r/BeAmazed • u/Wooden-Journalist902 • Nov 15 '25

Technology Hypersonic railgun round goes through metal plates like they are made of paper.

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u/SIPR_Sipper Nov 15 '25

The US Army spent a wild amount of money to come to the conclusion that rail guns are cooler than they are practical.

809

u/Rampant16 Nov 15 '25 edited Nov 16 '25

It was the US Navy, but yeah at least officially at present they've halted railgun development. It seems to mainly be an issue with barrel life.

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u/Ravenloff Nov 15 '25

Didn't they also have some breakthroughs with lasers? I know they've actually deployed a couple of laser systems on operational vessels.

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u/enterjiraiya Nov 16 '25

directed energy and lasers have less barriers to being deployable on a ship

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u/realparkingbrake Nov 16 '25

 lasers have less barriers to being deployable on a ship

A few miles of moist atmosphere are a pretty good way to neutralize the effects of a laser, and there is lots of moist atmosphere at sea.

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u/JusticeUmmmmm Nov 16 '25

And you can only shoot line of sight. I think even on WW2 they could shoot past the horizon with conventional naval guns.

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[deleted]

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u/MoistStub Nov 16 '25

If you think that's impressive you should see Uncle Rico throw over them mountains.

3

u/kernel-troutman Nov 17 '25

I wish he would stop eating all our steak.

3

u/jeffbas Nov 17 '25

He’s ruining all our lives.

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u/TwoNatTens Nov 16 '25

Most laser targets would be things that pose a threat to the ship: incoming missiles and hostile aircraft. Things that have to become LOS to strike the ship. In theory, targeting an incoming missile with a beam of light is a mite easier than hitting it with a counter-missile.

1

u/JusticeUmmmmm Nov 16 '25

Sure but that's not a replacement for a rail gun. A rail gun would be an offensive weapon.

1

u/zeracine Nov 16 '25

Yeah it's called Coincidence Range Finding. Easily one of the more insidious names for a targeting system.

1

u/Soeck666 Nov 17 '25

That's why big battleships had spotting airplanes, to know where the target is

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u/Ubermidget2 Nov 18 '25

Time to start deploying Satellite Mounted Mirrors

14

u/iNapkin66 Nov 16 '25

Theyre not going to only have lasers. The lasers are for shooting incoming missiles, etc. Theyll still have big kinetic guns and missiles etc for shooting over the horizon.

2

u/JazzberryJam Nov 16 '25

Well, they’ve mounted them on UPS planes. And UPS asked for them

1

u/legorig Nov 19 '25

There are no such systems mounted on UPS aircraft. You might be thinking of El Al which has DIRCM systems onboard that can blind incoming infrared seeking missiles.

1

u/TheOnlyAedyn-one Nov 16 '25

Currently, the lasers are mainly for air defence, I believe

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u/DiLaCo Nov 17 '25

But they are for shooting income threats (drones, missiles, rockets, etc)

6

u/Aeseld Nov 16 '25

Different niche really. Railguns were meant to be a primary weapon and payload delivery in one. That turned out to be much harder and expensive than is feasible. You know it's bad when missiles are cheaper. 

The lasers are more defensive. Meant for drones and disabling or counting incoming missiles. 

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u/BadDudes_on_nes Nov 16 '25

Turns out there’s not really a more efficient substitute for a dense projectile propelled by expanding gases from a restricted chamber

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u/Rampant16 Nov 16 '25

Increasingly power laser weapons have been installed on various USN warships; however, thus far they are really just laser dazzlers capable of damaging optical sensors. Wide-scale adoption of laser weapons capable of shooting down incoming munitions is still not quite there.

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u/ConfectionSlight5463 Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 16 '25

Wasn’t there a laser shooting down rocket munitions in Israel recently? 

Edit: there is, the above comment is full of shit. 

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u/MasterChiefsasshole Nov 16 '25

Yeah but it’s more of a fucking up the electronics or enough damage to throw it off course kind of thing rather then the vaporize it that most people think of. There’s a lot of focusing and parameters that gotta be just right for a laser to really do some damage. Just look up how much goes into cutting a simple 1inch thick plate for basic manufacturing purposes. Now you gotta do that from an extreme distance.

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/MasterChiefsasshole Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 16 '25

Yes it’s in service. It works by directing holding a beam for a period of time till it causes enough damage to take down the target. It does not vaporize the target like you see in movies. So a cursory google search says I’m not full of shit.

The following is from the product brochure as a brief overview of how this works. You can read further online with additional specs on how the tracking to keep the laser on target or employ additional lasers on target to cause enough damage to cause the target to have a catastrophic failure.

