Summary and Key Points: The railgun, an advanced artillery system using electromagnetic force to launch projectiles at high velocities, has faced significant challenges, leading to the U.S. Navy canceling its program in 2021.

-The main issues included durability, integration with ship power systems, and underperformance in tests. Despite this, China claims to be advancing its railgun technology, potentially incorporating it into their naval forces.

-While some analysts believe China may be bluffing to provoke U.S. spending, others worry about China's genuine progress in this field.

The Great Railgun Debate

When the catapult was introduced into warfare, it changed history forever. Empires were built or destroyed by this ingenious weapon. They seem antiquated today, but the concept of taking an object and hurling it at enemy formation or fortification keeps its appeal. 

We are obviously well beyond the era of catapults. But the U.S. military and others have toyed with a more high-tech version of this artillery piece: the railgun.

What is the Railgun?

Basically, a railgun uses electromagnetic force to propel an object toward a target at an extremely high velocity. The innovation is that the railgun uses electricity rather than chemicals to give the projectiles their speed.

The speed we are talking about leaves little time to react. There is in theory little defense against this type of attack. 

But while this technology was the great dream of many U.S. military engineers, it never came to fruition. 

What Happened to This Weapon?

According to ExecutiveGov, the Navy canceled the program because “the rails could easily experience wear and tear from firing multiple projectiles, resulting in a very high surface temperature, which can magnify durability issues even more.” 

Further, these weapons are power hogs, and their inability to integrate into the warship’s electrical grid made them useless as weapons. 

Finally, when railguns were tested at the U.S. Army’s Dugway Proving Ground in the Utah desert, they didn’t hit the range their designers had promised. 

All of this left the Navy with nothing to show for over a decade of work and hundreds of millions of dollars invested. In 2021, the Navy canceled the program and redirected its resources to more conventional defenses as well as its hypersonic weapons program.

The Navy couldn’t make it work, and we were told that it wasn’t that big of a deal. If the Navy couldn’t do it, certainly no one else, especially a foreign power, could ever attain this radical technology.

China Enters the Chat

But China claims it is proving these Western leaders wrong. 

With China becoming a wealthy and modernizing nation-state, it is inevitable that they would enhance their military capabilities. As part of the effort, China is working on some radical, advanced new military technologies. One such new capability, they claim, is the railgun. 

Beijing announced the existence of their program just two years after the Pentagon abandoned theirs. 

Some in Washington, such as the analysts at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), don’t think that the Chinese have the railgun. They believe China is bluffing on the topic. They see a sort of reverse-Reagan approach to handling the U.S. threat to China. U.S. President Ronald Reagan got the USSR to spend itself into oblivion partly by lying about what new systems the Americans were building, and China is doing that to the U.S. today.

But after every Chinese advance, the Western press enters the scene to downplay the threat and disparage anyone who would believe such sophistry. Beijing is undoubtedly turning some variation of the Reagan plan against the U.S. Yet China is also truly developing some advanced – and fearsome – technologies to combat the Americans.

Enter the Chinese railgun. They purportedly have a rudimentary version of the one the Americans had been developing. Chinese strategists also claim that the new railguns are being easily incorporated into their warships to give their naval force added protection and power-projection capabilities. 

The United States military, meanwhile, is struggling with all these problems. If China can build a railgun when the U.S. cannot, that is good reason to worry. 

About the Author

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock. All photos are of various submarine styles. 

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