Hypersonic... rifle! Electromagnetic weapons
An explosive type solenoid that provides an unprecedented increase in the strength of the electromagnetic field. Rice. A. Sheps
“Today we are in a unique situation.
in our new and latest stories:
are chasing us.
No country today has
hypersonic weapons generally,
and continental-range hypersonic weapons
especially".
V.V. Putin
in our new and latest stories:
are chasing us.
No country today has
hypersonic weapons generally,
and continental-range hypersonic weapons
especially".
V.V. Putin
Weapons of the near future. And it happened that back in 1930, the future science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev invented a cannon with an electromagnetic drive and showed it to the then People's Commissar of Heavy Industry Sergo Ordzhonikidze. Well, the tests themselves took place in the office: this model with its iron shells will ruin all the walls in his office. But the people's commissar replied that the repair would require less funds than the development of this promising invention, and immediately ordered Alexander Kazantsev to be transferred from the Ural Metallurgical Plant to Podlipki near Moscow, to an artillery plant.
Actually, Kazantsev did not offer anything particularly new then. What he did was the already well-known "Gauss cannon", and it was possible to seduce with it only our military leaders like Tukhachevsky, and people's commissars like Ordzhonikidze. Be that as it may, but, although his “gun” did not go further than a desktop model, he nevertheless wrote the novel “The Burning Island”, and he entered the golden fund of our national science fiction.
This is how, according to the publishers of the American journal Modern Mechanics, an electromagnetic gun of the near future could look like
Years passed, and now, thanks to the achievements of science and technology, Kazantsev's dream of creating electromagnetic weapons began to gradually take shape.
In particular, at the end of July 2021, the American company Arcflash Labs demonstrated its development of the GR-1 electromagnetic rifle, which represents the most powerful Gauss rifle available to the mass consumer. The rifle can be ordered and received in six months.
In fact, this is one of the varieties of the electromagnetic mass accelerator, which was named after the German scientist Karl Gauss, who laid the foundations for the entire mathematical theory of electromagnetism. Structurally, any rifle or Gauss gun is a solenoid, inside of which there is a barrel made of a dielectric. The shot is fired with a special ferromagnet projectile. This device operates very simply: as soon as an electric current appears in the solenoid coil, an electromagnetic field arises, which the projectile accelerates.
American electromagnetic gun EM-01-Alpha
In order for the effect of the current pulse in the solenoid to be powerful and short-lived, high-voltage electrolytic capacitors are used.
And his image in graphic design
Interestingly, the rifle received the designation GR-1 ANVIL ("Anvil"), the company advertises it as the world's first serial model of a rifle, that is, a hand weapon operating by the force of electromagnetism.
It is noted that the GR-1 can accelerate ferromagnetic projectiles with a diameter of one and a half inches to a speed of 75 m / s, while its rate of fire can reach 100 rounds per minute. The standard magazine holds 10 bullets. The 6S LiPo battery allows you to shoot 40 shots on just one charge. Moreover, the shooter can change this indicator from 20 rounds per minute at full power to 100 rounds per minute with a power of 50 percent. Shells for it have different lengths: 32, 42 and 52 mm.
Another "miracle rifle" with an electromagnetic drive. It even has an optical sight installed ...
Experts note that the "Gauss gun" has advantages that other types of small arms do not have. And in fact, she does not need sleeves for her. Its ammunition theoretically can be dispersed to a very high speed, a projectile fired at no more than the speed of sound is silent. The recoil is low, the wear resistance of the barrel is high, and it is possible to work even in outer space.
But her shortcomings are very serious, and the most important of them is low RPP. In addition, due to the presence of electromagnets and a battery of significant capacity, it has a lot of weight, and the bullet speed is still low, that is, for shooting for fun, this is just the “thing”, but for participating in hostilities 75 m / s - this is ridiculous.
But what if in the near future there will be such hypersonic sniper rifles with explosive pumping? Explosive-type solenoids are known. New materials that make it possible to obtain record magnetic field strengths have already been created. What if we combine all this in a single design, and use an ordinary ... rifle as a “booster” for a bullet, but only firing a steel bullet? For example, such as you see in this photo. Of course, the “fairy tale is a lie”, but ... After all, almost all the “bricks” for it are already there today, and they all work! Well, outwardly, this is the most ordinary sniper rifle, except that its barrel is longer than usual. In the photo it is shown in the position before loading.
Theoretically, if it is possible to create small-sized and extremely powerful current sources and high-temperature superconductors (200–300 K), then it will be possible to talk seriously about this weapon. Although there is another way...
In this photo, a magnetron solenoid and a suppressor are already put on the barrel, and an optical sight is fixed on the Picatinny rail
So, specialists from the National Laboratory for High Magnetic Fields in the USA (MagLab) managed to create an extremely powerful electromagnet that can even fit in a small handbag, and it weighs only 390 g.
