saw a prototype of this on a PBS science show back when I was about 16. That was a very long time ago.
Ummmm......I want one.......
I am not a military person, but if a shell explodes on contact with target, and our shells are designed to be launched from a muzzle with 9 MJ of energy, wouldn’t multiplying the muzzle energy by 5 have a risk of making the shell think it is experiencing impact when it is being launched from a rail gun? I am sure they will design new shells, but it seems like we may be approaching some kind of physiscal limit here.
DDG-1000 class Zumwalt is built to accept a railgun if it ever becomes practical, but high voltage, high current, quick impulse is NOT benign.
No, silly person, this is an “untried unproven technology” according to Lord Obama (piss be upon him).
I remember when Congress tanked the funding for R&D on them at LANL decades ago, but the theories were (and remain) sound (it was part of SDI, I think).
One of the guys told me that theoretically, they felt could hit the moon with a one pound projectile if they could get enough controlled electricity to pulse through it w/o burning up the entire mesa.
The National Labs built various bench-scale prototypes that shoot plastic projectiles w/embedded copper conductors, but I don't know of they have gone much beyond that. If I remember correctly, the velocities are in the high explosive range (22k+ FPS), which is what makes them so devastating downrange. All that kinetic energy in a relatively tiny projectile. They take an enormous amount of stored power, very rapidly discharged from charged capacitors to work. Not real efficient, but.....???? There have been videos of those for years.
Maybe some other office (DARPA??) expanded the program to develop actual deployable units, but who knows? They do knock some nice holes in armor.
The Pentagon considered fielding self-propelled rail guns (in the mid-late 80’s I think), but the power requirements were so great that they would have to pull or drive around a like-sized power generation unit for each artillery piece. Kind of cuts down their mobility.
Maybe now, the advances in battery and capacitor technology/materials would make it practical.
The railgun’s 200 to 250 nautical-mile range will allow Navy ships to strike deep in enemy territory while staying out of reach of hostile forces......
Can it avoid the hostile forces of Zero?