The idea that the Pentagon would abandon electromagnetic railgun technology during a new age that the Pentagon itself describes as one marked by 'great power competition' was and still is a laughable claim. And now it's clear that the Army putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to making its own railgun dreams a reality in the not so distant future.
General Atomics
So for the Army, which will face the possibility of operating deep in contested territory, potentially without persistent air cover, the railgun concept is something of a super weapon. With this in mind, General Atomics wants to take what they have learned from their three mega joule and 32 mega joule test guns and refine the technology into a 10 mega joule land-mobile railgun system. The company has supposedly made some major advances in miniaturizing the infrastructure needed for generating and distributing the pulsed power required to launch guided projectiles at hypersonic speeds via their railgun architecture.
Nick Bucci told the Army the following during testing last Summer at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah:
China's railgun prototype mounted on an amphibious transport vessel for testing.
Meanwhile, China's military has confirmed that it has indeed fielded their railgun prototype aboard a ship for testing. Global Times quoted the official Chinese release as such:
Being able to draw an 80 to 100 mile radius around a point on a map and know you can quickly engage targets at any time and in any atmospheric conditions within that circle without relying on air power is a very attractive capability to have in itself. But executing artillery strikes is just one of the railgun's many applications. As noted by Mr. Bucci, the technology is nearly an ideal anti-air weapon—potentially capable of taking out air breathing and ballistic missile threats. Even counter-motor, artillery, and rocket defense could be another critical job for these weapons.
A land-mobile railgun concept.
"On Thursday, navy.81.cn published a report about Zhang Xiao, an associate research fellow at the PLA Naval University of Engineering. The report mentioned that Zhang is a key figure in China's research into "electromagnetic launching technology," and she is also a core member of the team led by Rear Admiral Ma Weiming, also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
"We're getting more energy in a smaller package, so you can have more energy and still have (the railgun) be transportable... We've made tremendous strides on the energy density of capacitors."
General Atomics
"The way we produce the launchers now, we believe bore life will be in the neighborhood of thousands of shots"
Ma's team is responsible for research into the most significant areas for the Chinese navy, including nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, and Zhang has also made her own contributions to the navy.Chinese Internet
An amazing shot of a hyper-velocity projectile separates from its sabot casing after leaving the railgun's barrel.
General Atomics
"After hundreds of failures and more than 50,000 tests," Zhang has successfully developed the largest "repeating power supply system" in the world, the report said."
One of the biggest roadblocks in operational railgun development has been longevity of the barrels used to propel projectiles at nearly 6,500 miles per hour—twice that of a standard artillery round. But Bucci notes that this too is changing:
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