ANJALI NAIR
Just as the US seems to have given up, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China has finally found a way to install a prototype rail gun in one of its warships.
Photographs taken at the Wuchang Shipyard show a large gun, mounted on the Haiyang Shan, a type 072 tank landing craft, that does not fit the profile of its standard twin 37 millimetre cannons.
Military analysts however believe that it might be a 203 millimetre calibre weapon, the same proportions as a prototype American rail gun that is now not operative.
The US Navy had spent $US500 million researching rail guns and other electromagnetic technologies but now seems to be shelving the project.
A gun identified by weapons experts as an electromagnetic railgun is seen mounted aboard a Chinese landing ship. China has indirectly confirmed it is testing what would be the world’s first warship-mounted electromagnetic weapon. Picture Source: WeChat
Rail guns use electricity to generate strong electromagnetic fields between two rails. A conductive metal device, called an armature, picks up a projectile and accelerates down the path between the rails, slinging the projectile downrange at hypervelocity.
The power supply must be able to deliver large currents, sustained and controlled over a useful amount of time, with the key determinant being the energy it can deliver.
The brain behind the pulsating power system to charge the rail gun is a female lead engineer, Zhang Xiao, who has led her team cross all technical hurdles in launching the ship borne electromagnetic carrier systems.
Rail guns use the same sort of energy to launch projectiles, which are guided along rails and then shot through a barrel at hypersonic speeds over longer distances than traditional cannons. They are also able to acquire targets much faster, which allows multiple rapid launches.
According to the Sina Military, if the range turned out to be that of real a rail gun, then it would be as good as a conventional anti-ship missile, giving Chinese ships significant leeway in battle.
Military analysts say that the bulky size of a rail gun and its peripheral equipment is one of the biggest hurdles in fitting the weapon on ships, while it is also more vulnerable to wear and tear due to the extreme kinetic forces being experienced. The gun’s accuracy also needs to be improved so it can target ships more than 100 km away
Although they don’t use gunpowder or explosive propellants, rail guns can achieve a higher destructive force than conventional guns and be more cost effective and safer to use.
Military analysts say that the bulky size of a rail gun and its peripheral equipment is one of the biggest hurdles in fitting the weapon on ships, while it is also more vulnerable to wear and tear due to the extreme kinetic forces being experienced. The gun’s accuracy also needs to be improved so it can target ships more than 100 km away.
However, the electromagnetic rail gun is a key frontier of the next generation of weaponry that will replace gunpowder with electricity and magnetism.
China has already steamed ahead of the US, who has already given up after a lot of trials and experiments on this issue.
The success of the Chinese may prompt the US to review its own policies. ■
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