Strategic Capabilities Office - Hypervelocity Gun Weapon - Missile Defense

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SCO aims to flip the script on missile defense for bases, ports, ships with hypervelocity gun


The Pentagon wants to take a weapon originally designed for offense, flip its punch for defense and demonstrate by 2018 the potential for the Army and Navy to conduct missile defense of bases, ports and ships using traditional field guns to fire a new hypervelocity round guided by a mobile, ground variant of an Air Force fighter aircraft radar.

The Strategic Capabilities Office is working with the Army, Navy and Air Force to craft a Hypervelocity Gun Weapon System that aims, in part, to provide China and Russia an example of a secret collection of new U.S. military capabilities the Defense Department is bringing online in an effort to strengthen conventional deterrence.

"It is a fantastic program," Will Roper, Strategic Capabilities Office director, said in a March 28 interview with reporters, who said the project aims "to completely lower the cost of doing missile defense" by defeating missile raids at a lower cost per round and, as a consequence, imposing higher costs on attackers.

Current U.S. missile defense capabilities are centered around very sophisticated guided-missile interceptors, which cost -- in most cases -- millions of dollars per shot, an approach the Army and Navy service chiefs, in a Nov. 5, 2014 joint memo, warned the defense secretary is "unsustainable."

"Projectiles that we fire and test today are on the order of $50,000 currently and we hope to push down to $35,000 -- a two order-of-magnitude swing in some cases," Roper said.

The Pentagon is seeking $246 million for the HGWS in fiscal year 2017, building on $364 million appropriated for the project in FY-15 and FY-16.

The HGWS takes smart projectiles developed for the Navy's electromagnetic railgun and fires them with artillery already in the inventory.

"Cost-effective, large magazine, base defense will be demonstrated by closing the fire-control loop between existing sensors and prototype projectiles launched from existing powder guns including the Navy's Mk-45 5-inch Naval gun and the Army's Paladin 155 mm self-propelled howitzer; advanced powder gun prototypes; and the electromagnetic railgun," the Pentagon's FY-17 budget request states.

The Army and Navy have a combined inventory of approximately 1,000 guns capable of firing rounds of this size, including about 900 Army Paladins. The Navy has about 100 cruisers and destroyers, each with one 5-inch MK-45 gun on the bow.

"The intended end-state is a prototype system that retires risks to allow transition of gun-based defense to partners: the Missile Defense Agency, the Navy, and/or the Army," the budget request adds.

Roper, during the March 28 interview, disclosed a new dimension of the HGWS project.

"We haven't talked publicly about the sensor that we're doing with that," he said. "So, if you're going to do missile defense, you're going to need something to do the tracking. And we are working very extensively with taking fighter radars, in which we have a huge investment, and building ground-based variants of these."

The SCO is working to fashion a ground variant of the most advanced fighter radars, based on active electronically scanned array (AESA) technology: "Putting them on the ground to support intercepts of systems that can truly move," Roper said, referring to the radar's role in plans to take out ballistic and cruise missile threats.

He said the hypervelocity project has evolved to be a joint effort with three services: "We have a Navy round, an Army gun, and an Air Force sensor -- all combined into one Frankenstein architecture."

Roper, who was the Missile Defense Agency's director for engineering before being tapped to head the SCO at its formation in August 2012, declined to quantify the estimated range for the hypervelocity gun system.

"It goes without saying that because it is a gun, it is not a huge area defense," Roper said. "We're wanting to be able to defend high-value, small-area assets -- forward operating bases, ships, ports with a high, high density of fire -- with assets that are completely mobile."

He noted that much of the existing missile-defense capability is hindered by being fixed infrastructure. "Things that don't move give an opponent a decided advantage," Roper said. "We want to deny those, complicate their counter-targeting" with the HGWS, he said.

"We'd like opponents of the U.S. to think: 'I can't saturate their defense by having enough systems on my side.' We'd like them to think these critical forward operating bases and stations will continue to operate no matter how many missiles they continue to throw at them," the SCO director said. "We want that deterrent aspect in play."

Roper said the SCO is testing the new round out of the guns every three months. "We hope to prove the end-to-end architecture by the end of 2018," he said.
 
Interesting..

Hyper-Velocity Gun Weapon System

The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), Patuxent River, MD intends to award a sole source, Delivery Order under Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) N00019-16-G-0015 with Orbital Sciences Corporation, 3380 Price Road Chandler AZ, for a software upgrade to the GQM-163A aerial target for enhanced capabilities to the flight software in order to introduce new trajectories profiles to support testing of the Hyper-Velocity Gun Weapon System (HGWS) program.
 
