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The US Navy's Railgun Program

Posted by samzenpus on from the shoot-em-if-you-got-em dept.

RougeFive writes "Imagine a warship weapon that can launch projectiles at Mach 10 without explosives (more than three times the muzzle speed of an M16 rifle), that has a range of 220 miles and that uses the enormous speed to destroy the target by causing as much damage as a Tomahawk missile. Meet the U.S. Navy's electromagnetic railgun program."

2 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Old news... by Valor958 · · Score: 5, Informative

    In and of itself.. this article is very lacking and at face value is old news. We have been developing railguns for a long time. We have the principles down, but the problem comes with the energy needed to really run a weapons effective version.
    Even the linked article just referrences an overview of the technology and it's goals. Why not an update... did they make a breakthrough? SOMETHING...

    1. Re:Old news... by EvolutionInAction · · Score: 5, Informative

      Unfortunately you're dead wrong. We can power them. Maybe not easily, but we can do it. The problem is that you get something like three shots before the rails have eroded to the point of uselessness. Too much friction, too much electrical arcing.