I build deadly railguns for the US Army ! ! !

You mean it's easier to fire a railgun at a terrorist whose location you don't know than to use a conventional weapon? That puzzles me. Please explain.

Sylvia.

very nice of you to do that, however we would be more interested in discussing the technical specs of the hardware. what size are the guns? projectile mass and shape? how much power? rate of fire? accuracy? range? ballistics? targeting? portability? power source? cooling?

and most important, will it be compatible with 7Hz DC ionosphere downloads ?

powerful

will finish

interested in

ezzactly.

100 to 200 yards for the heavier pay loads. a light weight slightly parabolic (5 degrees) bridge structure laid out on flat ground with a pivot at the load end.. it swings in an arc about 45 degrees across the battle zone. riding on rails (not the derivation of the term though). Range is a hard function of the cancerous coil frequency, not for the most part by by the input surge (input surge is a rough 10% over calculated load demand)..its the synchronous coil firing frequency down the tube that regulates muzzle velocity.

The construction is simple. A light metal bridge, supporting a non conductive tube, with super cooled coils on the OD every

3'.. magnetically engaging relatively light super cooled rings on either end of a 5' approx 12" in diameter pay load.

The projectile is loaded and valves close on either end and the tube is evacuated slightly to 28" of mercury by means of a two stage screw compressor to 24" and the final stage by means of a large vacuum vessel held at 29"..10" ports connected each end of the launch tube.

The breach end of the launch tube has a relatively slow acting ball valve loading port..the muzzle end has two ball valves in series, approx 50' apart, opened by means triple redundant, explosive gas powered cylinders. The muzzle end breaks away in event of valve failure.

The muzzle end valve firing energy is supplied directly by synchronous coils yards from the muzzle. this contains the supersonic shock wave within the muzzle as the projectile hits the atmosphere where it is held stable by the muzzle material a very slightly rifled heavy steel bore..

very high, but classified..

rate of fire? several rounds per minute with magazine loading.

accuracy? good but not as good as a guided missile due to variables in air density with temperature, day to day, corrected but still not perfectly. range? There are onboard projectile options that will extend the range... the muzzle end steel tube can be changed to allow firing of wire guided projectiles with some control surface and slight propulsion features.

Net costs per ton of explosives delivered is well under a twentieth the cost of a cruise missile and falls with use. This system will not compete with the cruise missile though but with smart bombs where costs are comparable but the tonnage deliverable per hour is dramatically higher.

The larger gun is not portable in less than a few days. Viability drops with reduced size of payload where existing technology is still the most cost effective.

power source? Conventional gen sets powering a capacitor bank.

cooling? Liquid nitrogen for all aspects.

ionosphere downloads ?

no

With the launch tube in a vacuum power requirements calculate to reasonable levels...going much lower with lower firing rates due to the capacitor discharge arrangement used to feed the synchronous coils.

Breech end options include an explosive boost that significantly reduces the size of the gensets and capacitors.

The assault on Baghdad though would have been a viable application. ..arrays of these systems to cover the entire middle east will be viable. ..time to strike will be reduced from many minutes to *seconds per target from a single gun.. an array of 5 or 6 guns in an area will deliver conventional fire power at speeds and in quantities never seen before enabling them to be used in real time fire fight situations.

Absolutely devastating fire power can be brought to bear within seconds onto an enemy position, eliminating the need for most ground troops, except for spotters and teams to establish initial engagement only, and occupational forces.

While range can be a hundred miles or more strategic live battlefield applications will most viable from a 10 or 20 mile perimeter. Projectile time in the air will be well under a minute. Not long enough for most targets move away.

An absolutely dramatic tactical advantage compared to existing systems with much less risk to US and allied personnel.

Is this entire approach smart? There are other issues. Domestic infrastructure targetablility of the US and the related economic implications. As we become utterly efficient in the middle east, we will be come utterly inefficient at defending ourselves domestically.

The dominant established, locatable and targetable powers in world history have never prevailed long term against guerilla movements...for a wide range of reasons...

Additionally guerilla's gain individually in war, their immediate character is advanced...

... dominant powers loose individually in war as they must operate subservient to a rigid command structure (these were issues in the Star Wars series), such association pollutes that gene pool....immediately as genetics develop on the fly as a person lives, and over the term of the next generation.

Guerilla's breed warriors... established powers breed sycophants. Sycophants never win long term (70 years or so seems to be a maximum )..and with their early short term winnings they found corruption.,,, corruption destroys its host.

