The main gun is a Rail gun.

You know the US Navy has just tested its first railgun a few months back.  It has been calculated that it would have an IMPACT velocity greater then mach 5, at about 180 miles away.  Its so powerful that they can't risk using explosive shells, mass rounds are going to be more effective with that kind of impact velocity anyways.  Now all the Navy needs is a reactor that can actually provide the power for these insane guns...

They have a power generator in the works, yet the heat inside of it always melts the plates containing the reaction. 

I have heard that one important bottleneck is the capacitor technology...the charge up time can be a real killer for getting lots of shots off quickly...I suppose that isn't a problem for a long range precision strike, but if you were looking to replace more conventional weapons (let's just be theoretical and say a machine gun) then it'd be a problem...

I suppose it doesn't matter though if, as you say, longevity (and maybe heat dissipation) is the biggest issue...simply put, firing faster ain't going to help so much if your device breaks while you're using it...

Actually saw an interesting talk on some of the new capacitor technology they are working on, but they were more concerned with non-military applications which kind of bummed me out...new rechargeable batteries can only be so interesting....

I'm not going to lie, I didn't believe you at first when you said TMV could help batteries so I actually looked it up...

That is quite impressive...considering the age of some of the articles (late 2010) I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention on developments recently (or maybe the rock I live under is too big)...is this stuff actually being used in anything commercial or is it still in the research phase?

haha yeah i remember reading a blurb in the WSJ about that, very cool stuff indeed.  Something creepy about using viruses in that way. 

If I remember correctly they had a piece of "paper" that was really a virus that had 1/4 of a charge of a double A battery.  Very cool stuff.  Once it is implimented I can say that cellphones are a deadly virus needing to be contained!

@ nate

2 times as powerful? holy guacamole.  Would be crazy to see one of these bad boys bring back a submarine deck gun that would fire 360 miles away at an aircraft carrier, the size of the crater in the carrier would probably be pretty big.  I wonder how many shots it would take?  Sign me up for that duty any day of the week (almost as fun firing off an adcap torpedo or tomohawk missile).  i wouldn't be surprise if phalanx guns would have a hard time dealing with that high speed of a projectile, i'm not even sure if we have the capability to target something that small moving that fast. 

@ goa

From what i've seen of the official demonstration vids, the shot itself isn't particularly large(no WW2 style battleship shots).

Well the phalanx anti-missile system onboard a ship might be able to do it, yet mach 5+ is fast.  Phalanx systems aren't exactly "small arms fire"(lol) and would really need enough bang to destroy the aerodynamics of the shot, and considering the high ballistic arc (pretty much attacking from above) any small push to either side would throw off targeting and render the shot potentially harmless.  Remember its travelling at mach 5, and small things would be hitting it travelling at slower speeds, yet still would be like mini brick walls having a few mach in speed difference.  Also, phalanx systems fire a LOT of rounds per second, and the energy of any impact would be enourmous.   Any sailors on the boat would be afraid of some shrapnel, as the round would likely be pulverized into thousands of pieces.  If I remember rightly the shrapnel issue would be because of the engagement range of the phalanx guns, something that I don't remember, and wouldn't tell you If I did, lol.

At visual range I don't think you would have a chance in hell of stopping one of these shots(visual is something like 26miles to the edge of the horizon).  I don't know what the muzzle velocity is, but its gonna be high, and only 26 miles of wind resistance isn't going to do much to that shot.  Fast and mean, and oh so effective.  I wonder how deeply you could penetrate into a mountain with one of these things.  The shots sure would be cheaper then a tomahawk missile.

The main issue imo, would be tracking a small fast moving target to get the right anti missile weapon on target at the right time.

Not yet anyways.

What are they, something between 20-40mm rounds? By ships standards I consider that small arms.

So maybe Phalanx round would be effective as well if they hit the thing. Interesting.

You're probably referring to the sonic boom.  I suppose it would exert a force on an object attempting to approach it from the side, but for an object in front of it, it would have little to no effect.

Project Thor

Yep I agree with you ase of spadez.  Yet I'm also looking ahead to see what would be improved, and perhaps the phalanx system could be improved to deal with this threat.  After all, warfare capability constantly evolves, once someone has a powerful capability, someone will spend a lot to provide a powerful defense to that capability.  I don't profess to know all the intricacies of the physics involved at such an encounter, i'm just talking about it because well, its fun and its also very cool, imo.

I would be cautious about using such a device underwater... I'd be concerned that the water itself would tear the projectile to shreds.

In the event of the submarine surfacing you run into another problem: as mentioned previously the rails undergo friction, which degrades them. In addition, you will get electrical arcing (which is a big portion of the fireball that you see in those test shots). If a submarine fires the weapon shortly after surfacing, I would be concerned that the salt water would conduct the current from the rails to some other location that it's not supposed to go.

@ nate

Na you don't need to be genius to solve the corrosion issue.  You would have to store the gun internally(in a specially sealed, water free environment using a demoisturizer to limit corrosion...these are standard on submarines as it is, so this is completely doable) and set it up to fire as a deck gun via a "crane" apparatus that would require a small amount of setup before use. You would need calm seas and clear air to fire, yet i'm sure there would be testing to make it as "rough weather ready" as possible.  This would be a rather large submarine, and it would have to have a keel or risk being flipped after it shoots (a submarine normally has a round hull).  This thing probably wouldn't be winning any sound silencing competitions, yet its ability to be something like a large submersible sniper could be quite alluring for special ops.  Especially if they could find a way to automate gun setup once the ship surfaces.

Now all the maintenance costs of those extra moving parts on such a ship would probably ensure that there wouldn't be a lot of these sort of "submersible guns", and we wouldn't know if such maintenance would be worth the cost.  Yet, just possessing the capability alone is enough to change the nature of strategic planning, and therefore development of such a weapon could be worth the cost for this reason alone. 

In Sins they are treated as two different weapon types, even if this conversation got way off topic on real ones.