WeaponSystems
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DARPA tests advanced hypersonic weapon prototype, makes railgun sweat
The US Army completed testing of its hypersonic weapon yesterday, launching a test projectile across the Pacific Ocean. The glider flies at a lower trajectory than typical missiles, traveling at several times the speed of sound, making it capable of hitting anywhere on this peaceful ball of blue and green within an hour. We saw DARPA's hypersonic aircraft's successful launch earlier this year -- the Falcon HTV-2 (pictured above) managed to hit the dizzying speed of Mach 20 during its tests, before it crashed. Despite recent military funding issues in the US government, hopefully all things hypersonic will get to fly again soon.
US Navy's electromagnetic railgun hits testing milestone: 1,000 shots fired
If there's one thing you want your multi-million dollar electromagnetic railgun to be, it's reliable, and the US Navy announced today that it's reached a key milestone towards that goal. It's now successfully fired its prototype gun 1,000 times, which translates to as many as 15 shots per week. In recent years, those tests have generally been conducted at a 1.5 megajoule launch energy, which the Navy puts into perspective by noting that "a one-ton vehicle moving at 100 mph has approximately one megajoule of kinetic energy." Eventually, the Navy hopes to install even more advanced and far more powerful railgun weapons systems on ships, although the project's future remains a bit up in the air given some recent funding battles in the US Senate.
