Navy unveils its mach 7 magnetic mangler

http://blogs.gazette.com/highground/2014/04/10/navy-unveils-its-mach-7-magnetic-mangler/



Navy unveils its mach 7 magnetic mangler
Published: April 10, 2014, 4:27 pm, by Tom Roeder

The Navy this week is showing off one of its most secret weapons — a railgun straight out of Star Trek that can take out targets at 100 miles with a projectile flying at nearly 7,000 feet per second.

Long the topic of science fiction, the rail gun uses magnetic pulses to drive a metal projectile at eye-popping speeds and wrecks targets with pure kinetic energy rather than explosives. The military has talked about railgun research for years, but a working model has been elusive.

The biggest difficulty with railguns is the breathtaking amount of electricity required to make them work. The Navy said a single shot of its railgun uses 33 megajoules of electricity — enough power to run the average American household for three days.

All that electricity leads to impressive results, the Pentagon said on its technology blog.