Dave Majumdar
According to the ONR, the railgun has already been tested at low muzzle energy while firing multiple shot salvoes—what the Navy calls repetition rate of fires or rep-rates. Now, the Navy hopes to incrementally increase the amount of energy flowing through the weapon while also increasing the salvo size and rate of fire.
Long a staple of science fiction movies, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is hoping to turn railguns into a practical reality onboard tomorrow’s warships. As part of its efforts, the ONR is ready to demonstrate its electromagnetic railgun technology during field trials at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division's new railgun Rep-Rate Test Site at Terminal Range."Railguns and other directed-energy weapons are the future of maritime superiority," Dr. Thomas Beutner, head of ONR's Naval Air Warfare and Weapons Department said at the Naval Future Force Science and Technology Expo.
"The U.S. Navy must be the first to field this leap-ahead technology and maintain the advantage over our adversaries."Railguns rely on electromagnets to launch a metallic projective—dispensing with chemical propellants. In the case of the Navy, the service has developed a new next-generation, low-drag, guided round called the High-Velocity Projectile (HVP) that it intends to use in conjunction with the railgun
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/railguns-the-ultimate-weapon-or-the-ultimate-paper-tiger-22796
