Research Summaries

Back Railgun Capability on Amphibious Ships

Fiscal Year 2020
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department NPS Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Beery, Paul T.
Paulo, Eugene P.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Our team proposes to explore the operational impact of adding a railgun to an amphibious ship through the application of systems engineering, systems architecting, and systems simulation analysis to a scenario based on a CONOPS developed and explored by other student teams at NPS as part of their Wargaming course. We expect to identify these potential capability improvements and impacts based on adding a railgun weapon system to LDP-17 Class Ships or other Large Deck Ships in support of engagement of a variety of enemy systems, with the purpose of strike and/or defending own ship or surface action group. Impact of railgun on overall operational effectiveness will include some aspects of ship integration to include repetition rate, salvo size, and timing to the capacity of the LPD17 class electrical system supplemented with varying levels of energy storage. Our research objectives include assessment of improvement to overall operational effectiveness that can be provided by the employment of a railgun on an LDP-17 ship, as well as determining the most significant factors (to include salvo size, repetition rate, timing⿦) in determining the contribution to operational effectiveness of the LPD-17 by the presence of a railgun. Our approach will be to leverage experience gained by applying systems engineering and systems architecting to our recent projects involving the operational navy and missions at sea that consider new technologies (including unmanned systems such as Sea Hunter) and operational concepts (such as distributed maritime operations).
Keywords Amphibious Assault Ship Hypervelocity projectiles Railgun
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal