[Chainmail]

The article sort of addressed some of my concerns - but it was more of a puff piece than a technical discussion. Personally, I'd like to see something succeed for a change but the current way we frame requirements, engineer concept demonstrators/prototypes and conduct experiment is wasteful and disconnected from emerging operational needs - and too connected/dependent on bloated and expensive defense vendors.

We have developed 52 caliber gun tubes for the M777 and the M109A7 but again greater range absolutely requires guided munitions and Quarter-Million Dollars a Pop rounds.

When I was doing this stuff, we designed our own system in-house at Picatinny Arsenal, built it a Rock Island, and tested it at Yuma - and our direction was greater automation, faster rates of fire, high ballistic precision, and fire on the move. I guess we'll see where the technology takes us.

[Spktyr]

Unfortunately, for obvious reasons - especially with the Chinese and Turks evident progress with railguns - you’re not likely to see anything more detailed on an officially condoned article. However, you have but to look at the private citizens’ railgun development (and there’s a LOT of them) to see that they’ve encountered the same problems on a smaller scale and worked around them, all using unclassified publicly available gear.

Articles that may be of interest:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7175261
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221491471600026X
https://content.iospress.com/articles/international-journal-of-applied-electromagnetics-and-mechanics/jae160060

[Spktyr]

Also, check out the hundreds of videos on Youtube about building personal railguns.