Possible rate of fire in a gauss gun is much much higher.
This of a machine gun that fires silently, at targets that are over the horizon. Any current conducting object can be used for projectiles.
With proper design, they can fire a lot of very cheap metal.
At Mach 7, most of this will be very very hot and probably just as hot as a exploding warhead.
Yes, but wouldn’t it eliminate fallout?
I don’t think it will be “silent”. The amount of electrical energy that is discharged to fire the magnetics will most LIKELY make some powerful popping sounds. And... there will be a sonic boom from the projectile (of course if you heard it, it’s too late for someone already up ahead and they won’t be hearing the projectile at all)
The laser guns and beam cannons are equally limited by their power source. While a projectile would be far slower than a wavefront, it would be unwise to underestimate kinetic energy.
That's what they say.
A few years ago I had to investigate these things. I thought it would be great fun to work with such snazzy gadgets.
Many but not all of the physical properties of these things are as claimed. However, for the foreseeable future, there will remain fundamental problems that make the claims of operational usefulness of these type weapons (and hence most of the article) a bunch of fund raising propoganda.
In other words, I am not calling it pure BS but the stuff has already past the second stomach.