Navy Gets 8-Megajoule Rail Gun Working

prototypo writes "The Free Lance-Star newspaper is reporting that the Navy Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia has successfully demonstrated an 8-megajoule electromagnetic rail gun. A 32-megajoule version is due to be tested in June. A 64-megajoule version is anticipated to extend the range of naval gunfire (currently about 15 nautical miles for a 5-inch naval gun) to more than 200 nautical miles by 2020. The projectiles are small, but go so fast that have enough kinetic punch to replace a Tomahawk missile at a fraction of the cost. In the final version, they will apex at 95 miles altitude, well into space. These systems were initially part of Reagan's SDI program ("Star Wars"). An interesting tidbit in the article is that the rail gun is only expected to fire ten times or less per day, presumably because of the amount of electricity needed. I guess we now need a warp core to power them."

Comments

Read between the lines

[overtly_demure]

No doubt many of you are now bow-legged and tech-drooly over this wacky piece of hardware, so futuristic, such cool words (megajoule! railgun! kinetic energy!), and so SciFi-like. Read between the lines. This is a worthless pork-barrel project that will rarely, more likely never, make a significant difference on the battlefield. Its enormous impracticality is obvious, if you decide to see it. We should not waste huge amounts of money on such junk. It is corporate welfare for companies that refuse to remove their hands from the government till. Funny how so many people defend giving billions away to defense contractors in exchange for essentially nothing, but will adamantly resist spending the same money on infrastrucure for the rest of us.

And yet, I know that many, many people will be so enamored with the sexy-sounding hype that they will be pleased to have their hard-earned taxes spent on it. It fits in so well with The War on Terror and other sucker-stories that our Hypnotoad representatives have been feeding us.