A giant, ship-mounted gun that fires a projectile with magnetism at an incredulously high speed?

That's why, if you look at the more recent and more famous railgun test, there's a HUGE fireball around the projectile. The friction it causes literally ignites the air.

You hear that Russia, don't fuck with is.

This technology has been around for a while. In amusement parks, the basic technology behind this can be used to propel roller coasters. It's called a "linear induction motor". It can propel roller coasters from 0 to 55 MPH in 2 seconds.

it doesn't refer only to people. the term refers to any target that is not heavily armored. so planes, jeeps, warehouses, fuel depots, and temporary structures are all "soft targets" even though they're not exactly soft. bunkers are a typical example of a "hard target".

The trail in fact would be the friction from the round causing the air in the bullet's path to hyper-expand, which would cause distortion, and depending on how fast the projectile was moving, may theoretically ignite the air. So the trail will be there. Now, there won't be any fancy energy-esque contrail or anything, but...

I think it is more about stopping power than range of accuracy seeing after a certain point the weapon becomes line-of-sight. After that added speed just means added force of impact.

The interesting thing is when they say "soft" they don't mean just human soft. A round going at those speeds has the kinetic energy of a high explosive warhead.

@doasie the problem with the lower level weapons is that you need an VERY high amount of Energy to propel a single round, that is not very efficient compared to the gunpowder, and there´s also the force that the Rail will create, you need to tight up the gun VERY TIGHT or it will explode due the force created by the magnetic field. Imagine the Gun as a Ballon, and the Air is the Magnetic field, if you put the balloon in a confined space, it won´t explode, just fill.

@StainedShuriken333 Also, inductors can provide large voltages on kickback, but limited by curent. Also, inductors do not store energy after you remove the applied voltage. You would need to maintain the current applied to the inductor continualy till you want the discharge.

Yeah it's unlikely, just suggesting that the reactor might be of a size (or number) that means it's protection is reduced in the design constraints and that the future battlefield could well see enemies capable of hitting it.

You are thinking of the 5 inch gun, which is fired on a regular basis. This gun is rarely fired.