Main Capabilities • Defends against UAVs, mortars, rockets, artillery, and cruise missiles • 100 kW class laser power • Extended tracking enabled by multifunction Beam Directors • Built-in Adaptive Optics for stabilization • Coherent Beam Combination • Rapid retargeting for swarm engagement • Focus on specific part of a threat for neutralization within seconds • Remote deployment of operator console

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u/ConfectionSlight5463 Nov 16 '25

Dozens and dozens of videos of it and even a press release showcasing and explaining its capabilities again, disagree with you. 

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u/MasterChiefsasshole Nov 16 '25

????? I’m describing how it works literally as it’s advertised? It hits the target with a beam of energy while tracking the target to hold the beam on the target until the heat of the beam damages it enough to cause the target to have a critical failure. Are you reply to the correct comments or are you thinking of Star Trek? It’s a fiber laser the same tech is used in thousands of manufacturing plants across the world.

1

u/HecticHermes Nov 16 '25

Dude believes a cursory google search and the controlled environment of testing and press releases are good enough. Why bother trying to learn how it actually works? /S

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u/baconppi Nov 16 '25

Most of the videos are showing it intercepting drones/motar shells or small calibre rockets, where it it feasible to vaporise the entire thing(although i doubt they do it in practice)

For larger missiles like ballistic missiles or cruise missiles it is just to degrade the electronics and the fuze,so as to allow a iron beam system to take out multiple missiles in a short amount of time, as vaporizing the missile is just going to waste precious intercept time.....

1

u/FatWreckords Nov 16 '25

Tyson looked good in short promo videos leading up to the Paul fight too.

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u/arftism2 Nov 16 '25

what do you think happens to a rocket when it gets overheated.

spoiler alert.

it vaporizes, like in movies

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u/TheMightyOreo Nov 16 '25

Lasers are used regularly in combat now. Mostly for anti drone deterrence, but there also being used for some other stuff.

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u/legorig Nov 19 '25

Directed energy lasers still have a few years to go before they see widespread deployment. The only combat tested system that I know of is Iron Beam and its use was rather limited.

The US Navy has a few lower power systems installed on some destroyers operating in the south China sea that they use to dazzle ISR assets like drones. These systems are almost entirely meant for peace time operations though. Since shooting down the drones would cause quite a stir its just better to blind them.

1

u/Atun_Grande Nov 16 '25

Can we all agree that the fact that ‘dazzle’ is a doctrinal terms is amazing? (It really is, and the thought of a bunch of old waspy shits sitting around a briefing room having to use this word tickles my coccyx)

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u/GreenLurka Nov 16 '25

Yeah but you can't curve a laser over the horizon

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u/Ravenloff Nov 16 '25

You can bounce it over though :)

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u/ThrowAwaAlpaca Nov 16 '25 edited Nov 17 '25

Pretty sure the deployed ones are a complete disaster, at least the one Saudis use. Because there has been no breakthrough, still dissipates way to fast too be useful and takes too long to charge the capacitor. And in the desert it also takes 30-40mins to cool the equipment before you can start shooting.

That's before you consider that they're essentially beta testing the thing since they were the first customer attempting actual operational deployment. So it breaks down constantly...

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u/ExtremlyFastLinoone Nov 19 '25

The problem is that it comes out so fast and has so much kinetic energy the inside of the barrel gets shredded, theres no material on earth that can withstand that.

Lasers dont have barrels and the limitations lasers do have can be circumvented by just aiming more lasers at the same target since they dont interfear with each other

1

u/chamomile-crumbs Nov 16 '25

My friend works on lasers for a DOD contractor and he p much said that they’ll probably never be viable because of the insane amount of power they need to be able to pierce any kind of metal

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u/FuriousGirafFabber Nov 18 '25

Lasers are too easily countered by bad weather or a bit of smoke.

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u/SilvermistInc Nov 15 '25

FedEx had them on their planes going over active warzones for missile protection, and I believe the Abrams trophy system uses a laser too.

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u/Rampant16 Nov 16 '25

Those are Infrared countermeasures which confuse the Infrared seekers used by some types of missiles. They aren't really a direct energy weapon in the sense that they could destroy an incoming missile, just confuse it off target.

1

u/SilvermistInc Nov 16 '25

Don't they fire a laser at the missile to confuse its sensors?

1

u/JustNilt Nov 16 '25

There are different versions. Some use lasers but many don't.

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[deleted]

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u/Wocawocawocawoca Nov 16 '25

How did you like the movie eraser.

