this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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Proof that the US Navy railgun program failed due to incompetence rather than physical limitations
Those are two entirely different things. Railguns are a sort of "this could scale to an absurdly high level if you can pump enough current through it, but at those levels it oxidizes its rails rendering them useless after a few shots" thing (and the big artillery pieces that would theoretically enable are kind of dead anyways, since missiles do their job much, much better), while coilguns are just a projectile firing version of the EM catapults that some carriers and roller coasters use as launch systems. Making a good coilgun is comparatively well understood, and it just hasn't been weaponized because energy storage and all the hardware for it has generally been heavier than conventional ammo and a firearm that's able to handle the pressure of a given shot.
Here I'm assuming they've just optimized the firing sequence to minimize the waste and are using high end modern batteries to get something with the size and weight of a typical infantry rifle but the performance of a machine pistol, for the explicit purpose of reducing its volume as much as possible. So it's kind of comparable in role to something like the Soviet's AS Val/VSS Vintorez rifles with their integrated suppressors and subsonic cartridges.
Fair points, but give it time. I half expect the Chinese to build a working naval railgun just to dab on us.
I'd expect infantry scale railguns instead tbh. A naval railgun has to somehow be better and more logistically efficient than a missile rack and its ammunition and the current trend is for those to get cheaper and more effective. There'd need to be some kind of breakthrough in anti-missile systems that makes "just send more cheap missiles at a target to overwhelm the defenses/exhaust their interceptors" no longer viable, like a laser CIWS that actually works in practice, in order for "how do we make big artillery pieces work better?" to make a comeback.
At the small scale, it's possible the issues of railguns ruining their barrels could be solved, but it still needs a good answer to "why are you not just using conventional propellant?" and now "why are you not just using an anti-infantry/anti-vehicle drone system instead?" Since railguns are more efficient than coilguns, it's feasible it could end up working as an integrally silenced weapon (and stealth aside, reducing volume is good especially indoors because it reduces hearing damage for everyone nearby) although coilguns would probably win out on reliability.
They do have this
But like you said that is a different tech than a rail gun.
They fell for the most classic of blunders
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