The Navy's Electric Cannon Will Rail You at 5,600 MPH

Normally I tend to ignore anything happening with military technology advancement. That some of the most cutting edge scientific research goes towards creating better and more efficient human killing machines is straight up terrifying, for one. And for another, anything promoting the military usually comes wrapped in a neat package of blind patriotic promotion, where abnormally detailed bald eagles fly around, and everybody looks like they’ve been photoshopped to liken Captain America.

That being said, the Office of Naval Research has been testing some sort of new long-range projectile launcher, or something. It uses electricity instead of chemical propellants. See, most long-range missiles today rely on complex chemical concoctions to launch projectiles. Only this device, dubbed the EM railgun, uses magnetic fields created by high electrical currents to accelerate a sliding metal conductor between two rails to launch projectiles at 4,500 mph to 5,600 mph. Awesome, right?

The first industry-built, 32-Megajoule prototype demonstrator created by BAE Systems arrived at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in a shiny package on January 30, and can now be tested for real combat implementation. In case you didn’t know, a mega-joule is equivalent to a one-ton car travelling at 100 miles per hour. Imagine 32 of those coming straight at your ship. Or village.

Now, I realize that I’m probably the last person who should be commenting on U.S. military-tech developments. Still, I can’t help but look at this 10 second video of a long-range projectile being launched at 5,600 mph in a massive fire storm and not feel slightly uncomfortable at the reminder of what some of the best engineers in the world help develop on a daily basis.

That shit is scary.

This piece originally ran on Motherboard.