How hard can a railgun hit?

Railguns are being researched as weapons with projectiles that do not contain explosives or propellants, but are given extremely high velocities: 2,500 m/s (8,200 ft/s) (approximately Mach 7 at sea level) or more.

What can a railgun destroy?

Unlike present-day artillery shells, railgun projectiles are just that – projectiles. They contain no explosives. Just the kinetic energy imparted by the projectile, travelling seven or so times the speed of sound, can rip through steel or concrete, destroying anything in its path.

Is railgun dead?

The United States has lost the railgun wars.

What are the advantages of railguns over cannons?

Current railgun technologies necessitate a long and heavy barrel, but a railgun’s ballistics far outperform conventional cannons of equal barrel lengths. Railguns can also deliver area of effect damage by detonating a bursting charge in the projectile which unleashes a swarm of smaller projectiles over a large area.

Will the Navy’s railgun become a useful weapon?

In July, 2017, Defensetech reported that the Navy wants to push the Office of Naval Research’s prototype railgun from a science experiment into useful weapon territory. The goal, according to Tom Beutner, head of Naval Air Warfare and Weapons for the ONR, is ten shots per minute at 32 megajoules.

Could a railgun be used to launch an aircraft to space?

In addition to military applications, NASA has proposed to use a railgun to launch “wedge-shaped aircraft with scramjets” to high-altitude at Mach 10, where they will then fire a small payload into orbit using conventional rocket propulsion.

Why do some hypervelocity research projects use railguns?

In some hypervelocity research projects, projectiles are ‘pre-injected’ into railguns, to avoid the need for a standing start, and both two-stage light-gas guns and conventional powder guns have been used for this role.