If there’s one thing you want your multi-million dollar electromagnetic railgun to be, it’s reliable, and the US Navy announced today that it’s reached a key milestone towards that goal. It’s now successfully fired its prototype gun 1,000 times, which translates to as many as 15 shots per week. In recent years, those tests have generally been conducted at a 1.5 megajoule launch energy, which the Navy puts into perspective by noting that “a one-ton vehicle moving at 100 mph has approximately one megajoule of kinetic energy.” Eventually, the Navy hopes to install even more advanced and far more powerful railgun weapons systems on ships, although the project’s future remains a bit up in the air given some recent funding battles in the US Senate.
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US Navy’s electromagnetic railgun hits testing milestone: 1,000 shots fired originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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