagating energy storage modules for the future electromagnetic railgun. The electromagnetic railgun project seeks to use magnetic fields created by high electrical currents to accelerate a sliding metal conductor between two rails to launch projectiles at 4,500 mph.
Such a shipboard weapon would use kinetic energy, rather than explosives, to destroy or disable targets at sea. The railgun will use electricity generated by its host ship and stored over several seconds in a pulsed power system. The Navy’s near-term goal is a 20- to 32-megajoule weapon that shoots a distance of 50 to 100 nautical miles. Navy officials want a rate of fire for the electromagnetic railgun of at least 10 rounds per minute. The pulsed power system will provide the electrical power necessary for this rate of fire. For more information see Saft America atwww.saftbatteries.com, or the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Dahlgren atwww.navsea.navy.mil/Home/WarfareCenters/NSWCDahlgren