Why aren't railguns used more in B5?

[Omega-13]

Just like the topic says,
At the distances that b5 ships typically fight at, by the time the projectile reached the target, the computer wouldn't have time to intercept it with the batteries, thats even if it was large enough to detect.

I mean, a starfurry smashed through the wing of a Minbari Cruiser...what would happen if a 500g projectile was launched at 200 km/s

It would have tons more energy...and thats only half a kilogram projectile.
I mean, what if the object was even 2 kilograms? It would totally wreck the area where it impacted

[neoolong]

They're banned from use. Londo mentions it when it is decided for the Centauri to use them to bombard Narn.

[Crown]

neoolong you are thinking of mass drivers in the sense of like really large masses for orbital bombardment, railguns in the sense that Omega-13 is talking about adds up to something that is in essense less powerfull than today's Main Battle Tanks (MBT) main weapon!

[neoolong]

neoolong you are thinking of mass drivers in the sense of like really large masses for orbital bombardment, railguns in the sense that Omega-13 is talking about adds up to something that is in essense less powerfull than today's Main Battle Tanks (MBT) main weapon!

I thought the whole technology was banned from use. That would mean no rail guns of any scale. Was it just the larger mass drivers?

[Crown]

Even if the whole tech was outlawed (extremely unlikely) since it appears that it is aimed at the asteriod level mass driver, just whack on the M1-A1's MBT's cannon and bobs your uncles father, there you go! It's not a 'railgun' in the traditional sense since it uses a chemical propulsion technique.

[neoolong]

Even if the whole tech was outlawed (extremely unlikely) since it appears that it is aimed at the asteriod level mass driver, just whack on the M1-A1's MBT's cannon and bobs your uncles father, there you go! It's not a 'railgun' in the traditional sense since it uses a chemical propulsion technique.

Okay. It depends then on the wording of the ban which I don't know. So whatever.

[XaLEv]

Warlocks and Hyperions are armed with railguns. Not sure about ships from other powers.

[neoolong]

Ah, so they do have them. My mistake. I thought the ban was for all mass driver weapons.

[XaLEv]

Ah, so they do have them. My mistake. I thought the ban was for all mass driver weapons.

Nah. As far as I know, the ban is only on using the larger models to bombard civilian targets, due to the damage they can cause.

[Omega-13]

neoolong you are thinking of mass drivers in the sense of like really large masses for orbital bombardment, railguns in the sense that Omega-13 is talking about adds up to something that is in essense less powerfull than today's Main Battle Tanks (MBT) main weapon!

please explain how a 120 mm round can be more powerful than a 2 kg projectile with a muzzle velocity of 200 km/s?

If the projectile reached 200 km/s in 0.01 of a second (time it takes to leave the rail system, that would mean its acceleration is, 20,000 km/s/s

F = MA
40,000,000 N
this is all really really rough math

but now if you have a 30 kg round leaving the barrol of a 120mm cannon, such as the abrams at 6000 m/s, and say its acceleration is the same (both figures are wrong, but we'll use the same just to have a comparison)

its about 18,000,000 N

so its not really a comparison, even today, nevermind hundreds of years from now, we can accelerate something to 6 km/s in just 4 cm,

[[BL]Phalanx]

Like XaLev said, they do have railguns. The rounds fired by railguns are still interceptable by point-defense guns in B5.

Mass Drivers are something else entirely, at least in the B5 universe.

BTW, the Starfury that rammed a Sharlin's fin? It's not an inert object, it's got a fusion reactor and fuel core, too.

[Omega-13]

Like XaLev said, they do have railguns. The rounds fired by railguns are still interceptable by point-defense guns in B5.

Mass Drivers are something else entirely, at least in the B5 universe.

BTW, the Starfury that rammed a Sharlin's fin? It's not an inert object, it's got a fusion reactor and fuel core, too.

how can a railgun projectile be interceptable by b5 interceptors? thats impossible from what we've seen, and I'll tell you why,
The plasma 'balls' that are fired from the interceptor batteries seem to go 3 or 4 times faster than the actual star furries,
the balls of energy are very slow compared to what a railgun would be firing.