Hope they give us some video when HVP takes down a Coyote. or at least some before and after pics.
 
Moose said:
Hope they give us some video when HVP takes down a Coyote. or at least some before and after pics.

We don't even get video when normal systems take down a Coyote. :(
 
Lots of interesting Miltech stories coming out recently.
 
Moose said:
Hope they give us some video when HVP takes down a Coyote. or at least some before and after pics.

I'll be happy with seeing a video of the Coyote High dive mode that they added to simulate a specific recent threat.
 
bring_it_on said:
SCO aims to flip the script on missile defense for bases, ports, ships with hypervelocity gun


The Pentagon wants to take a weapon originally designed for offense, flip its punch for defense and demonstrate by 2018 the potential for the Army and Navy to conduct missile defense of bases, ports and ships using traditional field guns to fire a new hypervelocity round guided by a mobile, ground variant of an Air Force fighter aircraft radar.

The Strategic Capabilities Office is working with the Army, Navy and Air Force to craft a Hypervelocity Gun Weapon System that aims, in part, to provide China and Russia an example of a secret collection of new U.S. military capabilities the Defense Department is bringing online in an effort to strengthen conventional deterrence.

"It is a fantastic program," Will Roper, Strategic Capabilities Office director, said in a March 28 interview with reporters, who said the project aims "to completely lower the cost of doing missile defense" by defeating missile raids at a lower cost per round and, as a consequence, imposing higher costs on attackers.

Current U.S. missile defense capabilities are centered around very sophisticated guided-missile interceptors, which cost -- in most cases -- millions of dollars per shot, an approach the Army and Navy service chiefs, in a Nov. 5, 2014 joint memo, warned the defense secretary is "unsustainable."

"Projectiles that we fire and test today are on the order of $50,000 currently and we hope to push down to $35,000 -- a two order-of-magnitude swing in some cases," Roper said.

The Pentagon is seeking $246 million for the HGWS in fiscal year 2017, building on $364 million appropriated for the project in FY-15 and FY-16.

The HGWS takes smart projectiles developed for the Navy's electromagnetic railgun and fires them with artillery already in the inventory.

"Cost-effective, large magazine, base defense will be demonstrated by closing the fire-control loop between existing sensors and prototype projectiles launched from existing powder guns including the Navy's Mk-45 5-inch Naval gun and the Army's Paladin 155 mm self-propelled howitzer; advanced powder gun prototypes; and the electromagnetic railgun," the Pentagon's FY-17 budget request states.

The Army and Navy have a combined inventory of approximately 1,000 guns capable of firing rounds of this size, including about 900 Army Paladins. The Navy has about 100 cruisers and destroyers, each with one 5-inch MK-45 gun on the bow.

"The intended end-state is a prototype system that retires risks to allow transition of gun-based defense to partners: the Missile Defense Agency, the Navy, and/or the Army," the budget request adds.

Roper, during the March 28 interview, disclosed a new dimension of the HGWS project.

"We haven't talked publicly about the sensor that we're doing with that," he said. "So, if you're going to do missile defense, you're going to need something to do the tracking. And we are working very extensively with taking fighter radars, in which we have a huge investment, and building ground-based variants of these."

The SCO is working to fashion a ground variant of the most advanced fighter radars, based on active electronically scanned array (AESA) technology: "Putting them on the ground to support intercepts of systems that can truly move," Roper said, referring to the radar's role in plans to take out ballistic and cruise missile threats.

