The impact of gun dimensions on the operational effectiveness of a Naval surface fleet equipped with long range electromagnetic guns

Abstract

The focus of the US Navy surface fleet in the post cold war era has shifted from confrontation with the (former) Soviet Union on the open ocean to supporting military operations ashore. This land attack mission requires large numbers of precision guided munitions to be delivered to aim points hundreds of miles inland. Navy long-range concept evaluations have identified electromagnetic launch as a technology with an excellent chance of affordably delivering these massed competent munitions. Preliminary studies have verified the feasibility of fulfilling this mission requirement with an electromagnetic (EM) gun. These same studies also amplified the need for the navy to articulate its operational requirements to the gun system designer so that a definitive engineering trade space study can be undertaken. This paper outlines a systems engineering approach to the land attack fleet whose major subsystems are: the targets, the targeting sensors, land attack missiles, carrier aviation, close in weapons systems, EM gun projectiles, the EM guns, the pulsed power system, the power distribution system, and the ships. Taking this fleet-level view identifies the operational role of the EM gun and the high leverage relationships between the operational, architectural and engineering trade space parameters. Identifying these roles and relationships will serve to facilitate the dialog between the naval fleet operator, the naval architect, and the electromagnetic gun engineer in an effort to identify tradeoffs that have a significant detrimental impact on gun development while incurring only minor penalties in operational capability.