US Army developing 1,000 mile ‘supercannon’ to counter Chinese military capabilities in the Pacific

[Elderberry]

American Military News  October 24, 2019 Ryan Morgan

The U.S. Army is working on what it believes could be a “game-changing” weapon in its efforts to counter advanced adversaries like China.

The Strategic Long-Range Cannon (SLRC) project is aiming to deliver an artillery piece that can enable precision strikes from beyond a 1,000 miles away. The technology is still in its development stages but the Army hopes to test this artillery piece by 2023, according to the Washington Times.

The technology behind the SLRC remains in development but is just one effort led by the Pentagon to equip its forces with “long-range precision fires” around the world and prepare for advance U.S. military doctrine to counter China or other military powers in a potential future conflict.

More: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/10/us-army-developing-1000-mile-supercannon-to-counter-chinese-military-capabilities-in-the-pacific/

[Smokin Joe]

Instead of rocket powered artillery shells, maybe railguns? What has become of that research?

[Elderberry]

Instead of rocket powered artillery shells, maybe railguns? What has become of that research?

@Smokin Joe

The U.S. Navy Wants Deadly Railguns On Its Ships. Good Luck with That.

Yahoo Finance by James Mugg 10/23/2019

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-navy-wants-deadly-railguns-000000289.html

There’s renewed interest of late in the US Navy’s (USN)  electromagnetic railgun. Plans to perform at-sea weapon testing appear to have been delayed in favor of further research. So, while development will probably continue, there are still two major problems holding the railgun back. The first is meeting the weapon’s massive power requirements at sea. The second is demonstrating that it’ll be ‘better’ than existing weapons.

The railgun launches rounds using electromagnetic force rather than explosive propellant. The USN prototype has 100MJ of pulse-power capacitors and a 25MW powerplant for recharging. The capacitors release their stored charge into the railgun barrel in a hundredth of a second, accelerating the projectile to about Mach 6. The USN’s goal is to fire ten rounds per minute, so the capacitors need to be recharged to fire every 6 seconds.

Few warships have the spare electrical capacity the weapon requires. The strongest candidate is the USN’s Zumwalt-class destroyer, whose 78MW integrated power system can dynamically distribute power between propulsion and on-board systems. It should have about 58MW of reserve power while steaming at 20 knots. By comparison, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has only 7.5MW for on-board systems.

The USN previously had several nuclear-powered cruisers, but the last were decommissioned in the 1990s. A new class of nuclear-powered warships could host multiple railguns (or other power-hungry weapons). But before the USN commits the kind of money required, it has to prove that the weapon is worth the investment.

More at link.

[Smokin Joe]

Thanks, @Elderberry .  These were tested at the Naval Weapons Lab across the river from where I used to build seawalls.
Many, many moons ago I remember first noticing that we saw the splash of impacting rounds in the Potomac before hearing the report of the guns over there, and realized the shells traveled faster than the sound...

58MW of excess capacity for the Zumwalt class is a lot of juice, and it's perhaps a difficult choice between keeping connections clean and dry vs having powder magazines to detonate in the event of a well aimed hit. IIRC, it was the cost of the projectiles which has been the biggest bugaboo.