Why are countries competing to develop electromagnetic guns?

Why are countries competing to develop electromagnetic guns? How far has it developed?

I often see electromagnetic guns in the media. I would like to ask where the electromagnetic gun is really powerful, to what extent it has developed now, and how is the level of electromagnetic gun in China?

Electromagnetic gun refers to a new kinetic energy weapon system that uses electromagnetic force to launch ultra-high-speed shells and uses its huge kinetic energy to damage targets. Traditional artillery uses chemical energy such as gunpowder gas pressure to throw projectiles. Compared with electromagnetic gun, electromagnetic gun uses electromagnetic force instead of chemical energy, so it has many advantages.

First of all, the propellant gas has no energy consumption (when the traditional artillery is fired, the projectile must advance at a high speed, and the propellant gas must also advance at a high speed), and the energy utilization rate is high, which can break through the initial velocity limit of the traditional artillery, reach a very high initial velocity, and have a long range (easily reaching 100 km or more). Secondly, electric energy can be generated by any primary energy such as diesel engines and nuclear reactors; There is no sound, smoke and muzzle flame when shooting, which has good shooting concealment; The electric energy can be selected and adjusted according to the nature and distance of the target, with high efficiency; The launching process can be completely controlled by computer, which has good launching stability and is easier to achieve high precision. Therefore, electromagnetic gun is considered as a new weapon system in the future, which will lead to the revolution of gun technology. According to the principle, electromagnetic guns can be divided into coilgun, rail guns and reconnection guns. Among them, coilgun is the earliest developed electromagnetic gun style, which consists of fixed coil and projectile coil. The fixed coil is equivalent to the barrel. When electrified, a moving magnetic field will be formed, and an induced current will be generated in the projectile coil. Coilgun uses the electromagnetic force of the interaction between magnetic field and induced current to accelerate the projectile coil and make the projectile shoot at high speed.

The structure of the rail gun is relatively simple, which consists of guide rail, launching component, power supply system and control system. The two tracks are placed in parallel and run through the barrel. The launching assembly consists of projectiles, light bullet racks and propulsion plates, which are placed between the two tracks together with the conductive armature. The projectile is fixed by the projectile holder, and the pulse forming network, capacitor bank or rotating mechanical device provide the electric energy needed for launching. The pulse forming network energizes one track, and the current flows to the other track through the conductor armature, thus generating a strong magnetic field perpendicular to the track and a force opposite to the current around the two tracks respectively. The interaction between the magnetic field and the current flowing through the armature produces Lorentz force along the axial direction of the barrel, which accelerates the launching assembly and armature to ultra-high speed along the track. When the launching assembly leaves the muzzle, the projectile, armature and propulsion plate are separated from the projectile, and the projectile begins to fly to the target. The earliest railgun was invented by Frenchman Villeruber in 1920. Because of its relatively simple structure and easy realization, rail gun has become the focus of electromagnetic gun development at present.

Reconnecting gun is the latest development form of electromagnetic gun, and it is a multi-stage acceleration contactless electromagnetic launcher. The reconnection gun has no barrel, which requires the projectile to have a certain initial velocity before entering the reconnection gun. It works by using two magnetic fields to re-attract and re-launch objects. When two magnetic fields interact and expand into a volume or a new magnetic field structure, the projectile is pushed forward at high speed. Because the reconnection gun is a tubeless gun, there is no overheating and ablation problem, so it is considered as the prototype of the future space-based ultra-high-speed electromagnetic gun.

Since the 1980s, the United States, the Soviet Union/Russia, Britain, France, China, Japan, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and other countries have successively established laboratories and invested a lot of manpower and financial resources in research, which made the railgun technology develop rapidly, among which the United States is in a leading position in the development of railgun technology. In August, 2005, the U.S. military began a formal project to develop rail guns. According to the public data of the US military, the initial velocity of the prototype gun of the shipborne electromagnetic gun is 2500m/s, and the projectile launched can hit the target at Mach 5, and the firing rate exceeds 6 rounds per minute. Due to the huge kinetic energy of the projectile, the killing effect of the shipborne electromagnetic gun is 3 ~ 5 times that of the existing naval gun, and the maximum range can reach hundreds of kilometers. The US Navy hopes that by 2030, the muzzle kinetic energy of the shipborne railgun will reach 64 MJ and the maximum range will reach 32 1 km to replace the "advanced shipborne gun system" of155 mm. According to American media reports, the No.3 ship of the "zumwalt" class destroyer "Lyndon B. Johnson" will take the lead in reloading the railgun.

China's railguns have not been publicly reported, but the media reported that Ma Weiming, a professor of PLA Naval Engineering University, has solved a series of world-class scientific and technological problems in the field of new integrated power generation technology and electromagnetic launch technology for ships, and the innovative scientific research team led by Ma Weiming has also made a cluster breakthrough in the field of electromagnetic launch technology for more than 10 years, which not only achieved synchronous development with the strongest countries in the world, but also pioneered many technologies in the world. It can be seen that China is very strong in electromagnetic emission technology.