A Chinese naval warship has been pictured out at sea carrying what appears to be an electromagnetic railgun. Key points:
Railguns use enormous electric currents to shoot projectiles from tracks at great speed China's first railgun was revealed in 2011, and has been since tested for more range The US has been slow to develop the technology since initial research in 2005
A photo taken and posted by Weibo user (and prominent defence blogger) Haohan-Red Shark, purports to show the Type 072II Yuting-class tank landing ship Haiyangshan with a railgun mounted on its bow.
Compared to conventional artillery that uses gunpowder to fire projectiles — a practice that has been in wide use since the 1500s — a railgun uses a high-powered electric circuit to shoot a projectile along magnetic rails, firing at hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 or higher (five times the speed of sound).
While the US has been pursuing its railgun capability since 2005, China has seemingly taken the front foot, with anonymous sources confirming the existence of the weapon in 2011 to CNBC.
Railguns to usher in naval 'hemispheric battle space'
Dr Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the ABC the technology would usher in a "hemispheric battle space".
It's a separate speed regime due to the fact that above Mach 5, the friction heat is so great that the air begins to super heat and start chemically reacting with the outer shell of the flight vehicle (edit: and also the air reacts with itself)
So a titanium shell and the surrounding oxygen might start forming titanium oxide as the air molecules begin to bond with the hull material.
Reentry speeds can often be around Mach 30 or so
Henry Allen
Why not get in your speed boat . go into Chinese waters and take a better shot?
Xavier Ward
US saw this and said china stole from US 😂😂😂 stupid US loser and US puppet Western countries. The beginning of the end for the American empire.
Why is whinny the poos head pasted on to the geom here? Is this a chinahese meme?
Aaron Edwards
What do they call a Chinese ship? A *junk*
Jaxon Taylor
That's not even the God-Emperor, you dumbass chink. Not that anyone would expect you to know that, seeing as how the only difference between a hive world and China is at least the Imperium tries to protect its citizens.
Jeremiah Morales
It's our god emperor you stupid american dog and soon to be the world's
Chinese pure dna and higher IQ will defeat your dirty 56% DNA
We let no niggers or aboriginal amerian contaminants into our gene pool
Lucas Nelson
Taiwan is the real china
Jaxson Sanchez
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Caleb Ross
Your "Emperor" is such a sensitive little bitch that Winnie the Pooh sends him into a pants-shitting seizure, cries about how similar he is to a cartoon bear, then bans it because it hurts his pathetic bugman feelings. Also, not american. The whole world thinks you are a joke, dog-eating subhuman.
Owen Diaz
Yet you have Wee-Gir mudslimes in your "pure country"
Andrew Green
ah thanks, I was looking for this.
Ryan Evans
lol. Just remember; china only has this tech because Israel sold it to them for a bargain! Thanks Israel!
I like little girls even if have boy's body You wanna be my dawter?
Luke Bell
so sorry for bad englis Chinese ship carries
but soon you all need to speak Mandarin(cantonese is for dogs)
Nathaniel Cooper
The US has had a working rail gun for the better part of the millennium. They don't use it because it's not safe. They don't use it because it creates so much force it screws with the body of the ships.
Robert Johnson
Kek, this is excellent bait. If you are actually an unironic chink you just negatively impressed me.
Christian Powell
Just got back to civilisation after working in China for a year or so. It's the biggest shithole on the planet (and I've worked in Africa and India); the Chinks are self obsessed, vain, insects and the country is a heap of shit. The Opium Wars were the best thing that happened to you, and the world should start the third Opium War as soon as possible to remove this stain from the globe, permanently.
based china century incoming i for one welcome our han-jew overlords
Christian Campbell
Also
Pick 1
Is that Winnie the Pooh? He's so cute! Can't wait to wipe China off the map.
Eli Rodriguez
Winnie the fuckin' enslave YOO
Kayden Watson
i'm assuming the advantage of this is that the bullets fly so fast they can't be stopped ?
coz otherwise it sounds like rockets would be better sonce they don't necessarily need 'line-of-sight'
Josiah Reyes
Why are you talking about America, I did mention that I got back to civilisation, didn't I? : ^ )
Bullets get their energy from mass and speed. Railguns can accelerate the bullet to speeds that conventional guns can't hope to match (the BAE prototype gets the projectile moving at about mach 7/2.4km a second). The video shows you what happens when you fire one of these things. Another advantage they have is that the ammo is basically just chunks of shaped metal, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than an anti-ship missile (the US Navy Harpoon missiles cost $1.2 million each), and it reduces the number of things that can catch fire/explode on board the ship - which is a nice bonus.
