Free Republic

The US Navy's electromagnetic railgun project notched up a successful test yesterday. The radical new protoype weapon, operated by the the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, fired* shot a hypersonic aluminium slug at approximately Mach 7.5 to generate muzzle energy of 10.6 megajoules. The Office of Naval Research are hoping that they can scale up their electric cannon to 64-megajoule levels, enabling them to fire heavier projectiles at targets two hundred miles away. Whether electrical pulses of the required magnitude can be generated practicably remains to be seen. Even if they can be, at present railgun barrels only have a...

The US Navy will astound the world tomorrow by test-firing a radical new weapon system at an unprecedented power level. The new piece of war-tech on trial is that old sci-fi favourite, an electromagnetic railgun. According to the Office of Naval Research, which is in charge of the project, the electric cannon will deliver over ten megajoules of energy in one shot. The ONR say this is "a power level never before achieved" by a railgun, and already represents significantly more poke than a normal five-inch naval gun can put behind its shells. The designers hope in future to get...