If the ships are fighting at standard battle distances (couple hundreds kilometers or even dozen of kilometers) the projectile would have already hit the ship, by the time the turrents began to rotate to track it.

Second, if the projectile is only 10 or 20 kg, and say its density is someting along the same lines as steel, its going to be very small, maybe the size of a lunch box,
its going to be really hard to track and target in less than a second, we've never seen anything in b5 do anything close to this.

As for the comment on the star furry, from what i remember, fuel cell had nothing to do with the material failing, as for the engine pushing it through, how much of a difference would this make in a split second.

[XaLEv]

please explain how a 120 mm round can be more powerful than a 2 kg projectile with a muzzle velocity of 200 km/s?

If the projectile reached 200 km/s in 0.01 of a second (time it takes to leave the rail system, that would mean its acceleration is, 20,000 km/s/s

F = MA
40,000,000 N
this is all really really rough math

but now if you have a 30 kg round leaving the barrol of a 120mm cannon, such as the abrams at 6000 m/s, and say its acceleration is the same (both figures are wrong, but we'll use the same just to have a comparison)

its about 18,000,000 N

so its not really a comparison, even today, nevermind hundreds of years from now, we can accelerate something to 6 km/s in just 4 cm,

Looks like you are using force exerted on the projectile during launch to determine how powerful the weapon is. Try using momentum and kinetic energy instead.

30 kilograms at 6000 m/s gives a kinetic energy of 5.4e8 j, 180,000 kg·m/s.
2 kilograms at 200,000 m/s gives a kinetic energy of 4e10 j, momentum of 400,000 kg·m/s.

Clearly, the latter is more powerful.

[Omega-13]

please explain how a 120 mm round can be more powerful than a 2 kg projectile with a muzzle velocity of 200 km/s?

If the projectile reached 200 km/s in 0.01 of a second (time it takes to leave the rail system, that would mean its acceleration is, 20,000 km/s/s

F = MA
40,000,000 N
this is all really really rough math

but now if you have a 30 kg round leaving the barrol of a 120mm cannon, such as the abrams at 6000 m/s, and say its acceleration is the same (both figures are wrong, but we'll use the same just to have a comparison)

its about 18,000,000 N

so its not really a comparison, even today, nevermind hundreds of years from now, we can accelerate something to 6 km/s in just 4 cm,

Looks like you are using force exerted on the projectile during launch to determine how powerful the weapon is. Try using momentum and kinetic energy instead.

30 kilograms at 6000 m/s gives a kinetic energy of 5.4e8 j, 180,000 kg·m/s.
2 kilograms at 200,000 m/s gives a kinetic energy of 4e10 j, momentum of 400,000 kg·m/s.

Clearly, the latter is more powerful.

i read this over and over, and then realised you weren't contradicting my statment

just another way to show

[AzNtoccata]

The Olympus corvette has railguns too. The problem with railguns is logistics, energy weapons only use no munitions. Now this may seem logical or illogical to you, but that's the best answer I can come up with (I also read this somewhere, forgot where).

[Omega-13]

The Olympus corvette has railguns too. The problem with railguns is logistics, energy weapons only use no munitions. Now this may seem logical or illogical to you, but that's the best answer I can come up with (I also read this somewhere, forgot where).

thats not true actually

even energy weapons have 'munitions'
the new energy weapons they are trying to install into the 747's, they say have a maximum of 12 shots,

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

What kind of ammo? Gas supply or what?

[[BL]Phalanx]

What kind of ammo? Gas supply or what?

Plasma or something... whatever the heck it is they use.

It still requires supplying. Even the engines, which don't lob so much stuff as to be visible (in the series), still run out of fuel and need to be refueled.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Gas supplies would be largely negligible... Even the compressors don't take up that much space.

[Crown]

Omega-13 Sorry you are right, I thought you said 200 m/s, but you did state 200 km/s, my bad. Can you ever forgive me?

[[BL]Phalanx]

how can a railgun projectile be interceptable by b5 interceptors? thats impossible from what we've seen, and I'll tell you why,
The plasma 'balls' that are fired from the interceptor batteries seem to go 3 or 4 times faster than the actual star furries,
the balls of energy are very slow compared to what a railgun would be firing.

