Japan Becomes 1st Country Ever To Fire Electromagnetic Railgun From An Offshore Vessel::Japan has successfully test-fired a medium-caliber maritime electromagnetic railgun from an offshore platform, as it continues to advance its defenses in the face of burgeoning regional security threats.
They fired a certain scientific railgun. Nice.
Sad Zumwalt noises.
Damn, I was just researching EM based weaponry for a fiction book. Didn’t expect to see this kind of news for a few years based on what I found.
Here, this’ll probably make your day: MARAUDER plasma railgun. The first simulations were done in 1990, the first real-world test was done in 1993. They estimated that by 2000, their prototype would be capable of firing a plasma toroid at 3% of the speed of light.
My understanding is that the little we know about it is a result of someone either not taking the project seriously, or forgetting to classify the research. The result was that the early research got leaked to the public while the later research is believed to have become classified, which is why the otherwise successful project suddenly disappeared.
Edit: removed a redundancy
Top secret = classified…
I thought I’d heard that “classified” and “top secret” were levels of classification for info, but after looking it up it looks like you’re correct.
That’s what I based a different weapon on in my table top rpg world :)
My mate in high school used to make these. He’d wind his own electromagnetic little tunnel thing, apply current, and the little metal projectile used to shoot through walls. Was pretty amazing.
That’s a gauss gun, not a railgun. Still cool, though.
I assumed they were synonyms ? how do they differ ?
They’re pretty similar, in that both use electromagnetic forces to launch a projectile.
Gaus cannons use a field around the projectile, applied by wires wrapped around a tube, whereas railguns use two rails touching the projectile to conduct the magnetic field through the projectile.
From a video someone posted in this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTDcFxTq1Fw&t=127
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=QTDcFxTq1Fw&t=127
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Ahhh ok. He’d do them with the capacitors from disposable cameras that the local camera store would give him.
Did you go to high school with the Hacksmith team?
That’s pretty cool, and dangerous
The Venn diagram for those two things is just a single circle
They should try getting info on whatever they can about MARAUDER. Might be better at intercepting missiles than a railgun that fires physical projectiles.