US Navy’s Supergun – Success or Failure?

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After years of troubled development, the US Navy’s supergun appears stuck in the research and development stage. The Navy’s powerful electromagnetic railgun developed by BAE Systems and General Atomics was supposed to be the weapon of the future — a super-powered cannon capable of liquefying targets at up to 100 nautical miles away with a solid metal slug that travels at speeds up to 4,500 mph. 

The project isn’t being shut down, but it will receive less effort and notably a lot less money.

“The railgun itself has overcome all the required technical hurdles, but the systems simply aren’t in place to take advantage of its capability and speed — the fire control systems, the communications link with a command center,” a source with direct knowledge of the program told taskandpurpose.com. “If there’s no funding, the program can’t move forward.” 

In 2017, officials at the Office of Naval Research released a video of the weapon system, showing it firing several rounds at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division with speeds reaching up to Mach 6 at a high rate of fire. It was a preview of what a railgun’s battlefield operations might actually look like. But ever since then, shipboard testing has been pushed back. Just $9.5 million has been included in the Navy’s 2021 fiscal year budget request, down from the $15 million requested in the 2020 fiscal year budget and way down from the $28 million just a year prior.