Rail guns are weapons that use electrical current instead of gunpowder to propel their projectiles. A projectile is any object thrust into accelerated motion with the influence of force. Projectiles in motion can be propelled by pushes, pulls or, in some cases, both push and pull.

The armaments and weapons industry's continuous development has had a great role in the scientific quest for the perfect object propulsion. One technology has been very promising through the years and has shown time and again to be the future of weapons manufacture: the rail gun propulsion technology.

Rail Gun Propulsion Technology

Rail guns work by harnessing the push and pull of electromagnetic fields as the driving force of projectiles. The current potential for rail guns enormously surpasses many of its predecessors and contemporaries. Gunpowder propulsion is largely bound to produce speeds of around 4000 feet per second. The rail gun, on the other hand, can send a shell at more than 13 times that speed.

Electromagnetic Thrust

Electromagnetic energy is a reliable, though at times costly, source of magnetic force. Magnetic force is the main component of rail gun technology. Rail guns utilize a large electrical connection to power two robust electromagnets while the rail gun armature is situated between positive and negative forces – energy coiling in opposite clockwise and counterclockwise modes.

Current is introduced into the armature which then interacts with the revolving opposite magnetic forces of the electromagnets. This results in the forward motion of the aperture. The flow of energy works with current flowing through the positive rail into the armature and into the negative rail.

The potential of a rail gun setup can be altered by the length of the rails and the amount of current introduced.

Rail Gun versus Gunpowder

While it has been mentioned that rail gun speed potential can be augmented simply by increasing current power and elongating a specific gun's rails, its aging contemporary, gunpowder, employs a different and rather limited way of increasing its shell's velocity and range.

In order for gunpowder propulsion to increase, an additional amount of explosive substance is necessary. This apparently means infusing more gunpowder into the projectile construct. This, consequently, has a positive relationship with the overall projectile weight. The more gunpowder is infused, the faster the projectile speed becomes. The increase of gunpowder to be fitted into a projectile also increases the overall weight of the projectile. This poses a negative effect to the range of the propulsion. The heavier the shell is, the greater the tendency to reduce projectile motion trajectory. Thus, an attempt to increase the speed of gunpowder-propelled shells inevitably reduces its target range in the process.

It maybe said that rail gun power is significantly tolling to its host base (e.g. aircraft) since it requires electric current to function. Studies show that new age aircraft carriers will have the capacity to fuel the most advanced rail guns. By switching their main power sources, aircrafts can provide the required launching power for its rail gun weapons.