http://www.tnov.com/index.php/hypervelocity-weapon/
 
FY1994 RDT&E DESCRIPTIVE SUMMARY
Program Element: 0603216C Project Number: 1206
PE Title: Theater Missile Defenses Budget Activity: 04
Tactical Programs
A. Resources:
B. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MISSION REQUIREMENT AND SYSTEM CAPABILITIES:
The Electro Thermal Chemica1 (ETC) Launcher technology project is exploring the feasibility of using a combination of electrical and chemical energy sources to produce hypervelocities. This work is underway at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center (SNRC) under the provisions of the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. Government and the Government of Israel, dated 6 May 1986. The approach taken by the Propulsion Physics Laboratory at SNRC combines e1ectrotherma1 techno1ogy and conventiona1 ballistics technology in a conventional gun in a mode that will result in high projectile velocities and relatively small amounts of electrical energies. This combination promises an acceleration process that will enable the achievement of velocities above the conventional ballistics limit, and a cost effective system that does not require huge quantities of electrical energy. The ultimate goal is to produce an ETC Launcher which will be able to launch 5-7 kg guided projectiles at 2.0-3.0 km/s to meet TMD requirements.
Phase I of the program investigated the ignition of chemical propellants using high temperature plasma injectors. Initial tests using a 60mm ETC gun demonstrated the 1aunch of a 1 kg mass at 2. 0 km/s.
Sealing techniques were used to test this ETC approach in a 105mm gun which accomplished the goal of launching a 1.5 kg projectile to 2.5 km/s.
The 60mm and 105mm tests demonstrated a 15.6% and 9% improvement over conventional ballistics, respectively.
The follow-on program's goal is to launch weapon size projectiles(5-7 kg) at velocities (2.0-3.0 kmps) applicable for TMD. To keep the barrel length reasonably short, a 35% improvement of the ETC process over conventional ballistics is required. To reach required muzzle energies, it may be necessary to scale-up the barrel diameter from 105mm to 120-155mm. A series of field experiments is also planned. The purpose is to bring the gun system technologies (D-2 like projectile, Soreq ETC Launcher, fire control out of the 1aboratory and into the fie1d. The first series of integrated field experiments (beginning in 4QFY93) will demonstrate the ability to launch a 02-like aeroshell from an ETC Launcher with transportable power and fire control tracking of the projectile. The test series will culminate in FY95-96 with the launch of a command guided D2 interceptor from the Soreq 105mm ETC Launcher for the hit-to-kill intercept of a maneuvering target.
Additional subtasks include strategic and theater missile defense integration studies to analyze the threat and to develop appropriate TMD missions and flow-down requirements to major hypervelocity electric launcher weapon subsystems. The results will be used to guide development and demonstration planning, fire control conceptual design and
development, and critical technical issue resolution appropriate for hit-to-kill, gun-launched, hypervelocity projectiles.


PROGRAM ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND PLANS:
Soreq 60mm launcher fired 1 kg at 2.0 km/sec
Soreq 105mm launcher fired 1.5 kg at 2.5 km/sec
Soreq ETC Launchers demonstrated up to 25.6% increase in muzzle energy over
 
One thing I don't get is the idea that the US Army will have Paladin howitzers to spare for missile defense. The Army is nearly completely out of date in the ranged fires department and does not have any money in the near term to catch up. In any European / North Korean scenario, the Army will need al the artillery it can get it's hands on for offensive / defensive fires. The idea that there will be tons of left-overs for missile defense is questionable.
 
Are the barred from procuring new ones if a new mission is opened up?
 
bring_it_on said:
Are the barred from procuring new ones if a new mission is opened up?

I think you solved the problem. US Army puts the Paladins to work as missile defense units and then goes and buys a modern howitzer, such as Crusader, PZH-1000, Ceasar, etc., to replace the artillery in the maneuver forces and rebuild divisional artillery batteries.

That requires spending money on Army equipment though.

Absent buying a new Army howitzer, I don't see how the SCO idea is practical / scalable.
 
The SCO program is aimed at demonstrating a cost effective solution to missile defense. How the Army wishes to absorb it is up to them.
 
AIUI, the current plan is to qualify the HVP on the M777A2 with the ERCA tube (M777ER).

The M109A7s will get the ERCA tube and an autoloader.
 

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Pentagon seeks $307M plus-up for secretive SCO missile defeat programs


The Pentagon is requesting an additional $307 million in fiscal year 2018 for several classified Strategic Capabilities Office programs under an emergency appropriation focused on "missile defeat and defense enhancement," according to budget documents.

The request is part of the Trump administration's overall $6 billion FY-18 budget amendment, which includes $4 billion for missile defense, $700 million for Navy ship repair and $1.2 billion to finance the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan.

The SCO, a once-secretive organization established in 2012 to leverage existing weapons and commercial technology into new, innovative military capabilities, would put the additional $307 million toward four classified programs: Sea Dragon, Third Eye, Hurt Locker and Hoover, according to Defense Department budget justification documents.

Details on Sea Dragon, which would receive $194.5 million under the request, are scarce, but DOD's initial FY-18 budget submission states it is a “cost-effective, disruptive offensive capability” that will be "demonstrated by integrating an existing weapon system with an existing Navy platform."