Magnetron, A-shaped bipods with retractable parts, upper and lower receivers and a bolt of the simplest design - that's all this rifle could hypothetically consist of today
But he creates a magnetic field with an induction of a record 45,5 T, while in a tomograph (MRI) the magnet produces only some 2–3 T. Such high performance was finally achieved thanks to the use of a superconducting alloy based on barium oxide, copper and rare earth elements, which was used in the form of very thin tapes.
Cross-linked aluminum A-arm for greater rigidity is easily adjustable in height…
Here it should be recalled that the most powerful artificial magnetic fields are obtained by compressing the magnetic field inside the electromagnet, which occurs due to the detonation of an explosive charge. Therefore, such magnets are called explosive pump generators. The magnetic field at the time of the explosion can reach 1 T in a few microseconds. Here, in fact, the same principle was used, plus superconducting materials.
Upper receiver with two clutches and a spring inside. The barrel is screwed into one sleeve, slides into the other at the moment of the shot and pushes the bolt back
By the way, for the first time, work on explosive electromagnetic generators was carried out back in the USSR at the VNIIEF nuclear research center in Sarov in the early 1950s, and only after that in the United States at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The design of the bolt handle is nothing less than a tribute to tradition. In principle, it can be any other form convenient for the shooter. The L-shaped plate in front of the trigger guard is used to place one of the bipod legs on it when transporting the rifle
The generator is very simple: an explosive charge in the form of a cylinder covers a tube with a superconducting film wound around it in the form of a tape and is blown up so that the compression of the cylinder would begin at the very moment when the current passing through the solenoid was at its maximum. Then the magnetic field around it will be maximum in its strength!
But what if we make a sniper rifle working on this principle for ... special operations ?! For shooting from a long distance at extremely important targets ?!
Let's imagine a single-shot sniper rifle, in general, of a conventional design. In the upper receiver there is a barrel wrapped with a spring, on the lower there are guides for the shutter, a pistol grip for holding, a trigger, and a battery for supplying the solenoid. The cartridge is ordinary, rifle, but only the bullet for it should be steel with a copper leading belt and an inner core of tungsten carbide.
These are the mounts for the left bipod on the left side. The upper receiver, in principle, is also removed from the rifle, but it makes no sense to do this during transportation
The part of the barrel that is in the receiver is rifled, and the part that comes out of it is smooth. A cylinder with five sections inside, made of high strength steel, is put on the barrel behind the receiver before firing. Inside each section is a solenoid coil wound from a superconducting alloy tape, and each of these coils is lined with an explosive charge. So the cylinder itself must also be very strong (and therefore heavy, with a total weight of at least five kilograms!) So that it does not break when fired. A suppressor is put on the end of the barrel at the muzzle - a promising type of silencer combined with a muzzle brake, which provides less and far from unnecessary noise absorption of the shot, and also eliminates the muzzle flame that unmasks it and also performs the role of a muzzle compensator.
The rifle with the barrel removed from it in the transport position. Rectangular box under the butt - rechargeable battery
When fired, the bullet first accelerates in a rifled barrel to standard rifle barrels of 750-820 m / s. But as soon as it hits the smooth part of the barrel, the microprocessor, which had previously powered the solenoid with electricity from the battery, gives the command to alternately detonate the charges in the solenoid cylinder. A traveling magnetic field of colossal intensity arises, which can very well accelerate the bullet to a speed of 5–7 km / s, that is, to hypersonic speed. In this way, it will fly a distance of five kilometers in just one second, and when it hits the target, it will immediately turn into plasma. After the shot, the barrel moves back along with the bolt, and the spring itself returns back by the force of the spring.
Suppressor (left) and magnetron solenoid (right). It has a strap for easy carrying. The rifle itself is not very heavy, but with a magnetron put on it, its weight increases dramatically. True, this also gives it greater stability when fired.
Immediately after this, the suppressor is first removed from the barrel, then the accelerator-magnetron, in which, after some time, the fuses will have to work and release it from the hot gases inside. Then a new magnetron is put on the barrel, then a suppressor, a new cartridge is loaded into the rifle, and it is again ready to fire.
Yes, this is not a quick thing and will require the help of a partner shooter. But after all, a shot is fired from a distance of at least five kilometers, so that all this can be done completely unnoticed by the enemy, and the shots themselves were fired not even one, but two or three. And more is not needed if, for example, fire is fired at combat aircraft taking off from some remote airfield. Or - according to the engines of the VIP aircraft, they are also on takeoff. No matter how expensive a shot from a rifle like this is, destroying an aircraft worth millions of dollars will pay for any expenses.
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