Railgun Tests

Check out this vid released by the US Navy Research Lab:




Here is an excerpt for the article in Popular Mechanics: 

A futuristic weapon that uses electricity rather than traditional propellant to shoot high-speed projectiles took a step closer to the battlefield last week. The U.S. Navy fired the first live demonstration of its prototype electromagnetic railgun at a test range, program manager Roger Ellis says. Now some military officials at the Office of Naval Research say that it might even be possible to have the weapon—which had been plagued by delays and technical problems—ready sooner than previously planned.In this test at a range in Dahlgren, Va., the Navy fired a 32-megajoule half-power prototype of the electromagnetic railgun, developed by BAE Systems. (The Navy compares one megajoule of energy to a 1-ton vehicle moving at about 100 miles per hour.) The full-scale system is expected to be 64 megajoules. General Atomics is scheduled to deliver its own 32-megajoule prototype to the Navy in April to compete with the BAE design.The BAE Systems prototype has yet to fire at full power. Tom Boucher, the Navy’s test director for the railgun, says that after the Navy commissioned it last week, it fired the gun six times at 20 megajoules. "As we evaluate the data, we’ll take it up to 32 megajoules," Boucher says.

Read more: The Navy’s Electric Cannon Fires Its First Shots - Popular Mechanics