The Pentagon also reprogrammed $33.3 million in FY-17 funds toward the Sea Dragon, the justification documents state.

The initial FY-18 request for Sea Dragon was $163 million to "complete construction of launch support test site; commence underwater static testing; continue planning for in-water testing; continue kill chain analysis within platform communications and fire control system architectures," according to budget documents.

In September 2016, the Navy awarded a $105.5 million contract modification to General Dynamics Electric Boat to begin the second phase of Sea Dragon.

The budget amendment also requests $10 million for Third Eye, which previous budget documents state is a "data architecture that leverages existing and emerging sensors to provide real-time tracking and targeting for multi-service weapon systems."

The Pentagon's initial FY-18 request for Third Eye was $24.5 million to "deploy limited operational capability."

The budget amendment also requests $56.2 million for SCO's Hurt Locker program and $46 million for Hoover. Details on the programs were unable to be found in previous budget submissions.

The initial FY-18 total request for SCO was $1.1 billion. Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who created the organization when he was deputy defense secretary in 2012, said in a February 2016 speech that the SCO would begin a new innovative era of warfare.

"SCO is incredibly innovative, but it also has the rare virtue of rapid development, and a rarer virtue of keeping current capabilities viable for as long as possible -- in other words, it tries to build on what we have," he said at the time. "The emphasis here was on rapidity of fielding, not 10- and 15-year programs."
 
HVP launch from Mk 45 Mod 4.
 

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So for all of the hype is the HVP anything other than a fancy guided saboted shell? Yes you can get a Mach 3 muzzle velocity from it and the associated range boost but it doesn't seem as horribly impressive as firing the thing at Mach 6 from a railgun.

Won't the payload be lower than a comparable full-sized 127mm or 155mm shell too?
 
Surprisingly close. The burster in a conventional 127mm shell is around 7.5 pounds. The fancy ERGM and BTERM warheads were similar, with 9 or 10 pounds of fragmentation. The payload cited for HVP is 15 lbs, total.
 
Hm. That seems small. Here's what I was looking at that gave the total payload of 15 pounds.
 

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The program manager for the SCO's HVP program just confirmed that a modified TPS-80 is going to be the surveillance sensor for the weapon system during a CSIS event.

https://www.csis.org/events/distributed-defense-new-operational-concepts-integrated-air-and-missile-defense
 
bring_it_on said:
The program manager for the SCO's HVP program just confirmed that a modified TPS-80 is going to be the surveillance sensor for the weapon system during a CSIS event.

https://www.csis.org/events/distributed-defense-new-operational-concepts-integrated-air-and-missile-defense

In the BMD role?
 
From the little that I listened to, he did not specify what role but since BMD is one important mission focus of the HVP I would assume that it is the case. Northrop has in the past self funded work to that end. He also mentioned that they are now fabricating a multi-sided 360 degree fire-control radar..In the past they had identified a modified USAF fighter radar for fire-control so not sure if they are just using that and adding multiple antennas for 360 coverage or that they dropped that idea.

Speaking of the G/ATOR, the very first LRIP variant with the Gallium Nitride Modules was slated for delivery in late-January/Early February so we should be hearing about it soon as well.

Later in the Q&A he also mentioned that they will be winding down the program after demonstrating the capability "less than a year from now".

Video is now up - https://youtu.be/aMRgjd6TOmo?t=6752
 
SCO aims to transition hypervelocity weapon to services within the next year


The Strategic Capabilities Office expects to hand off development of the hypervelocity gun weapon system to the services within the next year.

Vincent Sabio, program manager for the HGWS program, said SCO's aim is to provide the Army and Navy "with all the pieces" needed to transition to engineering and manufacturing development. He said SCO will "demonstrate the fundamentally new capability," which pairs a hypervelocity projectile with Army 155 mm howitzers and Navy 5-inch guns so they can conduct missile defense missions.

"My program ends less than a year from now," Sabio said during a Jan. 25 event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

If successful, the system holds the promise of conducting defenses against aerial, cruise missile and ballistic missile threats at a drastically reduced price compared to interceptors in the U.S. military's current programs of record.

According to Sabio, the Navy's program executive office for integrated warfare systems priced the hypervelocity projectile at about $85,000 a round.

"You can shoot a lot of those things and not feel badly about it at the end of the day," he said.

SCO is seeking $67 million in fiscal year 2018 for the HGWS program to, among other plans, finish building a fire-control solution and complete modifications to a surveillance radar, according to budget justification documents.

