China will conduct training shooting from the electromagnetic gun on a naval ship

Photo of a railgun on a large landing ship Haiyang Shan (PLAN LST 936)

It turns out that not only Americans are testing electromagnetic weapons. Twitter user Dafeng Cao translated the text from Chinese, which was published by “one of the most famous former officers of the Navy of the People’s Liberation Army of China, who participated in the construction of ships for the Navy for several decades.”

The specialist writes that the fact that the development of the railgun by Chinese engineers has long been known. The armament of the electromagnetic gun was approved by the Navy of the People’s Liberation Army of China for about a 5-6 year period. That is, during this time it was planned to create a prototype and conduct tests.

The officer writes that the standard Type 909 (class Wuhu-B in the NATO designation), on which new types of weapons are tested, was not chosen for testing. Instead, the railgun was installed on the old acting large landing ship Haiyang Shan (PLAN LST 936, class Type 072III or Yuting-II in NATO designation).


Photo of a half-covered railgun on the landing ship Haiyang Shan

Most likely, such a choice is related to the requirements for the power consumption of a new weapon. Probably, the Type 909 test vehicle failed to establish an appropriate power grid. The specialist says that the "Type 909 power plant has a fixed output power and it would be too expensive to change the setup for testing an electromagnetic gun."

It is for this reason that a ship of class Type 072III was selected for testing. There are no problems with installing multiple units of a power plant. In addition, on this ship a large platform for installing guns.


The installation process of the railgun, photo found on the Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo

The expert expressed the opinion that two containers on the deck could be the control room. It is not known where the photo was taken. Perhaps this is the shipyard of Wuchang, where landing ships were built before. Therefore, they are familiar with the design of the landing craft, so that for them the equipment of its non-standard armament will be easier.


Behind the railgun in the background during its installation hangs a poster with the words "We provide first-class naval weapons and equipment for building the world's first-class navy"

China has become the second country after the United States, which is beginning to test the railgun. The US Navy began such tests about ten years ago. During this time, we tested several prototypes developed by the General Atomics and BAE Systems contractors.


Preliminary tests on land (see video) proved to be extremely successful, after which the Navy leadership ordered to prepare tests in the open sea. Shooting had to go from the transport ship of the new class Joint High Speed ​​Vessel (JHSV), which is now renamed to the Spearhead class.


Railgun design

According to the stated specifications, the railgun must accelerate a metal projectile in the electromagnetic field to a speed of 7240–9000 km / h. The firing range is more than 160 km. A projectile weighing 10.4 kg at a speed of 6–7 Mach has a kinetic energy of about 32 megajoules. This is the same energy as the projectile weighing 1 ton at a speed of 252 m / s (910 km / h). The impact force can be compared to the impact to the Earth of a meteorite.

True, a 25 MW power plant is required to accelerate the projectile. Of the existing ships such can only be found on the class destroyers class "Zamvolt" (Zumwalt).


Land tests of railgun. Photo: US Navy

However, in recent years, the test of railguns in the US Navy was actually frozen due to funding problems and because the Strategic Capabilities Office lost interest in further research. Over the previous decade, more than $ 500 million was spent on the program.

Apparently, in the development of an electromagnetic gun, China has all the chances to outrun the United States and to become a technology leader - at least, they will be the first to carry out marine tests of the railgun. And then the Americans will follow the Chinese developments and copy the most successful technical solutions from them.