It fires a 40-pound metal slug up to 5,600 miles per hour from New York to Philadelphia, slamming into its target with 32 times the force of a "1-ton car being thrust at 100 mph." Railguns aren't sci-fi anymore.
We'd seen experimental lab models of a railgun weapon that were impressive enough—but they were just that: lab models. Enormous, room-filling contraptions that looked nothing like something you'd see on the deck of a destroyer. But for the first time, the Navy says it's successfully tested a fully weaponized railgun built by BAE, a private weapons firm. This is a huge milestone, bending the thing away from paper and fiction. "It finally looks like a gun," the Navy told us. And they're right. Each round is designed to destroy ships, land targets and missiles (ha!) with nothing more than kinetic energy—the equivalent of throwing a rock through someone's window. Right now the Navy's employing deliberately non-aerodynamic rounds that slow down (so the Virginian testing ground doesn't level a town), but they'll be refined into GPS-guided piercing conical chunks down the line. But that line is long.
It fires a 40-pound metal slug up to 5,600 miles per hour from New York to Philadelphia, slamming into its target with 32 times the force of a "1-ton car being thrust at 100 mph." Railguns aren't sci-fi anymore.
We'd seen experimental lab models of a railgun weapon that were impressive enough—but they were just that: lab models. Enormous, room-filling contraptions that looked nothing like something you'd see on the deck of a destroyer. But for the first time, the Navy says it's successfully tested a fully weaponized railgun built by BAE, a private weapons firm. This is a huge milestone, bending the thing away from paper and fiction. "It finally looks like a gun," the Navy told us. And they're right. Each round is designed to destroy ships, land targets and missiles (ha!) with nothing more than kinetic energy—the equivalent of throwing a rock through someone's window. Right now the Navy's employing deliberately non-aerodynamic rounds that slow down (so the Virginian testing ground doesn't level a town), but they'll be refined into GPS-guided piercing conical chunks down the line. But that line is long.
I heard real life, active-duty Navy SEALs used railguns in filming Act of Valor. But the Pentagon censored the footage and it wound up on the cutting room floor.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