That's why the Arab guerilla's are laughing at us...even as we target them... these see the longer view... America only sees a 5 to 20 year window apparently

Phil Scott

Let's hope they are deadly because if all they did was to create a really nasty bruise I'd be more worried about the army than I already am.

.

. . .

Oh yes, in the mean time 135,000 US troups need 800 Black Watch U.K. soldiers to go help them.

i'd like to thank you for you clear concise description of railguns.

however, i have a number of issues with your conclusions.

this has been often claimed for each for each new super weapon starting with the ballista.

it always reamins for the foot schloggin army to take and hold the ground.

as regards to gorilla warfare? how can one additional weapons system be considered an approach?

As we become utterly

that does not follow. anyway efficiently takes a back seat to effectiveness.

it will remain to be seen how efficient and/or effective defensive measures are on the occasion of the next raid. has is occurred to you that lack of enemy activity in the US is a sign that the current state of defense is working?

please define "immediate character"

individuals unite in a common goal serving a command structure as the most effective means to achieve an objective.

(these were

have you been reading a lot of Edgar Rice Boroughs? i have always found the idea that a feral child raised by apes could become "lord of the jungle" simply because he was born of aristocracy absurd.

gorillias breed babies. established powers breed... well nothing. (who would want more then one France?)

Sycophants never win long term (70 years or so

def Sycophant: A servile self-seeker who attempts to win favor by flattering influential people.

this implies that there are "influential people" who are not Sycophants. these "shakers and movers" may or may not be corrupt as defined by whatever society they happen to be in.

from my worms eye view the notion that corruption destroys is host has not proven itself. the corrupt in authority seemingly survive and prosper for years on end. i wish it were otherwise.

let them laugh. the US generally responds to taunts and jeers with deeds and accomplishments.

are you sure? or is it just self interest plus a religious belief system?

America only sees

it does seem that US politics and industry takes a short view of things. politicos take it one term in office at a time. However, the flip side would be a monarchy or dictatorship. even the most benevolent of these can't seem to provide the most good for the most people.

it must be pretty depressing and frustrating being a "terrorist" who is attempting to eliminate capitalism by inflicting death and destruction when every time they destroy something it just gets rebuilt in some way or another and every time they kill we mourn our dead but carry on.

sorry is this is too far off topic group

Tim

very interesting broad spectrum view of new weapons. The

20' rail gun being energy intensive and fast firing, at 12 rounds per second, could be detuned to fire say one round a second, or 60 rounds a second with much smaller and shore portable gen sets. those were fairly light projectiles at 40 lbs ea. For 1000 lb pay loads you with that approach you would need a 400' long barrel.

Mentions several key issues, 300 lb payloads and a 100 yd + rail..and the severe problems with armature / rail wear with the super conducting rail configuration (not encountered with the coil drive I described..but with that approach muzzle velocitity is under mach 3..) I think we will see both versions. The synchronous coil version for large pay load land uses including delivery of supplies to the front lines... where the pay load would not be able to withstand 48,000 G's...but could withstand 200 G's afforded by a longer launch tube.

Phil Scott

railguns.

need

forces.

weapon starting with

hold the ground.

No argument there.

mile

a

existing

approach?

I am missing your question here....? Dont know what you mean.. I am not inferring that the additional weapons system will reduce the threat from guerilla's at all though.

to effectiveness.

I am saying that regardless of how well we do attacking enemies abroad, we will still remain vulnerable domestically from terrorist allies already in the country... I had dinner with one of the nations utility executives a few years ago.. we are wide open for attacks that can take out the energy to our cities...with no known way to prevent it. We are wide open to a wide array of covert interventions that can be carried out by one or two people undectably.... I am saying that the more effective we are against these people as they present themselves as targets abroad...the more deternined they will be to attack us internally....do you see?

I am not saying with exposives or brute force, but with logistics...contageious biologicals for instance. One mans invention delivered in a spray at an airport could infect

1,000 people...as they disperse across the country. Those biologicals already exist.

One rifle shot into the wrong utility sub station could black out 5 states...the lead time on those transformers (made so far entirely in germany) is 6 months... loss of power in 6 states for a month in the winter would kill millions and bankrupt half the nation... one rifle shot would do it.,,,100 shots onto the same sub station... would create enough surge and disruption in the grid to affect half the nation.

People pushed against the wall by means of our totally superior weapons will and have increasingly resorted to those sort of retaliations...and we are *wide open for them... we are utterly and *completely defenseless against those sorts of attacks.

Failure to recognise that can and might well be fatal for us economically and for millions physically.