Sabio said SCO is building an "interferometer" fire-control system, with one unit providing more than 90-degree coverage at a cost of $23 million apiece.

"You can take four of these, you've got reasonably cost-effective, full hemespherical coverage for fire control," he said.

SCO is pairing the fire-control sensors with a modified Marine Corps Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) for a longer-range surveillance sensor, according to Sabio.

As part of its FY-18 plans, SCO also plans to "continue closed-loop performance demonstrations by conducting increasingly difficult fly-by engagements of live targets" as well as "integrate subsystems and conduct target intercepts," according to budget justification documents.

Sabio said SCO would also be "flying a warhead" on the hypervelocity projectile, but "this is not fundamentally a warhead program" from his office's perspective, he added.

"I defined the goal of the program to demonstrate that we can get a maneuvering projectile sufficiently proximate to an inbound maneuvering threat [and] with a suitably capable warhead, we can successfully engage and defeat that threat," Sabio said.

The Army and the Navy will be responsible for determining how to integrate the HGWS into their command-and-control systems, he said.

"I don't believe it's in my wheelhouse to tell my operational transition partners how they're going to use this, what their command-and-control structure needs to be or how it gets integrated into it," Sabio said.

Inside Defense previously reported on the Army's plans to launch a new hypervelocity projectile program of record in FY-18. The service projects spending $36 million annually through FY-22 on the program, when the Army expects a "follow-on development effort" to yield "an integrated system solution,” according to budget documents.

Meanwhile, in 2016, the Navy set up a program office for the electromagnetic railgun, which is also being developed to fire hypervelocity projectiles.
 
Retired secretary of state and Henry Kissinger mentor George P Schultz testified to Congress yesterday concerning the just released National Security Strategy and mentioned aluminum based explosive that are currently over 10x as powerful as TNT among other nano/hyper energetics being researched.
Why then an EM gun again? to augment as an Electro Magnetic Thermal Chemical (EMTC) gun but otherwise a boon doogle as stated repeatedly stated.
 
jsport said:
Retired secretary of state and Henry Kissinger mentor George P Schultz testified to Congress yesterday concerning the just released National Security Strategy and mentioned aluminum based explosive that are currently over 10x as powerful as TNT among other nano/hyper energetics being researched.
Why then an EM gun again? to augment as an Electro Magnetic Thermal Chemical (EMTC) gun but otherwise a boon doogle as stated repeatedly stated.

Artillery pieces don't use explosives to drive the shells. And it's only been "repeatedly stated" by you.
 
don't BS us. energetics are energetics.
 
jsport said:
don't BS us. energetics are energetics.

Don't YOU BS us. Explosives and smokeless powder are completely different. Sure, they both burn. So does wood. So does rocket propellant.
 
sferrin said:
jsport said:
don't BS us. energetics are energetics.

Don't YOU BS us. Explosives and smokeless powder are completely different. Sure, they both burn. So does wood. So does rocket propellant.

and YOU continue the BS us. energy to action pretty basic. capacitors don't match fuels and won't maybe ever. ... fruitless argument
 
jsport said:
capacitors don't match fuels and won't maybe ever. ... fruitless argument

Not in energy density, no. That is not the only important piece of the puzzle. Hell, why isn't my car nuclear powered? After all, gasoline doesn't match U235.
 
sferrin said:
jsport said:
capacitors don't match fuels and won't maybe ever. ... fruitless argument

Not in energy density, no. That is not the only important piece of the puzzle. Hell, why isn't my car nuclear powered? After all, gasoline doesn't match U235.

Nuke cars were built and someday maybe again. Doubt it though. The Army has been trying to implement tactical nuke power forever.

Much like the EMRG project this nothing to do w/ science but politics and ego. There is an Navy EMRG program (rube goldberg machine) because somebody has power and ignores the science and thankfully there is science based Army HVP energetics program for something simple like a M-109 based on science.
 
jsport said:
don't BS us. energetics are energetics.

Nope. When it comes to splodeystuff, there are two qualities most often examined:
1) Heaving force: basically how much gas is produced. This is useful for gun propellant.
2) Brisance ("Shattering force"): how powerful the shock waves produced by the splodeystuff is.

Gunpowder has *no* brisance. Put as big a pile of the stuff you like on a table and touch it off, it won't actually shatter the table. HMX, RDX, dynamite, TNT, etc. have buckets of brisance, and a small quantity of the stuff on a table, unconstrained, will blow the table to bits. And that's the problem: it'll blow a gun barrel to bits before actually stuffing the projectile down the bore.

