A Scenario for a Future European Shipboard Railgun

Railguns can convert large quantities of electrical energy into kinetic energy of the projectile. This was demonstrated by the 33-MJ muzzle energy shot performed in 2010 in the framework of the Office of Naval Research electromagnetic railgun program. Since then, railguns have been a prime candidate for the future long-range artillery systems. In this scenario, a heavy projectile (several kilograms) is accelerated to approximately 2.5-km/s muzzle velocity. While the primary interest for such a hypersonic projectile is the bombardment of targets hundreds of kilometers away, they can also be used to counter airplane attacks or in other direct fire scenarios. In these cases, the large initial velocity significantly reduces the time to impact the target. In this paper, we investigate a scenario, where a future shipboard railgun installation delivers the same kinetic energy to a target as the explosive round of a contemporary European ship artillery system. At the same time, the railgun outperforms the current artillery systems in range. For this scenario, a first draft for the parameters of a railgun system was derived. For the flight path of the projectile, trajectories for different launch angles were simulated and the aerothermodynamic heating was estimated using engineering tools developed within the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This enables the assessment of the feasibility of the different strike scenarios, as well as the identification of the limits of the technology. It is envisioned that this baseline design can be used as a helpful starting point for discussion of a possible electrical weaponization of the future European warships.