U.S. navy had tested railgun. Will it change everything?

The U.S. navy had tested railgun from warships on several occasions.
For those who are not familiar with the term railgun, it is an electrically powered projectile which can travel at the speed of Mach 7 or 5,400 miles per hour.

Here is a video of one of the earlier testings.



A railgun projectile is small (only a few pounds). It means a naval ship can carry thousands of projectiles instead of only several dozen missiles on the current setups. It's super speed mean it can intercept missiles and aircraft much easier than sending another missile to do the same job.

A little research mentioned that it was Nazi Germany first came up with the idea of railgun but it was never materialized due to lack of power generation required to fire it. It took so many decades for the testing to take place. Although the technology is not matured yet to be mass produced, I believe it will change the warfare at least in the area of anti-aircraft and anti-missiles once the technology is widely used. Of course, from the look of it... the U.S. will be the first one deploy this weapon on a large scale. Once it happens, it will create a "generation gap" in the weapons technologies...

What do you think?

 

I think there already is a generation gap between the US and the vast majority of the world, really, but I think it might lengthen that gap even further.

Obviously this is in it's infancy stages, because it's simply too large and cumbersome to be of much use for many purposes... especially AA and anti-missile roles, which place a great importance on speedy acquisition and tracking of a target as well as rate of fire(The railgun might shoot it's projectile extremely fast, but no weapon is going to hit what it aims at 100% of the time). But yeah, give it like a decade or two and I think it's extremely possible we miniaturize this technology enough to make it very easily replace many roles around the military.

I don't think it's beyond the scope to one day see a rifle we can give to our troops that has completely replaced the need for gunpowder... a question for people that know more about this than me: I can't see in the video, but does a gun like this have any recoil? Doesn't seem like anything is exploding back on you, like firing a regular gun, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

Sure most of the countries on this planet are far beyond in military technology when compare to the U.S. However, the most advanced of them are not far off. Most of the western European countries, Russia, China, Japan can hold their own quite well.

When I mentioned "generation gap", I meant the difference is so big that almost no damage can be done to the other side. For example, the Gulf War. Hundreds thousands of Iraqis were killed for mere 200 died on the opposite side. I don't think the U.S. can achieve the same feat when it is against Russia, China, or any developed western European countries. Not that kind of kill/death ratio anyway.

What I see now is that when the railgun can be mass produced and installed on every ship, it can be a superior replacement to both the CIWS (Close-in weapon system) and anti-air missiles. It has superior range, speed, and almost unlimited ammo. It will make naval ships equipped with it much harder to be sunk. If it is also used on land on some kind of mobile system, it can be used for both anti-air and anti-tank. Now that's going to be another leap forward and create a new generation gap over even Russia and China along with the rest of the world.

 

First used in 1918 - patent applied for by Louis Octave Fauchon-Villeplee:



http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US1370200