On December 10, the US Navy conducted a test of the railgun, an electromagnetic cannon in which electromagnetic impulses give acceleration to a projectile. The development of this weapon has been going on for several years already, it is expected that it should be received by promising ships of the fleet, primarily the already laid destroyers of the DDG-1000 Zumwalt project (while 2 ships of the series are being built, the expected acceptance into the fleet in 2013 and 2014).
Railgun is a pulsed electron mass accelerator, consists of two parallel electrically conductive buses, along which an electrically conductive mass moves, which can be a projectile or plasma. The principle of operation of the device is based on the conversion of electrical energy into kinetic energy of the projectile.
The first such cannon appeared in the 70s of the last century and was designed by the Canadian John P. Barber. In February 2008, the US Navy tested the installation with an energy of 10 MJ, then the projectile developed a muzzle velocity of 9,000 km / h. The now tested 33 MJ cannon provided a firing range of 203.7 km and a projectile speed at the end point of the trajectory of about Mach 5 (5600 km / h). Funding for the project is constantly increasing, it is expected that by 2020 guns with a muzzle energy of 64 MJ will be created, they will go into service with the DDG-1000 Zumwalt series destroyers, which are initially developed taking into account the modular design and the possibility of arming with such weapons.
The exact date of the completion of the tests conducted by the US Navy is not yet known, but at the moment it is not possible to use this weapon on warships, because the device itself is still too large, uses a significant amount of energy, and most importantly does not show the required firing accuracy.
The Zumwalt destroyers, which should be the first to be armed with electromagnetic guns, were to be laid in a series of 32 pieces, starting with the DDG-1000 number, but later the program was greatly reduced - to 7 pieces. At the same time, the real amount was allocated for the construction of only two such ships. The cost of each destroyer reaches $ 1.4 billion and, according to skeptics, may exceed $ 3.2 billion during construction. Another $ 4 billion will be worth the life cycle of each vessel, no wonder the House of Representatives has cut the Defense Department's appetite so dramatically. The destroyers under construction are multipurpose ships designed not only to combat the naval enemy, but also to combat aviation, strike by land and support troops from the sea.
