In 2016, one of these systems will be installed on a high speed vessel for testing and to figure out how to integrate it onto future naval vessels, potentially including the futuristic new Zumwalt class of destroyers.īAE feels like the benefits of railguns are too significant to restrict to just the Navy, and the company is pitching the system as an option for the U.S. Army’s next generation Future Fighting Vehicle (FFV), which could show up as early as 2019. And even without any kind of payload, that speed results in a projectile with a stupendous amount of kinetic energy, making railguns very effective at doing what weapons systems are supposed to do.īoth BAE Systems and General Atomics have operational railgun prototypes, developed with funding from the Office of Naval Research. They run entirely on electricity, using current passing through a pair of conductive rails to electromagnetically accelerate a projectile, meaning that there’s no explosive component: the projectiles are simply inert hunks of metal, making them safer to handle and store as well as an order of magnitude cheaper to employ.Ī railgun can accelerate a projectile to much higher velocities than a traditional gun, too: BAE’s prototype has a muzzle velocity of up to Mach 7.5, which results in a range exceeding 200 km. Railguns are an appealing weapon system for several reasons. If you haven’t yet seen what BAE’s railgun is capable of, here’s a video of a test from 2012: The first target might be a railgun for the Army’s next-generation Future Fighting Vehicle. Deployment of a prototype system is scheduled for 2016, but BAE is already looking forward to what might be possible as the technology scales up in power and scales down in size. BAE Systems has been refining the electromagnetic railgun that it’s been developing for the U.S.
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