A novel railgun launch package concept

Low parasitic mass, high muzzle velocity railgun launch packages are required for railguns to compete with conventional guns. This paper describes a launch package concept for long rod penetrators which has the potential of achieving less than 50% parasitic mass and 3 km/s muzzle velocity. The launch package uses a new armature, a magnetic obturator design which does not require additional mass for contact loading and distributes the acceleration forces along the body of the projectile. This paper describes the launch package concept, summarizes the mechanical and magnetic analyses conducted, and presents subscale test results with velocities up to 3 km/s.