Recently, a railgun was tested in Turkey. The country is preparing to conduct field tests of weapons built on new physical principles, in particular, Turkish professor Ismail Demir, Doctor of Technical Sciences, wrote on his Twitter account. Recently, there has been a reviving interest in such weapons all over the world, which sooner or later should lead to results. Today, the United States, China, Russia and India are actively working on the development of such weapons.
According to the Azerbaijani edition of SalamNews, citing Turkish sources, an increase in the number of security threats leads to the fact that Ankara needs to strengthen the defense and combat capabilities of the Turkish army. On the one hand, Turkish defense industry enterprises strive to maximize the needs of the army in modern types of weapons, and on the other, they are preparing for possible future challenges by developing new types of weapons. The presented videos with new tests of the Turkish railgun clearly demonstrate the capabilities of the weapon for piercing through 75 mm thick armor plates.
Currently, the country's defense enterprises continue to work on the creation of electromagnetic guns, which in the future should replace some types of firearms. The new type of weapon is called the railgun. In the past few years, they have been actively working on the creation of this weapon in countries that occupy leading positions in the world arms market.
Photo: andrei-bt.livejournal.com
Railguns are often referred to as weapons based on new physical principles. First of all, this is a very powerful kinetic weapon, which is able to disperse projectiles (in fact, metal blanks) weighing up to ten kilograms to a speed of several thousand kilometers per hour. In this case, the firing range of such ammunition can exceed several hundred kilometers. This is enough to seriously damage a large ship, successfully intercept an aircraft or a missile. The effect of meeting such a blank is comparable to a small meteorite hitting the ground.
The design of any railgun is an electromagnetic mass accelerator, which consists of three main elements - the railgun itself (a pair of conductive rails), a projectile and a direct current source. The projectile is located on two parallel electrodes, along which a direct current moves, it is accelerated due to the Ampere force. Currently, the developers of new guns have already come close to achieving the parameters required by the military. In the United States and China, such installations have already appeared on ships, where they are being tested with going to sea, but the practical feasibility of such developments has not been fully clarified. We can only say with confidence that in the near future (several years) none of the countries in the world will adopt this type of weapon. At the same time, more and more countries will definitely be involved in the development of railguns. Since the creation of new types of weapons, even regardless of their acceptance or non-acceptance into service, always moves science and technology forward.
Since the early 1980s, electromagnetic guns have become an increasingly important component of planned improvements in the context of creating weapons of the future. The analysis carried out by the military showed the need to create new weapons systems that would have a longer range, as well as improved efficiency. At the same time, artillery guns, activated in the usual way, will very soon reach their working limits. Muzzle energy can still be increased by optimizing all operating parameters, at the same time, the initial projectile speeds of existing artillery systems with high performance characteristics are already close to their technical and physical limits. At the same time, the laws of physics that underlie the electromagnetic thrust of the projectile allow much higher flight speeds, which is the most significant advantage of the electromagnetic guns being developed. At the same time, you can expect an increase in muzzle energy, and the railguns themselves will have a higher survivability compared to traditional artillery barrels.
It is believed that in the last 20 years alone, the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany have spent about five billion dollars on research in the field of creating electromagnetic weapons. Turkey joined this pool of states relatively recently. One of the country's private defense enterprises created its prototype of an electromagnetic gun only in 2013. It is reported that to this day, this prototype has already passed more than a thousand different tests.
The first Turkish railgun, introduced in 2013, was created by engineers at ASELSAN. In 2017, within the framework of the IDEF-2017 exhibition, which took place in Istanbul, ASELSAN for the first time presented its tower-type railgun called "Tufan" to the general public. It is important to note that the representatives of the developer's company did not provide reference materials for their development, and also did not report at least the approximate tactical and technical characteristics of the product. From the demonstration video presented in the same place, it was clear that the TUFAN tower installation is being created in stationary, mobile (on a wheeled chassis) and ship-based versions (in particular, it is planned that the railgun may appear on board Turkish frigates of the TF-2000 project, which can be taken on armament after 2023). The same video demonstrated the capabilities of the railgun to destroy ground military targets and unmanned aerial vehicles of the enemy. The shells used were shown next to the railgun and a sheet of armor pierced through with such ammunition was shown.
It is reported that the power of the prototype railgun created in Turkey reaches several megajoules. The created electromagnetic cannon is able to shoot various projectiles, the flight speed of which can reach 880-2060 m / s. If such a projectile flight speed is actually achieved, its flight range can reach about 300 kilometers. It is reported that the secretariat of the Turkish defense industry plans to continue investing in the creation of not only electromagnetic weapons, but also laser installations. As soon as possible, the department expects to finalize these prototypes of weapons in order to transfer them to the Turkish army and security services in the future.
