Han (The Preble) shot first.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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It has been suggested before that we might one day see a return of the battleships. The one technology that might allow it is truly effective rail gun technology. I remember seeing a story years ago speculating that such a ship parked of the coast of North Korea might be able to lodge shells anywhere onto the Korean Peninsula from well offshore.
Missiles are always likely to have their advantages, including range and maneuverability. But the potential advantage of railguns is a very cheap cost per shot. And instead of a ship's hold full of explosive-stuffed missiles, your ship has a reactor, a bank of capacitors, and a whole bunch of shells that are little more than big slugs of inert metal.
This article for example suggests a potential railgun range of 200 km.
Us truly mastering railguns is one of the few scenarios that we might actually see a return of the old battleships. Except instead of artillery shells, they'll be lobbing railgun slugs. And instead of being protected by foot-thick steel armor, they'll be protected by a porcupine lattice of laser defense systems.
How would a battleship defend itself against railguns?
Or would this be a "whoever shoots first wins" scenario?
Oblique angles on all possible bulkheads, and probably the biggest fuck-you electromagnet the military can strap onto a ship.
The way I understand it, a railgun slug by definition of the way a railgun works is required to be made of ferrous metal. We can use that to defend against it. A quarter second blip of extreme magnetism may be able to repel the bullet (or, alternatively, attract it off course from the main body of the ship). You'll EMP the shit out of anything on board, but eh, you can harden against that if you know it's coming.
Only other solution I can think of off hand is slagging the incoming round with laser fire but I have trouble believing you'd be able to detect, target, and vaporize an incoming railgun round in the amount of time you have between detection and impact. Those suckers move fast. Average result feels like it would be, congrats, you weren't hit by a railgun round, but you have been hit by ten pounds of liquid metal moving at nearly relativistic speeds. Potato potato.
Though, with the magnetic defense, the logical next step here is to develop a sort of ferrous sabot round that can accelerate the (non ferrous) payload and then release it to then completely not give any shits about further magnets. You pull that off and your opponent will have to rely on a laser intercept system or similar, and then - yeah, basically, whoever shoots first wins.
There's a lot to be said for good armor with good oblique angles though. Deflecting force is always going to be easier than absorbing it. If you can arrange to never give your enemy a good shot at a good flat plane, they'll have a lot harder time penetrating your armor no matter how fast their shots are going. This won't save you all the time but it'll do a lot more than you'd probably expect.
I'm not sure. Assumedly, the same way it would protect itself against ballistic missiles.
Doing an aikido roll at the last moment?