Why Railguns on Ships Are Useless — Especially for the US Navy

Why have naval railguns quietly disappeared from modern warships — and why is the US Navy right to abandon them?

For more than two decades, electromagnetic railguns were promoted as a revolutionary naval weapon. They promised hypersonic velocity, cheap ammunition, deep magazines, and the ability to replace missiles for naval fire support, missile defence, and surface warfare. Yet after years of testing and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, naval railguns have failed to enter service — and the US Navy has effectively walked away from the technology.

In this video, we break down how railguns actually work, why they initially appealed to navies, and why they ultimately failed as shipboard weapons. We examine the technical challenges of railgun power generation, rail erosion, heat management, rate of fire, projectile guidance, and ship integration. We also explain why even advanced electric warships like the Zumwalt-class destroyers were never realistic railgun platforms.

We explore the history of the US Navy railgun program, including Office of Naval Research testing, hypervelocity projectiles, megajoule-class launchers, and why the program was defunded in the FY2022 budget. We also look at China’s railgun testing and Japan’s shipboard railgun experiments, and explain why none of these efforts point toward near-term operational deployment.

Most importantly, we compare railguns to existing naval weapons. Modern cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, hypersonic missiles, interceptor missiles, and directed energy weapons already perform the missions railguns were supposed to replace — with greater reliability, flexibility, and combat effectiveness. We explain why missiles outperform railguns in naval warfare, missile defence, and long-range strike, and why saving money per shot is meaningless if probability of kill is lower.

Finally, we address the proposal to include a railgun on the Trump-class battleship design. We argue that railguns represent a pointless money sink that diverts resources from mature, combat-ready systems like the Conventional Prompt Strike missile and Tomahawk Block V.