U.S. Navy's hypersonic kinetic-kill electromagnetic railgun project faces axe in 2022 DOD budget request
WASHINGTON – After some 16 years of research and development, the U.S. Navy appears poised to kill its electromagnetic railgun program. The Drive reports. Continue reading original article
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
9 June 2021 -- The service has not asked for any new funding for the project in its latest budget request and says it will wrap up all the work it has planned now by the end of the current fiscal year, before effectively putting what's left of this effort into storage.
Since the Office of Naval Research (ONR) formally began work on the railgun project in 2005, funding has come through different line items. In the past, this sometimes caused confusion and led to erroneous reports that the program had been canceled. The Navy's plans now seem to be clear.
The Navy has tested at least two different railgun designs since 2005, one from BAE Systems and one from General Atomics, with the former being the primary prototype the service has used in its previous research and development efforts. Both of these weapons functioned in the same way, launching solid projectiles at hypersonic speeds using powerful electrically generated magnetic fields.
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John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics
