Reinventing the Gun

The art of propelling a projectile towards a target has been practiced by armies both professional and amateur for millennia.

And while the basic principle — using a fast-moving object to extend the range at which one can do harm — has remained the same, the means by which it’s done and the results have changed dramatically.

During World War II, Joseph Stalin once referred to artillery as “the god of war.”

Thanks to its range, relative accuracy, and weight of fire when massed (total mass of ordnance that can be deployed at a given moment), artillery could inflict a great deal of damage very quickly, with only a few seconds’ warning to the target.

Artillery as a technology peaked in size and popularity during World War II. The biggest field gun ever, the German Schwerer Gustav, weighed in at 1,350 tons and fired an 80-centimeter diameter, 7-ton shell.

However, after the war, technology took a different path. We started to move away from mass-firing, ballistic weapons and towards single-firing guided or “smart” weapons.

By the 1990s, most American and European naval vessels lost their characteristic gun barrels, replacing them with missile and guided-torpedo launchers.

Renewing a Relic

Today, American naval vessels typically carry a single five-inch naval gun for hitting small targets less than 10 miles away, as well as fast-firing automatic cannon for defense against incoming aerial threats.

The problem the Navy faced, however, was that anything outside of the standard five-inch shell required the use of expensive guided missiles or for the crew and ship to undertake increased risk by venturing closer to the target.

Also, ballistic projectiles, when fired at moving targets, need to be fired at the location where the target will be after the shell’s flight time has elapsed.

For a 10-mile flight, that could take half a minute or more — making a shot on a small, moving target like a speed boat very difficult, if not impossible, to execute on the first try.

Clearly, there needed to be an alternative to the standard gun — and it had to be not just accurate and long-ranged but cost effective as well.

The age of the rail had arrived.

Rail-driven artillery has been under development for more than 10 years — and has existed in theory since a working (but extremely weak) model was created by French inventor Louis Octave Fauchon-Villeplee in 1918.

Today’s prototype, created for the Navy by BAE Systems (OTC: BAESY), has definitely done some growing since those early days.

Here are just a few ways in which it improves upon the existing naval guns it will replace…

Serious Firepower… Without All the Fire

Muzzle velocity — the fastest a projectile will ever move during its flight — has gone from 2,500 feet per second to 6,600 feet per second, or about six times the speed of sound.

Range has improved from 10 miles to over 100 — with shell weight remaining the same.

Rate of fire has stayed the same (between 10 and 20 rounds a minute depending on power level), but thanks to the added velocity, accuracy will be far better.

Railguns are also inherently much safer, as they don’t require gunpowder or the extreme pressures associated with explosive propellant.

Also, all that velocity does another favor for the gun crews — it makes explosive shells unnecessary, as the kinetic energy of the projectile alone is enough to destroy any prospective target.

Finally, the railgun is an excellent economic alternative to guided missiles. The cost of energy is negligible, and the cost of the shells themselves will remain similar to what standard shells cost.

However, the railgun is more than just a weapon — it’s a whole new technology. And the military isn’t the only big-name customer looking to exploit its amazing capabilities…

NASA, among other space agencies, has considered using railguns as a cheap method of launching small satellites into orbit.

Yeah, Science!

Legendary ballistics engineer Gerald Bull experimented with high-velocity artillery as a cheap method of orbital delivery.

Unfortunately, his HARP (high-altitude research project) failed to accelerate its projectile past the 17,000 mph necessary for an object to stay in orbit.

The shell reached a height of 110 miles and then fell back to Earth.

And that represented the absolute limits of what traditional ballistics technology could do. Railguns, although yet to be tested at the velocities achieved by the HARP, have the capacity to achieve orbital and perhaps even escape velocity (about 25,000 mph).

Preliminary estimates have already pegged a potential orbital-launch cost of about $500 per kilogram.

Using rockets, the current cost of putting objects into orbit is closer to $20,000 per kilogram.

The Navy estimates that railguns will start to appear en masse onboard combat vessels over the course of the next decade.

If this technology follows the same path most modern technologies tend to, you will also see smaller, more efficient versions of the weapon finding newer applications with the other branches as well.

As I mentioned, the main company at work on this project is BAE Systems… However, other contractors will be entering the fold as soon as demand for more ordnance appears.

Love it or loathe it… At least appreciate the fact that it won’t be aimed at you.

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman