Top Gun: Navy's Newest Weapon Heads to Testing

Groups of Navy brass and the inventors who support them lined up in the cavernous Walter E. Washington Convention Center last week to take a photo with their 33-foot-long star: The electromagnetic railgun.

The Navy has worked on the railgun since 2005, and Wednesday marked its public debut in Washington. The Navy considers development of railgun technology one of its top modernization goals.

When it is fired, a massive electric pulse shoots into the railgun’s barrel, jumpstarting rings of magnetic fields that force a projectile out at speeds over 4,500 miles per hour – six times the speed of sound — and over a distance of more than 100 miles, according to the Navy.

BAE Systems won a $21 million contract in 2009 to develop its prototype. In 2013, it was awarded an additional $35 million contract to build its follow-on, which would fire more shots at once than its predecessor. The Navy expects to have the railgun fully operational in the mid-2020s.

The "bullets" themselves, projectiles that are also under development, are expected to cost about $25,000 each.

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