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Navy ditches railgun in favor of more sustainable options
The United States Navy recently announced that it plans to pull funding from its long-awaited electromagnetic railgun (EMRG), which has been in the research and development phase since 2005.
The United States Navy recently announced that it plans to pull funding from its long-awaited electromagnetic railgun (EMRG), which has been in the research and development phase since 2005. The Navy’s statement on the shift explained that, “Given fiscal constraints, combat system integration challenges and the prospective technology maturation of other weapon concepts, the Navy decided to pause research and development of the Electromagnetic Railgun at the end of 2021.”
In 2012, EMRG project was facing issues that still persist today. The most notable problems consist of the short barrel life of the EMRG prototypes, as well as the excessive energy supply the guns need to operate.
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Without solving these problems, the EMRG prototypes have consistently fallen short of their projected range of fire, as well as their anticipated level of overall structural integrity.
The only ship model that the Navy found to be appropriate for using EMRGs was the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers. Since there are only three of these gigantic ships in existence, it is obvious how little room there is for the EMRG system to be implemented.
Bryan Clark, an analyst at the Hudson Institute, informed the Associated Press last Thursday that the EMRG project has costed about $500 million in total.
Clark also commented on the lack of improvements over the years, claiming that the barrel on the EMRG prototype had to be replaced after about a dozen or so firings, which is an extremely small number in comparison with normal guns which can fire around 600 times before the barrel needs replacing.
Armed with the information gathered over the long and unsuccessful trials of the EMRG project, the Navy intends to use the data collected in order to pursue hyper velocity projectiles that fire using more conventional propellants.
