U.S. Navy Invents Railgun

The mighty railgun, that hitherto-unfeasible weapon most beloved of gamers and geeks the world over, is now a functional reality thanks to the U.S. Navy, which has produced a working 8-megajoule electromagnetic mass driver.

Spotted at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia, the navy's new weapon of choice fires but a single shot at once, unlike the hypothetical counterpart featured in classic FPS Quake. But what a shot is is, offering a 250 nautical-mile range (with an apogee of 95 miles from the Earth's surface!) and enough kinetic energy to equal the destructive power of a million-dollar missile.

"The projectile fired yesterday weighed only 3.2 kilograms and had no warhead. Future railgun ordnance won't be large and heavy, either, but will deliver the punch of a Tomahawk cruise missile because of the immense speed of the projectile at impact. Garnett compared that force to hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph." - The Fredericksburg Free Lance Star

A 64 megajoule version is coming soon, and the navy expects it to be operational by 2020.