The railgun projectiles will be guided too, won't they? So, not really dirt-cheap.
If they can only be installed on nuclear powered ships (?) then how much does that limit their use? How many nuclear cruisers and destroyers do we have - any? I'm thinking no way you'd bring an aircraft carrier inshore to hit shore targets - the enemy would happily make that trade all day long.
I'm not saying we shouldn't develop the weapon - I think we should develop every interesting weapon, because the goal of R&D is military dominance in 20 and 30 years, and who knows what will happen. I'm just unclear what the application is or will be.
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Missiles are expensive. Particularly guided/smart munitions. Once the initial hardware is installed, these things are dirt cheap - the energy is a non-issue with nuclear reactors. Ability to sit offshore and pummel targets all day long becomes very beneficial versus using the same number of high-dollar guided missiles or smart munitions.
Very cool technology.
As said before, this isn't even close to orbital velocity. Yes, it could be attained but it would be a much bigger apparatus. There was a proposal I remember seeing a long time ago (maybe from "Cosmos" or some such) using a railgun type setup running up a mountainside - the idea being that it would allow the acceleration to be gradual enough to not destroy payloads all the way to orbital velocity to deliver stuff to space-based stations or other facilities/crafts. Theoretically possible with today's technology.
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