If you have a 300lb bully on the play ground, with an IQ of

51...it is best not to piss him off...it has nothing to do with anything but comon sense. The US is pissing off a lot of real nasty people, with nothing to lose. Not smart.

We would be better off with bows and arrows...then our enemies would throw rotten dates at us or something... as it is they plot to take out our cities with dirty bombs. *thats what I mean by saying as we become more efficient in warfare abroad, we become more vulnerable as a nation.

defensive measures

that lack of

defense is

No. From where I sit, its apparent to me that the Islamic radical enemy is pulling its punches... that may or may not be apparent after reading my earlier remarks.

My view is that the US is completely wide open to devastating attack and the only reason we have seen round two is because our enemies are laughing so hard they are having a hard time getting serious about how to screw us over next.

ymmv. Stay tuned on the Iraq and Afganistan mess...its getting worse ...not better. We, our US soldiers fighting from compounds and targetable...our enemy is largely not targetable.. thats what took us out in Vietnam... the enemy could be a stripper in a Saigon lounge...we simply never knew.

Historically is is the established power structures that yield in the end to guerilla movements. Few if any exceptions to that long term... You and the US govt and many other people are taking a 10 to 20 year long view and consider that long term... our enemy is taking a generations long view... a study of the life cycle of nations and how one generation influences the next as Ive mentioned here and there are relevant issues.

in

guerilla

Ok...here is a personal example. I was a self employed contractor in LA for 15 years with 27 employees and developed an absolutely devastating set of personal characteristics. (not necessarily a good thang)... but I was indominable.. and business rocked..and it rocked hard.

then I decided I wanted to get into some huge projects (too big for me with only 27 employees_..and also into some very exciting ones, such as nuc weapons etc..and that advanced research...so I sold the business and began consulting...I found that by consulting through agencies I could get retained and assigned to projects in these areas... but of course not as the head honcho...which I had been when I had my company...so now I was an **employee... subservient to other peoples often lame brained notions.... I was obliged to cater in order to remain employed.. that catering to error degrades one in countless ways as I found out later.

I LOST my machismo...I lost that intensity and decisiveness, and power that I had gained and ingrained in myself when I had the company... As I was to find out later, I also lost my tool slinging skills, motor skills...that we now find are linked directly to and part of the intellectual capacity...when you loose the motor skills the mental capacity DECLINES.... it declines markedly.... I had no realized that until after I had my little run in with the nice folks at the Hanford nuc weapons labs (530 sq miles, 15,000 employes (half spooks)) in Western Washington State.... and was forced from my career (until I was called to testify before congress and some of that was reversed)....

I was forced none the less to go back to the tools...and I found that both my motor skills and say my skills in control wiring had gone almost totally south...I was a basket case.

In order to keep from starving to death (by 1995) I had to redevelop viable skills... so to answer your question, it is possible to degrade ones mental and physical infrastructure in this case by letting myself be destructively controlled (that means controlled to something less than optimal..compromise)

Now I see this degradation in others...its pervasive.

As I got good with the tools again (that has took 8 years) I regained my intellectual wits...and its not just subjective but objective...for instance now I can trouble shoot complex control systems without having to diagram it all out... I can retain the data in my head long enough to fathom the interlinks and interactions... no way could do that in the late stages of my engineering career.... so this is an example then of rehabilitating the motor skills portion of the brain, and the closely linked then intellectual portion recovered its capacity (not known to be the case in 1995, but by 1999 that research was broken in the scientific journals)

these are NOT just 'skills' these are changes in the way the brain approaches and organizes and how the persons personality and spirituality are affected....these are very very profound changes...they are *structural changes... just as the portion of the brain that links the left and right hemispheres shrinks and degrades in alcoholics and with certain sensory deprivations...so does ones *own day to day behavior change his own brain structure.

All this encoded genetically of course and passed on to ones children...the corruptions as well as the useful characteristics...so that when one corrupts him or herself that passes to the children...and this can be easily observed..

structure as the most

That is true to a very very large extent... there are also severe liabilities attached to being subservient, even in a good cause... we are at a cave man level of understanding on these issues. I find its good to assume we know nothing then we can observe without bias. This notion of serving a command structure is a two edged sword.

One example: the command is honest and true, and the goals honorable...following that will enhance an individual in most cases. So i that that case you would much more correct than in error in your above statement.

Another example: the command structure is murderously corrupt..abusive and lies etc. (we have seen these throught history)... the indiduals that support or follow or are compromised to evil by such are of course degraded.