Theoretically, you could replace the gunpowder with rocket propellant, many of which use aluminum as the fuel. Tiny little pellets of the HTTB/AP/Aluminum propellant used in many modern solid rockets would make a dandy propellant... *sorta.* There are two problems with using rocket propellant as a gun propellant:
1) Combustion temperature is higher than gunpowder. You could melt bits of the breech.
2) Aluminum oxide is an unavoidable combustion product. Aluminum oxide will happily glue itself to the breech and barrle, gumming them up with a rock-hard solid very difficult to clean out.
 
Thank you.

However,
liquid and gas guns will always provide the energy density over capacitors therefore the original argument stands. Fuels are better than capacitors.

Intermolecular Forces in Army research
http://slideplayer.com/slide/6324458/

Seems like the Army is interested in "Disruptive Energetics" slide 8 most likely for explosive and novel propellants.

PS: patents have been filed eliminating the liquid gun ignition problems suffered by the Crusader SPH development.
 
jsport said:
However,
liquid and gas guns will always provide the energy density over capacitors therefore the original argument stands. Fuels are better than capacitors.

If you're talking about energy density specifically, nobody has ever said otherwise. Energy density isn't the only factor to consider.
 
The Strategic Capabilities Office expects to hand off development of the hypervelocity gun weapon system to the services within the next year.

Vincent Sabio, program manager for the HGWS program, said SCO's aim is to provide the Army and Navy "with all the pieces" needed to transition to engineering and manufacturing development. He said SCO will "demonstrate the fundamentally new capability," which pairs a hypervelocity projectile with Army 155 mm howitzers and Navy 5-inch guns so they can conduct missile defense missions.

"My program ends less than a year from now," Sabio said during a Jan. 25 event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

If successful, the system holds the promise of conducting defenses against aerial, cruise missile and ballistic missile threats at a drastically reduced price compared to interceptors in the U.S. military's current programs of record.

According to Sabio, the Navy's program executive office for integrated warfare systems priced the hypervelocity projectile at about $85,000 a round.

"You can shoot a lot of those things and not feel badly about it at the end of the day," he said.

SCO is seeking $67 million in fiscal year 2018 for the HGWS program to, among other plans, finish building a fire-control solution and complete modifications to a surveillance radar, according to budget justification documents.

Sabio said SCO is building an "interferometer" fire-control system, with one unit providing more than 90-degree coverage at a cost of $23 million apiece.

I guess the implication is that the HVP doesn't have an active seeker so the interferometric radars provide the necessary angular resolution for
some command guided or midcourse update scheme. We've seen similar schemes before.
 

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jsport said:
Fuels are better than capacitors.

Depends on the role. Want to shoot a bullet? Gunpowder is as good as it gets. Want to shoot a projectile at Mach 10, or out of the atmosphere? Gunpowder won't do that; capacitors might in rail or coil guns. Light gas guns might be able to, but those are even more battlefield-unready than electromagnetic propulsion.

No matter how much gunpowder you stuff in the gun, it can only expand so fast, only shoot a projectile so fast, and for all practical purposes it reached its limit decades ago. Electromagnetic in *theory* can get a projectile up to relativistic speeds, but simply doing 50% better than gunpowder is a heck of a start.

Energy density doesn't mean doodly-squat if the system can't meet performance specifications.
 
You tend to need capacitors anyway for light gas and ETC guns. One thing in the favor of EM guns is
that the physics is far better understood than light gas or ETC guns.
 
Thankfully various Light gas guns are still around and studied.

Global Guns have been purposed to DoD before. The original "Shock and Awe" study mentions Hydrogen global guns. Dr G Bull's research seems not completely disappeared globally. If one doesn't have others will.


Slide 59

http://api.ning.com/files/ERvUaX951Kfz23UfviksssiBSAiUc5EPSQwWdUuT2mBOf7d4nk-X8ljUfZsHVQYgjLO8tPh0qed-lZoVl0xPqHJRNa5vC1lN

Shock wave gun patents are rife. An ETC gun is best and needs a lower energy capacitor.
 
.
I guess the implication is that the HVP doesn't have an active seeker so the interferometric radars provide the necessary angular resolution for
some command guided or midcourse update scheme. We've seen similar schemes before.

Yup I watched the video again and it makes it quite apparentl that this is the approach to keep cost low for the round.
 

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