Moved to off topic by me

Rail guns are cool. Although, I'm more into directed energy weapons (I.E. lasers), because their projectiles aren't affected by wind, gravity, barrel ware, rifling pattern or manufacturing inconsistancies. Their recoil is insanely low (almost none) and since light (that's all a laser is) travels much faster than anything else you would shoot it at, there is no need to lead your target.

However, I'm all for rail guns too. A small projectile travelling at several thousand miles per hour is much more effective than a larger projectile travelling slower.

My background... I'm retired US Navy, Electrician's Mate. I worked on the USS Wisconsin's refit in the late 80's and served aboard her in the Gulf War. And I can say with absolute first-hand experience that if they develop rail gun technology to a practical and usable level, they will NOT install them on the Iowa class ships and reactivate them. Why? Power.

Rail guns take gazillions of watts to power. They'd have to completely gut the iowas to put in the power systems required and completely rip out most of the antique power trunks from between tight bulkhead spaces. (Those things were the bane of my existance when we were upgrading her generators and installing cruise missile systems.)

The overhead involved to refit an Iowa with such a power intensive and bulky weapon system (bulk includes power generation and storage) would scuttle any project to do it based on cost alone. It will be cheaper and more practicaly to build a new class of ship around the weapon itself.

The only way the Iowas will see duty again is if they replace 1 or more 16" turrets with a vertical launch system or if they deploy rocket-boosted shells to enhance their range. Otherwise, their time is past as a practical weapon of war.

The Iowas were never designed to take the force of a railgun being fired off it. The entire ship would need complete refit down to the structure itself.

Not happening.


After 50 years of stress, I'd be surprise if it could fire all 9 guns at the exact same time and stay afloat let alone a single railgun.

2 problems with lasers:
Light spreads out over distance making them weaker the farther the target

They can only fire straight, they don't follow the earths curve so over long distance they are useless.

To response to the OP, no I don't think so. The reason is that our current gun technology is near the power of a railgun without the expense, yet we still don't use it. The air/missle faction is too entrenched to be dug out.

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Around the year 2000 a gun test was made with current technologies. That allowed the easy construction of 5.2"/65 - 5.2"/190 gun barrels. The former firing a normal weight shell reached a muzzle velocity of 4,000 fps. The latter reached 7,200 fps. That's 3.7 and 6.6 Mach Speed at sea level respectively.

These weapons, which would satisfy the 5-minute requirement for fire support (payload reaching within 5 minutes of being called anywhere), are not adopted despite the fact that missiles and aircraft can't perform anywhere near it's payload speed, range, and flight time. For comparison, a Tomahawk's reported max speed was 860 fps and an F-35's was 1760 fps. It might take ten-thirty minutes for a plane/missile to reach the target area, by which time majority of mobile assets, as noted by simulations, would have fled the area.

Btw, the 5.2"/190 is ~24% longer than a 16"/50 and has much thinner lining. This is mainly due to, much better and less corrosive propellants and much stronger gun barrel materials (1939 gun steel was build to 53,000 lb/in^2 yield strength, we current can make barrels with materials with 215,000 lb/in^2 yield strength).

This along with hyper aerodynamic projectiles (which have been designed before - but not in use due to DoD requirements - more details following) allows ranges in excess of 200+ miles. A 6.1"/52 firing a 121 lb shell can reach 62 miles today with no other assistance. A pure 16"/50 superheavy gun using modern design and propellants could have 40% more muzzle velocity. The kicker is that the shell will land within 5 minutes at practically any range and you can fire in rapid succession.

The reason these hyper aerodynamic projectiles and long barrels are not used is because weapons today must fit pre-existing systems. That is part of the reason why tanks main guns all round have not been upgraded. Designers are forced to work with the limited space and strength of the existing turrets.

However, if we are going to go as far as to refit/recom the Iowas with railguns - then we'll be doing deep enough reconstruction to warrant new turret designs. Railguns would require ripping out the turret as is and potentially replacing the barbette structure.

Now some points. High muzzle velocity is possible with extremely long barrel life. This is due to the vast improvement in explosives and propellants. We have much more powerful propellants that are also less corrosive. Even then, the nature of gun barrel design today allows use to break barrels into multiple sections so if one section is worn, we can just replace one section instead of the whole thing - as in the past - but that's besides the point.

The fact of the matter is, propellants and shell design has already reached the point that extremely high muzzle velocities can be achieved while being much shorter than a Paris Gun and creating much less chamber pressure.

Before anyone says we can't make the gun barrels today, that's completely false. The gun armories have shrunk, but been replaced by automated barrel forging machines. One of these machines could have forged every barrel for every Sherman tank used in WW-II and every 5-inch gun used by the US navy prior to? the Normandy invasion with capacity to spare. That's more than 58,000 barrels within a 29 month period. That's over 2000 barrels per month.

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That's the approximate current state of conventional gun technology today. If that didn't make the USN decide to change, I highly doubt a few railguns or dubious worth (very expensive and power-consuming for only marginal ultility!) would change their minds.

iowas will never be re-commissioned for use in the navy for much of the same reason they were essentially over taken by CV's as the main capital ship during WW2. AIRCRAFT!

while yes the iowas can take a huge beating even by todays standards as even a harpoon anti ship missle cannot penetrate is belt armor ( missle's dont plunge like free fall armor pierce bombs) since the fly just above the water and are technically only designed for penetrating thin skin and light armor... it would essentially dent the hull only!

Torpedo's from a sub on the other hand would WTF PWN an iowa with 1 shot as the iowas torpedo defense was not all that good during WW2 and today would be the achiles heel of the ship.

US marines however want the ship for landing support since a 16" shell, can do far better damage at softening hardened targets for a helluva lot cheaper than a missle can....

but all this gets summed up by a few simple reasons:

cost to refit the iowas (essentially rebuild them) in excess $3 billion US dollars per ship
they would be essentially an over sized CGN (guided missile cruiser) with 5 times the crew

limited support range (main guns) approx 35 mile gun range

this is the biggest reason you will not see an iowa in service again:

they cannot keep up with the current CV's, the last time the iowas were in action during the 1991 gulf war, they could only make 25 - 29 kts (WW2 saw 33-34) this is a result of hull design, the current carriers make 35+ kts indefinately and any ship that gets introduced into service (new or old) has to maintain cruise speed that matches the carriers (navy guideline)

all of this info can be checked on wiki and other notable web sites about naval ships.

as much as i would love to see 1 or more of the iowas back in action, it will never happen... least according to the US navy for many of the reasons listed here

Can it shoot planes?