Electromagnetic Rail Guns & Aircraft Launching System developments in India : News & Updates

Gautam

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Feb 16, 2019
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Ever since the design of INS Vishal has commenced the need for an EMALS has been felt. The preliminary plan is to acquire EMALS from General Atomics of USA. Although whether the Vishal eventually uses a EMALS at all remains to be seen. EMALS has been in development in India for a while now. The project went into serious lab testing some time late in 2016/early 2017. By mid 2017 a number of research papers on EMALS started coming up from various institutes in India(attachments included). The EMALS research seems to have kicked off a Electromagnetic rail gun R&D in the country as well.
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@Parthu @Milspec @Falcon @_Anonymous_ @randomradio @vstol Jockey @Ashwin

Did I miss anything ?
Let's use this thread to track all EMALS related developments in the country.
 

Attachments

All info out about Indian rail gun developments are scattered & dis-organized. So let's summarize what we know so far about :

In the initial post I made an assumption that the EMALS related R&D work has kicked off the work in the rail gun department. That was a wrong assumption. Some files declassified in 2017 says work on rail gun have been ongoing since the late 80s & early 90s. In fact in 1994, a railgun with a 240 KJ capacitor fired 3.5 gm projectiles at 2 km/s. The gun had a square bore of unknown size.
1602516737324.png


In 2018, DRDO in their Annual Report stated that 8 projectiles were fired from a railgun with 1.6 MJ capacitor. The capacitor bank was set up by combining four 400 KJ capacitor modules. The rail gun had a 12mm square bore, it could fire 8 gm projectiles at 1.5 km/s.
DgJAr5BW0AYe9nK.jpg


Then DRDO decided to scale up. They developed a 30mm round bore railgun. This gun was officially named the Electromagnetic Rail Gun(EMRG). The other 2 guns had no official designations. Those were lab experiments conducted without much official budgets being put out for the experiments. The naming is important as it suggests official budgetary sanctions.

The EMRG in simulations :
Screenshot (64)erased.png


And the real thing :
maxresdefault (2).jpg

The eventual project goal is to fire a 1 kg projectile at 2 km/s from a 10 MJ capacity rail gun.

The 1 kg projectile probably wont be fired from a 30mm gun. That would make the projectile excessively long, thus reducing speed. A larger gun with a bigger bore dia would be needed.

This is where this recent simulation picture comes in. This talks about the R&D into design optimisation of a single & multi-turn rail gun :

Screenshot (865).png


A single turn rail gun is the traditional rail gun we are familiar with. A multi-turn rail gun is a cross between a rail gun & a coil gun. The working principle of a multi-turn rail gun is that of a single turn rail gun & a coil gun combined. Since there are 2 different mechanisms for propelling the projectile working together, reaching any targeted speed takes a smaller barrel length than with one mechanism. This means the overall barrel length of a multi-turn rail gun will be smaller while providing the same performance as a single turn rail gun. This could make rail gun more practical to replace the traditional explosive driven guns in some applications. Naval main guns for example.

Here is a Russian research paper on multi-turn rail gun:


Then comes the problem of power. If we have developed a 1.6 MJ capacitor bank we could simply bundle 10 of them & have a 16 MJ capacitor bank. That's more than the targeted 10 MJ capacity. Typical Indian "juggad" mindset. This is not the most efficient option but this will work.

If the Navy is the primary customer, we have to remember that on ships space is a luxury. Can't afford to carry a rail gun if it needs a massive space for capacitor banks. Luckily there has been some breakthroughs in super-capacitor tech in India.

Remember the Navy asking the NMRL to develop Air-Independent Propulsion(AIP) for the Kalvari class(P-75) submarines ?
Screenshot (848).png

Well that R&D work had some spin-offs. NMRL managed to develop naval grade super-capacitors. A capacitor bank built with these super-capacitors might allow us to reduce the size of the bank.
Screenshot (850).png


DRDO is also sponsoring academic institutes to do more R&D work in super-capacitors in hopes of further improvement of the tech. Some are already bearing fruits. Check post #2.

DRDO is taking a practical approach to weaponization of the tech. This is better than making a massive gun that's powerful but completely unpractical for real world use. I don't know how long before we have a practical working prototype. All the info here are at least a couple of years old.
 
