Is this like a rail gun?
Instead, they chose to meet the president’s stated goal to “skip a generation” of technology.
This President will be remembered as a visionary.
We are already leagues ahead of any other nation in this department and oceans ahead of any country that is potentially a threat to us. The Arab world had their nose rubbed in that fact quite recently and they still haven't got their minds around it yet. What's it going to be like when we "skip a generation" of tech? Jeezuz! If we're giants striding the face of the globe now, what'll we be then?
The only thing that worries me is the super cavitating torpedo thing. I have to trust that that the military is keeping an eye on this because it is something that could fundamentally change the equation in the favor of our enemies. This will be one of the major challenges I think for our adversaries in the future- negating American Air and Naval power generally and the aircraft carrier in particular. We cannot allow Russia or China to perfect such a torpedo or a delivery platform for it.
I realize that carriers are the in thing these days, but recall the old saying, " We have the targets and they have the bullets." In this case the bullets are tactical nuclear weapons in the 100 to 500 kiloton range. God forbid that one should ever strike a carrier.
We researched them and then dropped the idea many, many years ago. Those things move really fast, but you can't make them very smart or adaptive for technical reasons. On a surprise shot you might be able to score a hit with these things with quite a bit of efficacy, but if your target knows you are there these become much more dubious. The US opted instead for very smart and adaptive versions of standard torpedos. It may take the torpedo quite a bit longer to reach the target, but it will hardly ever miss. As you may have noticed, a key calculus of US military technology is to prefer weapon systems that never miss over weapon systems that deliver tons of firepower but aren't that smart. It allows us to kill more with less ordnance in less time net, and we decided that in submarine warfare it was more important to be as smart and lethal as possible with speed coming in second.
I would note that we do have a naval stealth technology that makes solid objects invisible to active sonar, and the super-cavitating torpedos may be a "second-best" technology to counter some of problems you would have if your torpedos can't "see" the sub they are supposed to hit. If your target doesn't reflect acoustics, the only way you can kill it is with a straight intersection shot from a passive sonar target solution, which the super-cavitating torpedos would be a better choice for.
I very much doubt it. Probalby more like a maglev train, without(?) the levitation aspect. A linear motor.