Thursday, March 16, 2017

The Rail Gun Queen

Whenever I hear about military systems in shipping containers, I dream of The AFRICOM Queen. Could there be a Rail Gun Queen?

Hello, new building blocks for a modularized auxiliary cruiser:

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) has developed a High Energy Pulsed Power Container (HEPPC) that provides twice the energy density than existing railgun pulsed power solutions, the company announced in a March 9 release.

The HEPPC can reduce the number of pulsed power containers required to launch projectiles or hybrid missiles from a railgun weapon system, providing greater flexibility for future Navy and Army railgun applications.

GA-EMS has put the same power capacity in a 10-foot shipping container that used to require a 20-foot shipping container.

So could the Navy mount a rail gun on a container ship taken into Navy service with as many of those HEPPC units as needed (and the ammunition, of course) to have an auxiliary cruiser with a big-ass rail gun?

Hey, no space limitations for the weapon on that kind of large platform, eh?

The concept isn't just for the Army (see page 50), you know.