All info out about Indian rail gun developments are scattered & dis-organized. So let's summarize what we know so far about :

In the initial post I made an assumption that the EMALS related R&D work has kicked off the work in the rail gun department. That was a wrong assumption. Some files declassified in 2017 says work on rail gun have been ongoing since the late 80s & early 90s. In fact in 1994, a railgun with a 240 KJ capacitor fired 3.5 gm projectiles at 2 km/s. The gun had a square bore of unknown size.
View attachment 18246

In 2018, DRDO in their Annual Report stated that 8 projectiles were fired from a railgun with 1.6 MJ capacitor. The capacitor bank was set up by combining four 400 KJ capacitor modules. The rail gun had a 12mm square bore, it could fire 8 gm projectiles at 1.5 km/s.
View attachment 18242

Then DRDO decided to scale up. They developed a 30mm round bore railgun. This gun was officially named the Electromagnetic Rail Gun(EMRG). The other 2 guns had no official designations. Those were lab experiments conducted without much official budgets being put out for the experiments. The naming is important as it suggests official budgetary sanctions.

The EMRG in simulations :
View attachment 18248

And the real thing :
View attachment 18241
The eventual project goal is to fire a 1 kg projectile at 2 km/s from a 10 MJ capacity rail gun.

The 1 kg projectile probably wont be fired from a 30mm gun. That would make the projectile excessively long, thus reducing speed. A larger gun with a bigger bore dia would be needed.

This is where this recent simulation picture comes in. This talks about the R&D into design optimisation of a single & multi-turn rail gun :

View attachment 18247

A single turn rail gun is the traditional rail gun we are familiar with. A multi-turn rail gun is a cross between a rail gun & a coil gun. The working principle of a multi-turn rail gun is that of a single turn rail gun & a coil gun combined. Since there are 2 different mechanisms for propelling the projectile working together, reaching any targeted speed takes a smaller barrel length than with one mechanism. This means the overall barrel length of a multi-turn rail gun will be smaller while providing the same performance as a single turn rail gun. This could make rail gun more practical to replace the traditional explosive driven guns in some applications. Naval main guns for example.

Here is a Russian research paper on multi-turn rail gun:


Then comes the problem of power. If we have developed a 1.6 MJ capacitor bank we could simply bundle 10 of them & have a 16 MJ capacitor bank. That's more than the targeted 10 MJ capacity. Typical Indian "juggad" mindset. This is not the most efficient option but this will work.

If the Navy is the primary customer, we have to remember that on ships space is a luxury. Can't afford to carry a rail gun if it needs a massive space for capacitor banks. Luckily there has been some breakthroughs in super-capacitor tech in India.

Remember the Navy asking the NMRL to develop Air-Independent Propulsion(AIP) for the Kalvari class(P-75) submarines ?
View attachment 18250
Well that R&D work had some spin-offs. NMRL managed to develop naval grade super-capacitors. A capacitor bank built with these super-capacitors might allow us to reduce the size of the bank.
View attachment 18245

DRDO is also sponsoring academic institutes to do more R&D work in super-capacitors in hopes of further improvement of the tech. Some are already bearing fruits. Check post #2.

DRDO is taking a practical approach to weaponization of the tech. This is better than making a massive gun that's powerful but completely unpractical for real world use. I don't know how long before we have a practical working prototype. All the info here are at least a couple of years old.
All the necessary building blocks seem to be in place. It seems to be a question of putting them together & testing it. At least that's the impression I get reading this post & the thread. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
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Quite a bit of progress has been made on the railgun since I last posted about this. Check post #4 on this thread.

So they have moved up to 45mm bore from the 30mm known previously. DRDO has also achieved >2000 m/s with 1kg projectiles on the current 10 MJ gun. The next step is 100 MJ EM gun that can shoot 155mm projectiles weighing 18kgs at >2000 m/s. The kinetic energy of that kind of projectile would be a fraction of the KE of say a Brahmos missile, but it would be significantly higher than that of any conventional artillery today.

