Electromagnetic weapons: Türkiye makes Russia and the US backward

With speeds reaching Mach 6 in testing, Türkiye's electromagnetic gun has overshadowed Russia and the US in this field.

Turkish defense contractor Aselsan has achieved an incredible feat in testing an electromagnetic weapon (EMT) when the bullet was fired at a speed of up to Mach 6. With that, the defense contractor has begun entering the production phase.

Aselsan said the EMT technology is designed to be used as an anti-aircraft artillery system that can be effective at distances of up to 300km with high energy and an exit velocity of 2,000-2,500m/s.

Türkiye tests electromagnetic gun.

Manufacturer Aselsan successfully conducted live-fire tests from December 26 to 29, 2016. The maximum effective range of this weapon is up to 300km. In addition to attacking land and warships, Aselsan's electromagnetic weapons can also be used in air defense missions.

The company said it would continue to develop this field and demonstrate the EMT prototype at the International Defense Exhibition held in Istanbul in early May 2017. With what it has achieved, Türkiye has surpassed Russia and overshadowed the previous achievements of the US in the field of electromagnetic weapons.

According to Mr. Franz Klintsevich, Senator and First Deputy Chairman of the Security and Defense Committee of the Federation Council of Russia: "What the US announced about their electromagnetic cannon does not surprise us because Russia has been working on developing similar weapons for a long time," Mr. Franz Klintsevich stated.

Meanwhile, Russia's Rossiyskaya Gazeta (RG) newspaper in March 2017 unexpectedly revealed that Russia's electromagnetic gun, currently being researched by the High Temperature Research Institute (under the Academy of Sciences) in Shatura, has had successful tests and achieved a speed 3 times faster than the American electromagnetic gun.

"In laboratory tests, we tested an electromagnetic gun that fired a bullet weighing only a few tens of grams at a speed of up to 6.25 km/s (22,500 km/h), which is very close to the first cosmic speed," said Alexey Shurupov, director of the Institute of High Temperature Research at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Shatura.

With the terrifying speed of the bullet made by the above laboratory in Russia, no protective layer of current military equipment can withstand it, from warships, tanks, planes. And it is said to fly 3 times faster than the speed of the American electromagnetic cannon in the test (7,000km/h).

According to leading defense experts, success with electromagnetic weapons could change the nature of future naval warfare. Compared to missiles, electromagnetic weapons have many advantages in terms of low cost of use, easy maintenance and high combat performance. In fact, no matter how large a warship is, it can only carry a certain number of missiles.

When used up to reload, the warship is forced to return to port or a specialized system to reload. Electric weapons do not need this because the ammunition structure is small, can be easily transported like conventional artillery shells, and can even be supplied at sea.

In combat, missiles can be affected by jamming factors that can miss the target if the guidance system is disabled. This is not the case with electromagnetic weapons.

The ability to fly purely inertial, supersonic speed, the attack warhead has a small cross-section reflector, so it is almost impossible to prevent or interfere with them. With a high muzzle velocity, the destructive ability of the railgun shell fired is no different from that of heavy explosive warheads.

In terms of cost, each attack missile costs from hundreds to millions of USD per unit, while each unit of electromagnetic rail gun costs only a few tens of thousands of USD. Meanwhile, the range of the rail gun has reached almost the same level as that of popular missiles today.

According to Baodatviet