General Atomics makes a terrific railgun

**ghosthunter** · April 20th, 2011 12:44 PM

http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20110...rific-railgun/

[SIZE="4"]General Atomics makes a terrific railgun[/SIZE]
by Mark R - on April 19th, 2011

Some of you might remember when we reported about the railgun that can shoot projectiles at Mach 7, and this one by General Atomics is pretty cool too.

You can watch a video of it below if you want to see it in action, and it looks like there is some sort of convention or something that puts this railgun on display. I can’t help but wonder what kind of convention allows a railgun to be put on display? Don’t they know that this can shoot at one mile a second? In fact, Tom Hurn of General Atomics reports “the sabot round went seven kilometers downrange after punching through a 1.8-inch thick steel plate.

It is nice to know that weapons from science fiction movies like Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen are real, and there are different versions of it.

I believe that the plan is that General Atomics wants to put the railgun on a DDG-51 class destroyer by the end of the decade. I’m not certain I want to know what sort of wars would use a railgun. I heard that the Navy’s one can hit a target from 100 miles away.

Who knows what kind of range this has? That’s not a rhetorical question. Does anyone know?

http://www.military.com/video/guns/n.../904431955001/

**ghosthunter** · April 20th, 2011 12:49 PM

Hmmm, can they make one small enough to fit in a small SUV? Would be great to take care of groups of pesky jeepneys, etc on the road on a single shot.

**hondaboot** · April 20th, 2011 03:26 PM

napansin ko nga sa mga news ngaun yan railgun and the us navy testing lasers on pirates sa nigeria

hindi kaya ang awareness na mangyayari talaga si 2012 is not catastrophe but magpapakilala na mga aliens, and therefore, lasers are now being introduced to the masses as a form of weaponry. dati kasi taboo yan kasi mahirap talaga pag light enery ang nagamit, it's very abundant and anyone can just harness it and make war, year even 3rd world country like Libya

**CoDer** · April 20th, 2011 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by hondaboot

napansin ko nga sa mga news ngaun yan railgun and the us navy testing lasers on pirates sa nigeria

hindi kaya ang awareness na mangyayari talaga si 2012 is not catastrophe but magpapakilala na mga aliens, and therefore, lasers are now being introduced to the masses as a form of weaponry. dati kasi taboo yan kasi mahirap talaga pag light enery ang nagamit, it's very abundant and anyone can just harness it and make war, year even 3rd world country like Libya

Ay kang bata ka. Nakalimutan mo namang inumin ang gamot mo.

**Big_daddy** · April 21st, 2011 04:26 AM

DDG 51 + rail gun = owned!!!

I wonder when they can start fielding them on MBT's or even at least a HMMWV. Imagine that!

**chua_riwap** · April 21st, 2011 07:16 AM

Originally Posted by CoDer

Ay kang bata ka. Nakalimutan mo namang inumin ang gamot mo.

nalimutang mag-diatabs ni OB.......

**safeorigin** · April 21st, 2011 11:43 AM

well, the only reason why they're not in service yet is because of corrosion... which is really a problem in seawater environments

might be solved through coating the magnets though... hmmm...