Given the propulsive mechanism involved there is very little chance that the projectile itself will carry high explosives. The range of 100-400 km is also impressive. I imagine accuracy will suffer at these ranges. Currently used artillery guidance mechanisms like Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) &/or GPS can have trouble coping with the very strong EM field generated in the railgun barrel. How that will that be solved remains to be seen.

Perhaps the most important update is it the following pictures:

The current 10 MJ capacity 45mm bore gun:
Screenshot (914).png


The proposed 100 MJ capacity 155mm bore gun:
1664907577906.png


The upcoming design is not a fixed gun like the current gun (or the guns that came before it). The new gun can traverse i.e. rotate to point at a target. This is a big development. A fixed gun will have fixed dampeners & constraining those dampeners is a relatively easy task. This is a luxury that non-fixed guns don't have. Guns that can traverse need active damping systems that moves with the barrel. Those cannot be designed without a significant amount of confidence in the barrel design. In a rail gun, barrel design is everything.

This new gun & the new infra being built can provide useful data for the military with the 1st set of real-world usage data as to what they can expect from a rail gun when it is ready for service.
 
Would it be practical/economical to make the current 10MJ gun which is successfully created, be turned into a viable weapon at this stage?
I am always in favour of turning a set milestone success into a product variant if it is achievable under economic scale. Same could be done with HSTDV which achieved 23sec successful burn. I guess we have a smaller research group and very little support group behind them.
 
Would it be practical/economical to make the current 10MJ gun which is successfully created, be turned into a viable weapon at this stage?
Let's see....

Comparing some of our current artillery guns we are with the 10 MJ rail gun in terms of KE we have:

CRN-91 naval gun:

Caliber:
30x165mm
Max. Range: ~4km
Projectile Weight: ~0.4kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~1100m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~242,000 Joules or 0.242 MJ

OTO Melara 76mm naval gun:

Caliber:
76x636mm
Max. Range: ~16km
Projectile Weight: ~6.3kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~900m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~2,551,500 Joules or 2.552 MJ

Dhanush artillery gun:

Caliber: 155x45mm
Max. Range: ~38km
Projectile Weight: ~40kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~800m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~12,800,000 Joules or 12.8 MJ

ATAGS:

Caliber: 155x52mm
Max. Range: ~52km
Projectile Weight: ~40kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~900m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~16,200,000 Joules or 16.2 MJ

DRDO's 10MJ Railgun:

Caliber:
45mm
Max. Range: ~100km
Projectile Weight: ~1kg
Muzzle Velocity: >2000m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~2,000,000 Joules or 2 MJ

The current railgun's energy levels are similar to the Navy's 76mm SRGM. In its current configuration the Rail gun can be practical as a fixed land-based weapon. But it won't be nearly as portable as say the ATAGS. It will easily cut through hardened infantry bunkers, foxholes, trenches etc. This can certainly be useful along the LoC & LAC. But then the Army has 105 to 155mm artillery that can all that and more. The rail gun has no USPs as of now, but it does have significant drawbacks.

Also, the Army has a problem with the mobility of the ATAGS at high altitudes. You can imagine their reaction to a new gun that would be heavier, fixed, will have a significantly higher signature/power consumption and most importantly a completely different working mechanism. The Army will have none of this.

The main potential of the Rail gun is in the naval domain. The Navy, unlike the Army, is more open to experimentation. Maybe we can use some old training ships as a platform for this gun. This would be a good platform for naval gunners to gather experience on operating such a weapon. Also using an old naval ship for gun testing would be cheaper than building a whole new facility for rail guns which is DRDO is doing anyway.

Given the data we have:

DRDO's upcoming 100 MJ Railgun:

Caliber:
155mm
Max. Range: ~400km
Projectile Weight: ~18kg
Muzzle Velocity: >2000m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~36,000,000 Joules or 36 MJ

36 MJ is some unhinged levels of power. It will have more than twice the KE of the ATAGS. The ATAGS burns ~25,000 cubic centimeters of BMCS explosives to achieve its current KE. So, to achieve the 100 MJ railgun's level of KE on a conventional gun you would have to burn >50,000 cc of BMCS. Completely impractical. To achieve such power EM guns is the way to go.

