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Japan Becomes 1st Country Ever To Fire Electromagnetic Railgun From An Offshore Vessel
(www.eurasiantimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Damn, I was just researching EM based weaponry for a fiction book. Didn't expect to see this kind of news for a few years based on what I found.
Here, this'll probably make your day: MARAUDER plasma railgun. The first simulations were done in 1990, the first real-world test was done in 1993. They estimated that by 2000, their prototype would be capable of firing a plasma toroid at 3% of the speed of light.
My understanding is that the little we know about it is a result of someone either not taking the project seriously, or forgetting to classify the research. The result was that the early research got leaked to the public while the later research is believed to have become classified, which is why the otherwise successful project suddenly disappeared.
Edit: removed a redundancy
Top secret = classified...
I thought I'd heard that "classified" and "top secret" were levels of classification for info, but after looking it up it looks like you're correct.
That's what I based a different weapon on in my table top rpg world :)
Been possibly for a long time. Whether or not it’s a practical solution is another story.
Eh, I could hand wave the important bits behind "war-time research and development in a universe where physics isn't exactly the same", but it wouldn't really work for the story I want to tell. I want it to highlight a bit of an important side character, so if I'm hand waving their area of expertise, it falls apart.