At a mere sixteen years old, and one famous tributary appearance in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen where it shot the testicles off of a giant sized evil Decepticon (peak cinema there), the US Navy Railgun is no longer being funded. The project looks to be placed in storage and its research preserved and utilized in other similar endeavors such as the development of a hypervelocity shell that can be fired from 5 inch naval guns or 155mm howitzers at speeds of Mach 3 as well as potentially advancing research into various hypersonic missile platforms such as the SM-6 Block 1B.
In land based testing the ONR (Office of Navy Research) said one of their two railgun experiments could fire a slug at 4500 miles per hour, or six times the speed of sound. The eventual goal of the project however was to create a prototype that could be mounted on a ship to target everything from enemy vessels to missiles from ranges of up to a 100 miles away.
In land based testing the ONR (Office of Navy Research) said one of their two railgun experiments could fire a slug at 4500 miles per hour, or six times the speed of sound. The eventual goal of the project however was to create a prototype that could be mounted on a ship to target everything from enemy vessels to missiles from ranges of up to a 100 miles away.
The Navy's Railgun Looks Like It's Finally Facing The Axe In New Budget Request
The Navy has been working to make the idea of a railgun an operational reality since 2005.
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