The US Navy is not bolting its new electromagnetic railgun to any of its warships in the coming year, a move sure to disappoint those who rejoice at innovative methods of blowing stuff up.
The naval service's budget for fiscal year 2018 contained
no funding requests for putting the USN's electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) on a ship, according to respected defence industry magazine
Jane's Defence Weekly.
Instead, we are told,
the USN will concentrate on further R&D before putting a ship to sea packing a hyper-speed railgun.
The BAE Systems-designed EMRG project scooped the British firm $34.5m
back in 2013 when the contract was announced.
The USN's interest in railguns seems to be primarily as a point defence mechanism, blasting anti-ship cruise missiles and ballistic missiles out of the skies before they reach the target vessel. Seven years ago the maker of the USN's Blitzer railgun
boasted that it was "tactically relevant", which seemed premature even back then.
Russia in particular is becoming increasingly uneasy about the Western lead in defence technology, judging by its claims to have tested a Mach 8 anti-ship missile – though the only sources for that are
outlets such as ITAR-TASS, one of Russia's state-sponsored news agencies. Disinformation, as most folk in the West know, is a key part of Russian foreign policy.