US Government As Represented by the Secretary of the Army

Michael J Glennon

Eric L Kathe

John E Zweig

Michael D Gully

John P Kehn

Methods and apparatus related to design and construction of lightweight and mobile rail gun barrels. The barrels comprise a pair of elongated, generally parallel conductive rails extending along opposite sides of the bore and being symmetrical about a longitudinal axis of the bore; a pair of elongated insulators disposed generally coextensively with the rails and circumferentially between them and maintained in a compressed state; a circumferentially sleeve surrounding the insulators; a plurality of Belleville containment disk maintained in a stack that are compressed and surround the circumferential sleeve, each containment disk having a substantially hollow form with an outer surface, and an inner surface; and a plurality of longitudinal tension rods, disposed substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis of they bore and disposed external to the sleeve, the tension rods compress the plurality of Belleville containment disk. A protective sleeve and cooling channels can form part of the barrel.

Integral containment electromagnetic gun

A breech mechanism embodies a multi-lug sliding breech block having a pluity of pairs of lugs. At the instant before firing, the bearing surfaces of at least one pair of lugs are spaced a predetermined distance apart from the bearing surfaces of the respective threads, or lugs, of the breech ring. When the cannon is fired, a reactive force acting on the breech block elastically deforms the material of the ring and block, forcing all the bearing surfaces into an abutting contact relationship whereby the stresses produced within the material of the mechanism are more uniformly distributed throughout the breech ring and the breech block thereby increasing the service life of the mechanism.

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Loudonville, NY, United States of America

Michael J Glennon