Richard Lemmens website
Copyright:
Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike
This text content and maps on this page are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license license. This means that: adapting the content is allowed; using the content for commercial purposes is not allowed; sharing and redistributing the content with others is allowed. If you do any of the above, you must attribute your copy to its creator, Richard Lemmens, and make sure any alterations and distributions are licensed in the same way as the original. More info about Creative Commons licenses can be found at the Creative Commons website.

Warmatrix

War Matrix - Railgun

Global Age 1991 CE - present, Weapons and technology

Railgun prototype
Railgun prototype
A railgun is a gun that launches ammunition not by an explosion, but by electromagnetic acceleration. Conventional guns are limited to muzzle velocities of around 1,200 meters per second, yet railguns can achieve speeds an order of magnitude higher, though most prototypes aim at 2,000 - 3,500 meters per second and kinetic energy of 5 - 50 MegaJoules.
Railguns fire lighter projectiles than heavy artillery shells, but at higher speeds. This increases range, decreases the time for a defender to react and decreases the amount of ammunition that must be carried. There are also disadvantages. In order to build up significant projectile speed, a railgun needs a long barrel. It also requires a lot of electric power, typically up to several dozen MegaWatts. Therefore current prototypes can only be mounted on ships with strong batteries, or on fixed mounts on land. The launch of the projectile puts a great strain of the gun, both mechanically and through heat. For a powerful gun, this is more than current materials can handle, thus the gun is rendered unusable after a limited number of shots.
Railguns have been under development since the 2000's CE. Because of the design problems, they are currently limited to prototypes.