A Scenario for a Future European Shipboard Railgun

摘要

Railguns can convert large quantities of electrical energy into kineticenergy of the projectile. This was demon- strated by the 33 MJ muzzle energyshot performed in 2010 in the framework of the Office of Naval Research (ONR)electromag- netic railgun program. Since then, railguns are a prime candidatefor future long range artillery systems. In this scenario, a heavy projectile(several kilograms) is accelerated to approx. 2.5 km/s muzzle velocity. Whilethe primary interest for such a hypersonic projectile is the bombardment oftargets being hundreds of kilometers away, they can also be used to counterairplane attacks or in other direct fire scenarios. In these cases, the largeinitial velocity significantly reduces the time to impact the target. In thisstudy we investigate a scenario, where a future shipboard railgun installationdelivers the same kinetic energy to a target as the explosive round of acontemporary European ship artillery system. At the same time the railgunoutperforms the current artillery systems in range. For this scenario a firstdraft for the parameters of a railgun system were derived. For the flight-pathof the projectile, trajectories for different launch angles were simulated andthe aero-thermodynamic heating was estimated using engineering-tools developedwithin the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This enables the assessment of thefeasibility of the different strike scenarios, as well as the identification ofthe limits of the technology. It is envisioned that this baseline design can beused as a helpful starting point for discussions of a possible electricalweaponization of future European warships.