China has made a leap in railguns thanks to the application of artificial intelligence

By: Maksim Panasovskiy | 13.12.2023, 00:59

Scientists from China have managed to achieve a breakthrough in the field of railguns. Artificial intelligence helped them to do so.

Here's What We Know

Many countries are paying attention to railguns. In particular, Japan this year became the first country in the world to conduct firing tests of a railgun installed on board a ship. Another test recently took place in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Meanwhile, in China, artificial intelligence has enabled the cannon to fire 120 salvos without sacrificing accuracy or requiring repairs. This rate of fire brings the railgun closer to barrel artillery if we're talking about maintenance.

Chinese scientists used AI to control firing modes and weapon parameters. The rail gun is equipped with 100,000 sensors, which is an order of magnitude more than the number of sensors installed in aeroplanes.

The AI analysed sensor readings in fractions of a second. This reduced the number of malfunctions in the rail gun. In particular, the last 50 salvos of the railgun made without a single error. The velocity of the projectile's flight was approximately Mach 6 (2 km/s). Such acceleration of the munition allows striking at a range of up to 200 kilometres without loss of accuracy.

Source: scmp