1

u/SinkHoleDeMayo Nov 17 '25

It's fuckin awesome, duh.

I watched the shit outta that movie as a kid.

3

u/Stultus_Asinus Nov 16 '25

Isn’t something like that usually classified? 😂

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u/StrykerSeven Nov 16 '25

Maybe you could give me some feedback on a thought I was having.. 

I was thinking I wouldn't rule out that they have since realized that even though their cost in magnets and other more expensive components is higher per unit built, coilguns are a far more practical alternative for propellantless high velocity kinetics.

As far as I understand, they hold the dart in the middle of a magnetic field, meaning there is no rail contact to cause the insane wear. As long as they can develop system components that can last a lot longer than the rails would, that would not only give them better dart velocities but greatly reduce wear and potentially even critical failure points. 

1

u/ukezi Nov 16 '25

Why do something like that and not just use gun powder to start, or maybe light gases?

1

u/CrimsonReaper96 Nov 20 '25

The solid metal projectiles fired from railguns and coilguns move at hypersonic velocities.

The projectiles that require gunpowder as propellant instead of electromagnetic energy wouldn't be able to reach the same extremely high velocities that the solid metal projectiles can reach.

Also, the damage caused by the projectiles would involve two things, the kinteic energy getting converted into heat apon impact and the projectiles breaking apart into fragments apon impact.

1

u/ukezi Nov 20 '25

I wasn't about to replace the rail gun with gunpowder, just this plastic lining they vaporise to start it. That sounds more complicated than needed.

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u/bd_optics Nov 15 '25

The Army also investigated them. Originally the M1 Abrams tank had a space earmarked for a superconducting coil to power a rail gun. Unfortunately the expected recoil would destroy the drivetrain. The only solution would be to dig a pit and back in against the embankment before each shot. Not really suited to fire on the run.

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u/Rampant16 Nov 15 '25

Yeah that is total horseshit, I'm not sure where you heard that.

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u/bd_optics Nov 16 '25

I heard from a rail gun researcher at one of the DARPA research centers. Although you are probably right and he was full of shit.

2

u/mortgagepants Nov 16 '25

"i'm going to test fire the railgun!"

"dude, i told you that it isn't cool to announce to everyone you're going to take a shit!"

"...ok. IS THERE ANYONE DOWN RANGE??"

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u/Rampant16 Nov 16 '25

Yeah you are full of shit. For starters, a railgun isn't powered by "superconducting coils". Coils are not a power source, they are a means of inducing current to accelerate a projectile. The power source would still be the engine of the tank generating electrical energy to charge capacitors.

On top of that, a railgun doesn't use coils to accelerate a projectile, it uses (this will blow your mind) rails. Hence railgun. So your entire claim makes zero logical sense.

There's never been a serious attempt by the US Army to equip Abrams with a railgun. Even today, all of the various western next generation MBT prototypes are armed with normal old cannons with conventional chemical propellant.

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u/bd_optics Nov 16 '25

My wording was brief and imprecise. My bad on that. But I won't try to address your points because you are too rude and inconsiderate to waste any more effort.

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u/tdex50135200 Nov 16 '25

Yeah this guy is a cringe know it all with no manners bought up with a silver spoon

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u/rhubarb31415926 Nov 16 '25

Why would DARPA talk to a Brit?

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u/bd_optics Nov 16 '25

Who's the Brit? BTW I like your name.

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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25

[deleted]

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u/bd_optics Nov 16 '25

Newton’s laws. Accelerating the dart requires the rail gun to push it forward, but the dart tries to stay at rest. That generates a recoil equal to the force expended on moving the dart. Really no different than a regular gun except the expanding gas is replaced by the E-M field.

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u/Big_Yeash Nov 16 '25

Various early Abrams test beds - not "the M1 Abrams" itself - had programmes to test different weapon types, yes.

The power requirements for a practical coil gun or railgun that meets chemical (read - normal) artillery's capability just are not there for a tank-sized platform.

Something that probably was part of the various Abrams test beds was liquid propellant. There is an acronym for this, I forget it now, but it also required a substantial electric current in addition to pumping liquid propellant into the firing chamber. ELC? ELP? it was a tla, I'm sure. I don't remember how it works either.

But not a railgun.

2

u/Nope_Ninja-451 Nov 18 '25

TLA is my favourite TLA!

1

u/mmmfritz Nov 16 '25

Oh man that sounds like a fairly rudimentary thing to overcome for next gen tanks. Here’s hoping.

1

u/ElementII5 Nov 16 '25

Oh is shit! Is THAT the reason they went with a turbine for an engine, power generation for a railgun!?