The upcoming gun will be more efficient too:

Efficiency of the 10 MJ railgun= [(KE of projectile at the muzzle/Electrical power supplied) x100] %
= [(2/10) x100] = 20%
Efficiency of the 100 MJ railgun= [(KE of projectile at the muzzle/Electrical power supplied) x100] % = [(36/100) x100] = 36%

This project has direct implications for DRDO's own Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System which in turn is linked with the IAC-2. The Navy will be a big beneficiary of this program if DRDO can keep pace.
 
Let's see....

Comparing some of our current artillery guns we are with the 10 MJ rail gun in terms of KE we have:

CRN-91 naval gun:

Caliber:
30x165mm
Max. Range: ~4km
Projectile Weight: ~0.4kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~1100m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~242,000 Joules or 0.242 MJ

OTO Melara 76mm naval gun:

Caliber:
76x636mm
Max. Range: ~16km
Projectile Weight: ~6.3kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~900m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~2,551,500 Joules or 2.552 MJ

Dhanush artillery gun:

Caliber: 155x45mm
Max. Range: ~38km
Projectile Weight: ~40kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~800m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~12,800,000 Joules or 12.8 MJ

ATAGS:

Caliber: 155x52mm
Max. Range: ~52km
Projectile Weight: ~40kg
Muzzle Velocity: ~900m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~16,200,000 Joules or 16.2 MJ

DRDO's 10MJ Railgun:

Caliber:
45mm
Max. Range: ~100km
Projectile Weight: ~1kg
Muzzle Velocity: >2000m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~2,000,000 Joules or 2 MJ

The current railgun's energy levels are similar to the Navy's 76mm SRGM. In its current configuration the Rail gun can be practical as a fixed land-based weapon. But it won't be nearly as portable as say the ATAGS. It will easily cut through hardened infantry bunkers, foxholes, trenches etc. This can certainly be useful along the LoC & LAC. But then the Army has 105 to 155mm artillery that can all that and more. The rail gun has no USPs as of now, but it does have significant drawbacks.

Also, the Army has a problem with the mobility of the ATAGS at high altitudes. You can imagine their reaction to a new gun that would be heavier, fixed, will have a significantly higher signature/power consumption and most importantly a completely different working mechanism. The Army will have none of this.

The main potential of the Rail gun is in the naval domain. The Navy, unlike the Army, is more open to experimentation. Maybe we can use some old training ships as a platform for this gun. This would be a good platform for naval gunners to gather experience on operating such a weapon. Also using an old naval ship for gun testing would be cheaper than building a whole new facility for rail guns which is DRDO is doing anyway.

Given the data we have:

DRDO's upcoming 100 MJ Railgun:

Caliber:
155mm
Max. Range: ~400km
Projectile Weight: ~18kg
Muzzle Velocity: >2000m/s
KE of projectile at the muzzle: ~36,000,000 Joules or 36 MJ

36 MJ is some unhinged levels of power. It will have more than twice the KE of the ATAGS. The ATAGS burns ~25,000 cubic centimeters of BMCS explosives to achieve its current KE. So, to achieve the 100 MJ railgun's level of KE on a conventional gun you would have to burn >50,000 cc of BMCS. Completely impractical. To achieve such power EM guns is the way to go.

The upcoming gun will be more efficient too:

Efficiency of the 10 MJ railgun= [(KE of projectile at the muzzle/Electrical power supplied) x100] %
= [(2/10) x100] = 20%
Efficiency of the 100 MJ railgun= [(KE of projectile at the muzzle/Electrical power supplied) x100] % = [(36/100) x100] = 36%

This project has direct implications for DRDO's own Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System which in turn is linked with the IAC-2. The Navy will be a big beneficiary of this program if DRDO can keep pace.
So EMAL program is also on going.
 
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Spotted in DRDO CoE head cv listing of achievements, as also mentioned in the Tech Focus railgun issue, the detailed design of 100MJ gun firing 18kg projectile seems done, initially up to 150km, which you can guess would be another TD proto. Later upgraded to fire at 400km range. I think its not just the CAD design, but actual engg design of the gun.

Screenshot (4).png
 
Little bit on R&DE(E) work on emals system development. from old video of RDE


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