Comments

What's a waste of power is the chemical propellant stored in the casings of idle artillery shells in conventional big guns, and this is the primary reason they have been phased out in favor of smaller, high-velocity gunds (see modern Destroyer's and the mothballing of the fire-support fleet of Battleships and Cruisers). A conventional piece of artillery with an output comparable to this railgun (rated 32MJ) would require a massive artillery piece firing equally massive projectiles. Even the greatest big guns ever put to see ( the 400,000 pound Mark 7 16" guns) only put out about 20MJ of energy at the muzzle. This is a tremendous amount, to be sure, and it is compounded by the potential energy of the large volume of TNT stored in the 2,700 pound shell. Nonetheless, this railgun can accomplish a greater muzzle energy, a greater precision, a shorter time-on-target, a faster reload, and with an INFINITELY SMALLER LOGISTICAL FOOTPRINT. These things are extremely more practical. And let us remember that the Iowa class hit the "law of exponentials" practical energy barrier; increasing the size of the guns and destructive potential of its shells further required increasingly large volume investments for diminishing explosive returns. The Japanese Yamamoto-class super battleship had only a marginally more energetic main gun (approximately 5-10 percent increase) for a 25% increase in mass. This is the future of warfare. It will make armor obsolete; tomorrow it will be all about speed, stealth, and accuracy. He who fires first will win. Big ships are a liability and a poor investment. The aircraft carrier, the last of the big ships, will need to be superbly well protected by standoff weapons (destroyers mounting their own railguns and long-rang missiles), high stealth, and great speed if they are to remain competitive.