Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Rail/Coil guns
Summary: shipboard aspects
Message-ID: <1990Dec8.224037.125@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 8 Dec 90 22:40:37 GMT
References: <1990Dec7.012346.2212@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego
Lines: 23
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: budden@trout.nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)

Arrvid Carlson asked about railguns and about shipboard use.
Can't address the basic question about current state of development,
but can state firmly that Navy is paying attention.

A couple years ago, Navy did some 'blue sky' work resulting in a 
Ship Operational Characteristics Study (which I'm in the process
of cloning for USCG use, but different story).  One of the conclusions
of the SOCS was that electric power should be used as the prime
mover on the next generations of ships.  There were several reasons
for this (like signature masking), but a principal one was to have
adequate juice for electrically driven weapons like railguns.
If you have enough watts to drive the propulsion plant, you have
enough to fire a railgun by a momentary diversion.

Some other reasons were flexibility in machinery location and survivability
because you don't have to maintain the critical shaft alignments through
so many pieces of machinery.  

Rex Buddenberg