Re: Gauss Weapons

Thomas Barclay wrote:

> Well, you'd get lighter ammo (hence you could have more). You'd get
> low signature firing which makes locating your weapon based on
> signature harder. You'd probably be much kinder to the ears of the
> crew too. And it would be a good way to work around to tank guns and
> infantry gauss weapons too.
>
> Tom.

The low signature is moot.  Counter-battery fire is currently done by
using
radar to track the projectiles in flight, and since they are ballistic,
it is
easy enough to back-calculate their point of origin.  That's why towed
artillery is out of fashion - it takes too long to hook up and scoot in
a mobile
battlefield.

Gauss weapons would have lighter ammo, plus an additional benefit - you
can fire multiple rounds down the barrel at once.  You don't ahve to
wait
for the first round to clear before sending the next one on it's way. 
In fact
you could probably achive the same rate of fire from a single gauss
weapon
as you could from a normal battery, limited by how fast you could feed
rounds
into the gun.

Definitely easier on the crew to man a gauss weapon.  What would you get
if
they revamped an Iowa class to heave 16 inch Gauss shells?  One of the
limits
to gun size on battleships was back blast.  The Yamoto was unable to
mount
more anti-aircraft guns because the blast from the main guns firing
would tend
to strip anything not under an armored turret. Hmmm Spinal mount naval
rail
guns....

--Binhan