LAUNCHING TACTICALLY CONFIGURED SOLID ARMATURE PROJECTILES FROM LARGEAND MEDIUM CALIBER RAILGUNS - RESULTS FROM THE DRA TEST PROGRAM

One of the main thrusts of the United Kingdom EM gun programme is to p rove the feasibility of accurate hypervelocity flight of projectiles l aunched from an EM gun. Several notable successes have been achieved i n pursuit of this goal. To date DRA has carried out almost 70 large an d medium calibre solid armature experiments using 40mm and 90mm round bore railguns. With one or two exceptions all firings have employed mo nolithic aluminium alloy armatures, the majority in base-push configur ation So far, approximately half of the shots have been full tactical packages with discarding sabots and long rod sub-projectiles flown ove r range. This paper presents results from these tactical package firin gs and observations on armature performance based on analysis of shot data and recovered specimens. Other gun issues that may be important t o any future implementation of EML technology in a weapons system are also discussed.