Are Railgun Tanks Practical?

The "20 year" guess was overly generous. I was, admittedly, pretty tired when I made this video. I think railguns will eventually show up on tanks, but I don't think they will fully replace conventional cannons. I could have done a much better job of explaining that.

There are already some handheld railguns, poverwise comparable to 0.22LR (in situations under 30 meters). If the shooter has a backpack, or even a hand pushed cart, full of bateries, or (possibly even better) condenser(s), than the "bang" sudenly compares to firearms. Railgun will be much easier to mount on APC than tank - simply because in APC there is extra space for extra devices. If the APCs powerpack is hooked up a shitton of condensers in the troop compartment, AND IN the barrel of said railgun, than it might get to the "danger to other armoured vehicles" level of firepower.

Types of electromagnetic weaponry. Railgun, Mach-gun, coilgun, Gauss Cannon, and Shrapnel Accelerator. Boi(s). I don't know why, but I hate when people call mach-guns and coilguns, railguns it pisses me off so much.

Railgun Tanks are still practical, just the cannon doesn’t use a ton of energy unlike the navy built railgun. The energy source should be as small as an average tank engine, supposedly a mini nuclear reactor or high energy batteries for a propellant source . Overall its still not possible today but somewhere in the 2060’s its most probable.

Or you can increase the size and caliber of the round without occupying too much space in the tank, so you can have more ammo with the same size

Well a tank with A railgun would be great it has more penetrating power plus they don't new to worry about recoil and vibration.

MAC ROUNDS?! IN ATMOSPHERE?!

Why do you use a furry icon yet talk about military stuff?🇲🇩🇲🇩🇲🇩

My assumption is that the future of tanks will be piloted drones the size and weight as Honda civics, fire silent and smokeless railguns that try to LIMIT the amount of penetration they have, while being 3x as durable and no particular weaknesses in armour coverage.

HALO tends to make use of coil-guns, which have a higher maximum velocity but are technically more complicated. More or less.

👍.

tbh this tech will most likely be very niche and we will never see large amount of tanks/ships/planes equipped with such weapons, this is because drones and guided missiles offer much more flexability than railguns, being able to shoot from defended/concealed location while having perfect accuracy is a better option than a railgun, most likely they will only be used on ships or large planes because in air or on sea you cant really hide. The future for tanks is to become unmanned and downscaled, most likely in the next 100 years tanks would become 1/2 a size of your car, unmanned heavy weapon platforms, this is a problem for weapons like railgun because it can never be as small as atgm or conventional cannon and the desire of military to downscale tanks will most likely out run the ability of weapon engineers to downscale railguns (well in a short term future atleast).

One thing you missed is real guns take up a lot of power to fire a single shot this may not be a problem for warships but for tanks this could be a serious problem with space

This is a very interesting topic and your conclusions might be completely wrong depending on what kind of rail gun design we are talking about.

My design idea would be a hybrid design of chemical propulsion and electric field propulsion.
1st stage the projectile gets initially accelerated by a chemical component (black powder type)
2nd stage the rail gun or gauss rifle design takes over, senses the projectile and increases its speed further.

The advantage of this design would be to safe electrical energy, less wear and tear on the electrical components (rails / coils etc.), cheaper, more practical, more feasable.

For example, your ammo capacity etc might be and probably will be completely off. The space typically used for ammo will be used up and even more so for batteries, cpacitors etc.

Also rail guns do not have a barrel they have rails.

And there is no way rail guns in tanks will be a thing in 20 years. Your estimation is probably very far off

Maybe 50 years at best lol.

This is very interesting and I do plan on using this as inspiration for my own Sci-fi tank concept but what I'm curious about is what should I use for Sci-fi IFV's with autocannons since a railgun likely wouldn't have the correct rate of fire but what would be a good concept for an autocannon on a Sci-fi IFV

Hello. Railguns are a wet dream for people who do not understand how they work and what problems they cause.

Nice unsc falcon

What we really need to develop is coil guns. Instead of rail slippers the round is held magnetically then accelerated. This removes the barrel wear issue.

