Without the need for dangerous explosives storage and handling, the Electromagnetic Railgun can potentially reach targets up to 20 times farther than conventional weapons.
Navy scientists with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) hit a new milestone, succesfully firing their electromagnetic railgun for the 1,000th time as the state-of-the-art weapon edges closer to real world deployment.
A theoretical dream for decades, the railgun is unlike any other weapon used in warfare. And though still in testing, it's quite real, as the U.S. Navy proved in a record-setting test Monday, Oct. 31, in Dahlgren, Va.
Rather than relying on a explosion to fire a projectile, it uses an electomagnetic current to accelerate a non-explosive bullet at several times the speed of sound. The conductive projectile zips along a set of electrically charged parallel rails and out of the barrel at speeds up to Mach 7.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/11/02/us-navys-futuristic-railgun-passes-projectile-milestone/
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