So you have those two examples... a nation on the rise will foster strenth in its cooperating citizens. A nation corrupt and in decline will weaken anyone complicit with it. (the life cycle of a nation averages a fairly tight 260 years,

5 or 6 generations, the last termianlly corrupt.. research Ravi or Rivi Batra/ Kondratiev, Kondratief.

fly

generation.

No.

apes could become

aristocracy absurd.

that is of course also an absurd example. A broad study of these issues Ive mentioned will not bore you.

nothing. (who would

that was an obfuscation..not a furtherance of your understanding.

favor by flattering

Not a bad definition.

Sycophants.

No... many influential people got there and are maintained by the next tier up... they are sychophants to even bigger jerks.

defined by whatever

well ...yes... relativity. I find that this is a problem.. for instance one is either entirely truthful...or is say lying or twisting..... any lie or twist distorts reality, and the the person trying to then operate in that confusion is greatly weakend.

Many of not most 'movers and shakers' are as corrupt as many skid row wino's...just at another level. Corrupt none the less, and contributing to thier own personal downfall and that of the nation...whiich of course is also a net contributor to its own downfall as the negative threshold of net corruption is passed.

is host has not

and prosper for

Absolutely...correct. YEARS on end... you have it right.. you have it dead right.

Now take a look at how these bear out in ranges of 20, 50, 100 and 200 years... you will see that corruption takes out its host... every time. Not sometimes... but every single time, always, with no exception yet seen in world history.

i wish it were otherwise.

Well then your wish is granted. Time wounds all heals. Fatally.

as we

jeers with deeds and

Again you are correct...in the short term...maybe the next 10 years.. 20 at the outside...mabye only the next one or two years... but it will be the 5 BILLION muslims who give *us serious heart burn or worse...we will not be affecting these 5 billion even faintly...that is we will not affect them in the slightest, even as we render Bagdad to a pool of green glass...we will not be affecting the muslim nation.

they will be affecting us greatly though, as is already the case if you take a broad spectrum look at the effects on us economically and constitutionally.

belief system?

You get to observe yourself...these short term and very long term issues and then arrive at your own conclusions... No super power yet in world history as managed to sustain...not even one.. the cycle of nations, is a cycle of generational rise, prosperity, sloth, corruption and decline.

the short term view (say 20 or 30 years) misses these issues. Our adversaries count on them.

view of things.

even the most

the most people.

Well yes... you are aware of course that the US is not at all a democracy, and that our founding fathers consided and stated that a democracy was a suicidal form of government. Did you know that?

they gave us another form of govt entirely...almost but not exactly oposite a pure democracy.

Interesting isnt it?

The pledge of alegiance gives a clue... if you read up on the constitution this fact is stated overty and empasized. But is been lost to history. I will leave this to your own discovery, its more interesting for a person that way.

"terrorist" who is

destruction when

some way or

on.

they are not frustrated at all as you imagine, even as they are being blown to bits...they are neither frustrated or disheartened...it would as if you were in a dice game with the odds 52% on your side.. you could loose 10 throws in a row and not be in the least concerned...because you understand whats driving the long term trend.

If you had any idiot friends though..they would be deriding you as you kept loosing. You see?

It is necessary to understand the underlying factors... history demonstrates them, and an understanding of logistics etc allows you see them operating in present time.

Reasonably intelligent discussion among peers is never off topic. There is no law requiring those not interested to read these conversations.

Phil Scott

Watch U.K.

When the black watch guys land we might get see the CARE lady's head cut off and set on her hip. That will be impressive.

We (the US and england) are being taunted. We should get a clue. and even though dumber than boiled kidney on a plank...we will...in time... get a clue.

So we shoved broom handles up the asses of some Iraqi cab drivers and house wives... these people will now spend the rest of thier lives making sure we do get the clue we need.

Phil Scott

There is a powerful railgun in Quake III arena. But I still have to point the damn thing, and the pesky opponents never quit moving. And worse - they shoot back. Very unfair IMHO.

But I agree that it is a powerful weapon against unarmed, visible, stationary crying terrorists.

(Karl-Hugo

powerful

will finish

have to

moving. And

that scum.

visible,

very powerful...

Phil Scott

Sylvia Why are you feeding the trolls?

-- Tom H

Umm....

A mixture of boredom and intellectual curiosity. If someone posts what appears to be an absurd proposition, I'm interested to see whether they can present a case for it - whether or not their argument ultimately stands up. It's a bit like debating. You have to advance a particular position. Whether you believe it or not is immaterial.

However, as an approach to troll feeding it is largely ineffective, as in this case. Still, I live in hope.

Sylvia.