This commentary with the organ background music is so unreal

Could you have a railgun that splits when not in combat like a jaw? That may allow the barrel to stay intact while keeping them on the vehicle

I mean even if the projectile becomes molten goo it would be deadly
Thats pretty much what an rpg is

Railguns are terrible in terms of barrel wear. Coil/gauss guns are good with that but poor on actual muzzle velocity, unless you used cryogenics to either cool down the existing conductor to reduce its resistance, or employed a superconductor that has no resistance whatsoever.

Well, what if they made a railgun tank design that mitigates the cons?

Coil guns might be better than rail guns

Coils attach to a ring and deactivate when passes by laser, thus activating the next one. Possibly no physical contact, leading to longer lifespan.

Railguns, as you said, push both the projectile forward and the rails apart.

Smaller projectile means more space

Well, you'll need electricity, and a lot.
So either you'll need a capacitor or a huge battery.

If you choose a huge battery then you can also use that battery to propel the tank.

(Suddenly EVs become a lot more interesting)

Fun Fact:

The MAC guns in Halo are coilguns, which use magnetic coils to launch projectiles instead of using magnetic rails.

Are Coilgun Anti-Tanks Practical?

Not at all, the power requirements are insane, and unless you put a powerplant on a tank your screwed, and dont even think about an extension cord

I love watching halo while hearing yoh talk about tanks

I'm just an armchair engineer, like most other people here, but I wouldn't say a railgun is necessarily safer than a normal gun. Accelerating a projectile that weighs ~15kg to Mach 6-8 takes a lot of energy which needs to be stored somehow. Just because the energy is electrical potential (stored in a capacitor bank), chemical potential (stored in batteries) or magnetic potential (stored in an inductor), doesn't mean it couldn't accidentally be released suddenly (and catastrophically). Just look at Teslas, which have had a habit of spontaneously combusting.

Hey Spookston, what if you a attach a Railgun to a Hover tank? Would that be practical?

Good clip :)

A concept for fixing the barrel wearing out could be to make the gun barrel that holds the beams (or whatever propulses the slug) be slightly thicker, in order to carry a system to eject the beam and replace it with a new one, where it gets ejected in the same direction as the bullets are fired, and beams (for instance, the lower beam) move up into position and are locked in place.
I'm not sure this will work as i thought it would, since i've never documented myself much nor studied them, this theory might not work.

Well, Pentagon recently scrapped the Navy railgun program, so that's that

Solution: Build bigger tanks!!! ---->BOLO!

what about putting a railgun on a SUBMARINE

Halo uses coilguns for their ships now coilguns are better than railguns because railgun will tear itself apart and coilguns will not

Smaller calibre isn't always good. The projectile still need to be of a certain size and mass to actually be able to deliver all those KE that it stored. And a projectile can only deliver as much energy as its mass allowed, thus, the projectile still need to be at at least 100mm calibre for optimal KE deliverence....They also need to be big enough to handle the effect that atmosphere and space dust have on the projectile...disintegration will turn all that KE into wasted heat.

They need to come up with small nuclear reactors to power tanks and jet fighters

Someone once told railguns on tanks is impossible, it will never happen.

Rail gun exists

Gauss:Hold my beer

I don't think that a rail gun tank or MBT will be practical, but a tank destroyer with advanced lenses on the optics could be really good for destroying enemy tanks from long range

Short answer:yes
Long answer: yes, it could be a very viable armor peircing for building clearing, anti tank, anti air, and more

The barrel physical size wouldnt be any smaller than current normal tank gun barrels. Infact,, i think it could be longer and thicker.

Why longer? The step-up acceleration of a railgun works the entire length of the barrel. The longer the ammo is spent in the barrel accelerating, the less strain on the barrel itself. Ie: pumping 100MJ of electricity along a 10m long barrel would be less stressful for the barrel compared to a 5m long barrel.

Why thicker? Cooling. Even if we manage to sort out the power delivery material used, those babies will get hot real quick. Its not a big deal if the barrel is just a solid hollowed out cylinder used to fire standard rounds, but electromagnetism tend to be affected by heat. It might lose its effectiveness if the barrel is too hot.

Ahh another man of video game culture

Imagine a railgun that shoots a projectile... and that projectile contains a magnetic coil that shoots out another projectile.

Yo dawg, I heard you like railguns.

This is like asking in the 1500s if an armored cannon wagon is practical of course its not

Short simple videos, love em but wish they were longer.