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Originally Posted by DGthe3
A few hundred miles, easily.
They're not really well suited for hitting aircraft. One of the good things about using explosive warheads is that you don't need to get a 'skin on skin' kill, where missile makes direct contact with the target. As long as you get close enough, the shrapnel will tear up the control surfaces or other important bits. With a rail-gun you have no choice but to hit the target directly, which is really frikin' hard. Its kinda like going bird hunting with a sniper rifle (factiod: the term sniping derives from shooting birds with a rifle, in flight).
The killer app for railguns, in my opinion, would be as a bunker-buster. I don't know how many feet of earth or concrete a projectile could penetrate at mach 7, but I'm sure its more than enough to ruin somebodys day.
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Oh, I definitely agree that hitting something like an aircraft would be next to impossible.
My first thought with this because it was a Navy project is that this would go on a battleship for bombardment of bunkers, etc. Then I realized...I don't think they'd have the power to use this. You'd probably need a nuclear powered vessel of some sort as a platform.