  Railguns can convert large quantities of electrical energy into kinetic
energy of the projectile. This was demon- strated by the 33 MJ muzzle energy
shot performed in 2010 in the framework of the Office of Naval Research (ONR)
electromag- netic railgun program. Since then, railguns are a prime candidate
for future long range artillery systems. In this scenario, a heavy projectile
(several kilograms) is accelerated to approx. 2.5 km/s muzzle velocity. While
the primary interest for such a hypersonic projectile is the bombardment of
targets being hundreds of kilometers away, they can also be used to counter
airplane attacks or in other direct fire scenarios. In these cases, the large
initial velocity significantly reduces the time to impact the target. In this
study we investigate a scenario, where a future shipboard railgun installation
delivers the same kinetic energy to a target as the explosive round of a
contemporary European ship artillery system. At the same time the railgun
outperforms the current artillery systems in range. For this scenario a first
draft for the parameters of a railgun system were derived. For the flight-path
of the projectile, trajectories for different launch angles were simulated and
the aero-thermodynamic heating was estimated using engineering-tools developed
within the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This enables the assessment of the
feasibility of the different strike scenarios, as well as the identification of
the limits of the technology. It is envisioned that this baseline design can be
used as a helpful starting point for discussions of a possible electrical
weaponization of future European warships.