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u/Wurun Nov 15 '25

That's a wild story, given you could simply lower the power through the magnetic coils to not have that much recoil.

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u/Rampant16 Nov 16 '25

A railgun doesn't even use electromagnetic coils. It uses rails. JFC.

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u/Helmett-13 Nov 16 '25

The JDF mounted a test railgun on one of their destroyers earlier this year :)

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u/floppydo Nov 16 '25

China is still going strong on railguns. Either they know something we don’t or they’re willing to absorb more losses until a breakthrough. 

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u/jayschmitty Nov 16 '25

They want the breakthrough

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u/XanatosXIII Nov 16 '25

I thought I read somewhere that the batteries needed to have the power on standby took up half the space on any ship they would put it on. Then when it had fired it took forever to recharge for another shot.

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u/lookinatdirtystuff69 Nov 16 '25

They also have absurd power requirements that made them slow to fire, expensive to build, and ultimately impractical when compared to traditional weaponry

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u/Cleanbriefs Nov 16 '25

And the tremendous voltages needed to run the thing would need a dedicated nuclear reactor to make it a repeater 

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u/TooMuch615 Nov 16 '25

Wonder if it could be economical in space where the barrel is just an array of magnets on a frame.

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u/PopeHatSkeleton Nov 16 '25

Put a bunch of barrels on a wheel and have them cycle with each shot.

New Gundam idea: railgun revolver

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u/AlphaBetaSigmaNerd Nov 16 '25

From what I've read, part of the problem was that it was that it was actually too powerful and kept punching through the target instead of exploding on or inside of the target like traditional ammunition ironically

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u/Altruistic-Beach7625 Nov 16 '25

I wonder if they've tried disposable barrels.

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u/xenoeagle Nov 16 '25

As I know, as the other guy said, advances in lasers and also, cruise missiles basically at this point being more efficient and cheaper and they just gonna get better as well. No point in wasting money on railguns.

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u/Rampant16 Nov 16 '25

Lasers are line-of-sight only so useless for the intended role of shipborne railguns which was long-range shore bombardment. Cruise missiles historically have been >$1 million each. So the USN wanted a weapon with greater range that existing chemically-propelled cannons but lesser cost per shot than cruise missiles. Because of issues like barrel life, they haven't been able to get the cost per shot down low enough to have it make sense.

1

u/Jcamden7 Nov 16 '25

Yeah... Unfortunately, the cooler a gun is the more precise the barrel has to be AND the more of a beating the barrel takes a shot

1

u/sexraX_muiretsyM Nov 17 '25

wasnt it the energy necessary to fire a round? The whole purpose of a rail gun is to accelerate the round through rails, with magnets, not through a barrel

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u/Rampant16 Nov 17 '25

In sci-fi, railguns often look like these fork things with rails on either side that the projectile is suspended between while it accelerates.

In reality, there's still a barrel with the electromagnetic rails on either side. The projectile still makes contact with the barrel while it accelerates and therefore wears down the barrel over time. In other railgun videos, you can see sparks and stuff flying out of the muzzle of the railgun, some of that will be material worn off from the barrel.

Energy requirements is an obstacle for mounting railguns on small vehicles like tanks or aircraft, but ships like the Zumwalt-class are quite large and were designed with a lot of excess energy generation capacity for potential future systems like railguns or directed energy weapons.

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u/sexraX_muiretsyM Nov 18 '25

if it has a barrel then its not a rail gun, its a gauss rifle. Every rail gun is a gauss rifle, not every gauss rifle is a rail gun

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u/grumpykraut Nov 17 '25

A fact every futurist or remotely tech-savvy person could have told them about beforehand.
But who could have thought that dumping massive amounts of current through a circuit made out of two rails and a projectile to have the projectile grind along the rails at Mach 7 would have detrimetal effects on the rails?

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '25

They can basically explode within a single test firing. We were on site a few times when the navy was firing off rounds. They got two out before they shut down the range. Because the thing blew up. No point in having a weapon system like that.On any sort of craft.

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u/MattManSD Nov 17 '25

yes, because the advantage of not needing powder on board, and not needing explosive rounds makes ship sinking much more difficult. Barrel life and actual rate of fire in a combat situation.

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u/Aleashed Nov 16 '25

Navy already moved on to lasers because they are better in every regard. This technology was DOA.

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u/Rampant16 Nov 16 '25

Absolutely not. The goal with railguns was to develop artillery weapons with ranges well in excess of 100+ miles for striking land targets at a lesser cost than conventional cruise missile. A laser weapon is line-of-sight only and therefore useless in that regard.