US Military have working Railgun.

[George Ford]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/watch-navy-futuristic-railgun-weapon-3387565

Check out the above link! I remember just a few short years ago they were testing a gun with limited success, and now they have a large working prototype ready to be field tested on a ship!!! (Or should that be sea tested?)

Whats great about it is that it uses electrical energy to fire the projectile from the gun. Large ships like Carriers have nuclear power plants so have plenty of energy. It will save a large amount of weight, space and expense on conventional explosives that are used to fire existing main stream projectiles. Plus I think once they fine tune this thing it will be a simple computer program that will change the amount of magnetic field so this new weapon can hit targets accurately at great distances!

[+and-then]

Looks like it could breach a hull from deck to keel in a millisecond. At those speeds I wonder if anyone would hear it incoming?

[George Ford]

Looks like it could breach a hull from deck to keel in a millisecond. At those speeds I wonder if anyone would hear it incoming?

No they would not, it is classed as a hypersonic (faster then supersonic) object. So sound is way behind it. So like a bullet fired from a gun the target would experience the impact before they heard the crack of the bullet. I was thinking they could scale this gun up to the scale of a 'supergun' like what the Nazi's started to build towards the end of WW2, where a massive (over 100 meters long) gun would fire rounds from France into London. I imagine with magnets you could even angle the gun barrel a few degrees and hit targets half way round the world from America!!!

[+DieChecker]

I was thinking they could scale this gun up to the scale of a 'supergun' like what the Nazi's started to build towards the end of WW2, where a massive (over 100 meters long) gun would fire rounds from France into London.

You got some kind of plan in the works? Thinking about wiping out London?

[Frank Merton]

The US seems to have settled on a strategy of automating warfare.

[+DieChecker]

Watches video and reads article....

That is pretty impressive. So, they will be using it to fire explosive ordinance. So the savings is that there is no rocket propellant or cannon propellant necessary, just electricity.

The only problem I've really heard about rail guns is that they require a lot of maintenance, as the rails wear down a lot faster then a gun barrel.

I'm looking forward to gauss cannons, which use magnetism to fire the projectiles.

[SHaYap]

I wonder when the electromagnetic force field shield defense will make it to the prototype stage ~ by then the Earth will be ready for a Mars Invasion ... oh wait ...

[SecretAgentMathew]

old technology ...

[Frank Merton]

Oh yea rail guns have been around awhile; apparently they now have one that would actually be cost effective and usable to allow all sorts of things at lower cost than rockets.

[SecretAgentMathew]

Oh yea rail guns have been around awhile; apparently they now have one that would actually be cost effective and usable to allow all sorts of things at lower cost than rockets.

If Hitlers scientists created a vortex engine then anything like a railgun would look like a boomerang lol