From wiki.

The longest range recorded for sniper kill is 2,430 metres (2,657 yd), accomplished by a Canadian sniper, Corporal Rob Furlong, during the invasion of Afghanistan, using a .50 caliber BMG (12.7 mm) McMillan TAC-50 bolt-action rifle. This meant that the bullet had a flight time of ≈ 4.5 seconds, and a drop of ≈ 70 meters (230 ft)

By contrast, much of the US/Coalition urban sniping in support of operations in Iraq is at much shorter ranges, although in one notable incident on April 3, 2003, Corporals Matt and Sam Hughes, a two-man sniper team of the Royal Marines, armed with L96 sniper rifles each killed targets at a range of about 860 metres (941 yd) with shots that, due to strong wind, had to be “fire[d] exactly 17 meters (56 ft) to the left of the target for the bullet to bend in the wind.”[4]

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Ultima Ratio Regum

recently the austalians hit a target ( cant remember 6miles or 6k ) away bullseye with a barret
recently the british armys new barret like snipor also pissed all over the barret

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That's the one of the plusses of a railgun, it's untrackable. Missiles shoot flames out of the back of it's ass, that's how they're tracked. But with Railguns the projectile doesn't exist on radar, there's nothing to give it away.

Missiles take much longer, a few more minutes for sure, they can also be counter attacked and they're bloody expensive.

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Ya'll mis-understood what i meant... to fire it 220 miles, it needs to be mounted on something within 220 miles. If it requires a HUGE battleship with nuclear power, it's 220 miles from the target when it fires.

You may not track the warhead due to it's velocity... any navy worth their salt would have been tracking the ship for hundreds of miles before it can fire... so who needs to track the warhead? Shoot the fricken ship it's mounted on

hmmm...I hadn't actually realised how chronically short 220 miles actually is....given the weapons bad range and appalling hypothesised accuracy, I hereby declare this weapon useless.

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“There are some people in this world who don’t love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that!”

Yeah 220 miles isnt much really, considering some air to air missles on things like tomcats have a range of about 100 odd miles.
But then again in the article its just a baby gun compared with the railgun they want to build,
Course other interesting actions would be if you based it in orbit, or on the moon, then its a dead cheap kinetic weapon.
Or if you could punt a shell up high enough into a ballistic orbit/ trajectory and let the world turn under it as it drops, you'd get hell of a range then, you could even set them off at different trajectories, and speeds, and have a whole bunch of them drop down at the same time on the same point.

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Ultima Ratio Regum

But what if it's on a submarine!?

Oh and elbow.




Also other proposed uses for Railfuns are as a defence weapon, shooting missiles out of the sky which would just be like clay pigeon shooting with the difference in speeds.

Railguns are also being thought of as propelling rockets into space without the needed rocket part.
Another application scientists are thinking of is firing two Railguns loaded with fusible material at each other to create nuclear fusion.

Railguns could also be miniturised into infantry usable automatic weapons. A Railgun with a scope attached could snipe people through walls and probably make them explode. Just point and shoot.
Reloading would be quicker too as there is no spent shells to eject first, shoot a pellet and another one goes right in there.

Far from useless I'd say.

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If they want to use a rail gun for space missions - whatever they try to launch will be obliterated... literally. 0 -> Mach 7+ in the barrel length is too much for delicate scientific equipment!

Since they can make railguns no problem - and have been able to for a while (come on, they don't attempt to make their first railgun be one that can lob 2 tons of metal 220 miles and requires a nuclear power station to get it going!) I would say it's not new technology. Currently they're just seeing how far it goes - and i'd say the reason for that is because missiles can be shot down with lasers.. but lasers on big metal slugs won't exactly do much

Railguns for shooting missile, might not be that great, if its anti-shipping ones assuming it mounted on some sort of boat I thought there biggest problem was aquirring the target to shoot at.

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Ultima Ratio Regum

Laser guided?

It is just a big mounted gun.

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the barrel would get too wet (but also the gun would have to be massive it were to have enough bueffering to stop the submarine spinning around when it fired)



Guided by satellite? then its not just a lump of metal.

bullet drop? it doesn't matter how fast its going (because its a lump of metal, no lift), if its in the air for 2.5 minutes its going to drop quite a distance

wind drift? again, depends on distance, over 2.5 minutes its going to be a lot



its a fair point - its useless as a long range offensive weapon still.




see above - satellites = far too delicate




remind me to be several hundred miles away when they do that please



and what happenes when the battery runs out?

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“There are some people in this world who don’t love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that!”

Arthur C Clarke wrote about railguns being used on the moon to send cargo into orbit years ago

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The Pancreas of S.T.F.U. | Never take life too seriously - nobody gets out alive anyway.
Disco_jim: um..... I have no excuse. | Chips: Thank the Beef | Rev Dr: Beef, I think i wee'd a little

Yeah but seem to remember the goalkeeper system on ships doesnt work that well, thought you might encounter the same problems, admittedly it flies faster, and has a longer range.

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Ultima Ratio Regum

a rail gun could not be used as a primary source of power for satellites, for obvious reasons, but as a launching method they could be quite useful to reduce the enormous cost, but only really on the moon. I don't have the exact figures again, but the burn time on a rocket is significantly longer than the amount of time you'd be able to keep an object in a railgun (vertically at least).

you could try and combine a rail gun and the space elevator....

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“There are some people in this world who don’t love their fellow man, and I HATE people like that!”

Sort of like MGS:2

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