Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: gwh%earthquake.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Particle Beam Gun Message-ID: <10315@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 18 Oct 89 02:48:59 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 30 Approved: military@att.att.com From: gwh%earthquake.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert) In article <10232@cbnews.ATT.COM> budden@manta.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg) writes: >A couple issues ago, there were some notes about the next generation >of Navy ships and there is an interesting wrinkle in the logic. >Most of the verbiage referred to the process of defining the problem. >The disconnect is that one has crept in -- electric main >propulsion. >Now, unless the Navy has some black program out there, this isn't >likely to happen for a few years. The DDG-51 class of destroyer >is gas turbine propelled and has a weapons suite that looks fairly >familiar. And lead ship is at the christening stage about now. >So it'll be a few years before the Navy gets to the next break >point in construction where something like this might be programmed >for production. This is true. The navy has had the ability to use electric-coupled powerplants (and has had some) for years. They do have problems, but acceptable ones, and there has been quite a bit of thought on the idea of using this setup for standby power for directed energy weapons. Perhaps the mid-class Arleigh Burke update? **************************************** George William Herbert UCB Naval Architecture Dpt. (my god, even on schedule!) maniac@garnet.berkeley.edu gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu ----------------------------------------