"seem"? Where is *your* math on that? Keep in mind that B5 weaponry can vary the speed of the energy bolts coming out of the barrel *dynamically*. See "Fall of Night" where Sheridan orders weapons fire to be set to "time on target".

The "balls of energy" don't have to be faster than a railgun slug to intercept it. They only have to hit it before it hits the ship. This is a matter of the ability of the sensors to track it, and the speed and accuracy with which the interceptors respond to shoot it down. If you fire a 100 km/sec railgun slug at a ship 800 kilometers away (the minimum distance at which the fight in "Severed Dreams" began between the capital ships), it will take 8 seconds to cross that distance. If an interceptor cannon at the *other end* of the ship fired at it, and fired a bolt moving 500 meters per second, it would still arrive on time to stop it. It has 8 seconds to reach the other side of the ship, and the ship is only 1 kilometer long. The energy bolt will reach the other end of the ship in 2 seconds.

Of course, you'd rather avoid doing some thing that stupid anyway, by firing an interceptor cannon *near* the section of the ship being fired upon.

Finally, B5Wars info, which is at least official, backs me up on this. B5 forces can intercept railguns (at least, they stop B5 railguns).

If the ships are fighting at standard battle distances (couple hundreds kilometers or even dozen of kilometers) the projectile would have already hit the ship, by the time the turrents began to rotate to track it.

Of course, once you get close enough, then reaction times by the guns can be too slow. On the other hand, we've seen plenty of engagements begin at hundreds of kilometers.

Angular velocity is what is important here, and at that distance, angular velocity isn't going to be very high. *Precision* is very important, but tracking speed isn't. The railgun slug would be coming straight at you anyway (at least, if it were *aimed* properly at you).

Second, if the projectile is only 10 or 20 kg, and say its density is someting along the same lines as steel, its going to be very small, maybe the size of a lunch box,
its going to be really hard to track and target in less than a second, we've never seen anything in b5 do anything close to this.

On the other hand, we've seen Minbari nailing Starfuries with their capship guns... with reaction times from the Minbari gun stations so quick that, right after nailing the fighter, they nailed the eject pod a split second later.

Starfuries have ECM. Railgun slugs don't.

As for the comment on the star furry, from what i remember, fuel cell had nothing to do with the material failing, as for the engine pushing it through, how much of a difference would this make in a split second.

???

I didn't say the engines continued thrusting to shove the Starfury through it. I may be a dumbass according to paladin but I'm not THAT retarded.

However, the fuel core on the Starfury very likely *did* explode. In "A View from the Gallery" it's explained that the fuel core's destruction is precisely what makes an explosion look the way it does (in the B5 universe) when a Starfury is destroyed.

I don't see why that Starfury that rammed the Sharlin didn't have its fuel core go up. And if it did go up, that would be another factor contributing to the damage caused.

[Connor MacLeod]

Lets see:

Recoil - bema weapons have signfiicantly less recoil than a kinetic impactor.

Ammo - Railguns rely far more on mass to inflict damage than particle beams or plasma bolts would, so they can carry fewer shots.

Velocity - being more massive than siad plasma/particle beams, they are also substantially harder to accelerate (even htough this does result in a larger energy release for equivalent velocities, given the difference in mass, this isnt' neccearily going to make a difference - see below.)

Interceptability - unless they move at speeds comparable to a particle beam (which given equivalent energy, is unlikely), they are much more easily intercepted - given they are also more of a solid mass than particle/plasma weapons, they are much easier to damage.

For the most part, Beam weapons in B5 offer far more advantages than railguns do. They ARE used, and aren't a RARE weapon (contrary to what Omega-13 says), but they are a minor one compared to the rest.

I might point out that he is also overestimating their value - B5 hulls do not seem overly optimized to resist kinetic attack- this means that in some cases they may very well offer little to no resistance to a kinetic impactor - and basically shoot through delivering only a part of their energy, thereby minimizing damage. (which would make sense on nonessential areas.)