Radical railgun revealed: US Navy's 'Star Wars' weapon that can fire shells at mach 6 [truncated]

UK Daily Mail ^ | February 5, 2015 | Mark Prigg

[C19fan]

A radical new weapon that can fire a shell at seven times the speed of sound has been shown off in public for the first time. Described as 'Star Wars technology' by researchers, the railgun can fire shells at seven times speed of sound, and penetrate concrete 100 miles away. The weapon was on display to the public for the first time at the Naval Future Force Science and Technology EXPO at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

[WMarshal]

I too am waiting for ray guns to be invented. I member back in the 70s having lunch boxes with are that said the year 2000 with spacemen on the moon shooting ray guns on it, never happened.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Very true. At those speeds, the projectile IS the payload.

[RandallFlagg]

That can’t be real.
There wasn’t any, “PEW-PEW,” sounds like in the movies.

;-)

[minnesota_bound]

#7 you are just never satisfied.... : )

[SampleMan]

Most of the Iraq and all of Afghanistan is more than 100 miles.

While 90% of North Korea and 60% of the Chinese population is within 100 miles.

That said, this is a first generation rail gun. Larger guns, with longer ranges, will be coming.

Right now, I would presume that the 100 mile figure is not the ballistic range, which should be considerably more at those velocities, but rather effective range for retaining enough kinetic energy to dispense with a warhead.