China to test electromagnetic railgun in open waters, according to the publication Business Insider, citing Task & Purpose. Recently, the Network appeared photos of a large landing ship “Jianshang” project Type 072-III mounted with his bow presumably experimental electromagnetic weapon. It is noted that we are talking about the same ship that was spotted moored on one of the Chinese shipyards at the beginning of 2018.
Citing data from us intelligence by the Western media in June of last year it was reported that China is going in 2025 to begin operation on their ships electromagnetic weapons capable of striking the enemy at a distance up to 124 miles (200 km). At the same time it was noted that such an active pace of development of the Chinese engineers “should significantly spur the Pentagon to develop its own version of the superweapon”. Judging from the recent pictures, the pace of development of the program for development of electromagnetic weapons in China are much faster, the expected time frame.
According to CNBC reports, information about the Chinese railgun appeared in 2011, and three years later the installation was first tested in the terrestrial environment. The report also says that the Chinese military has completed the installation of the electromagnetic guns on one of their ships to the end of last year, then began its sea trials.
Long time no see, the railgun test ship is spotted undergoing sea trials these days. pic.twitter.com/WdxXkyYWrF
— dafeng cao (@dafengcao) 29 Dec 2018
Unlike conventional naval guns, in which projectiles are accelerated by a flammable gunpowder, the railgun uses electromagnetic energy with which the projectile accelerates at a very high speed (about 2.6 kilometers per second). One of the main drawbacks of this technology is that the shot of a railgun requires enormous amount of energy. Did China solve the problem? It is difficult to judge, since the information about such projects as a rule very rarely gets into open access.
As for the US, the us Navy has not yet managed to install a railgun on a ship of war, said the source. However, as stressed by the publication, a good sign is that the development of this weapon has been allocated an additional $ 40 million from the budget for the year 2019.
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