Re: In today's news...
Railguns! Future technology? Nope, it's almost here!
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They're much cheaper than conventional cruise missiles, at only $25,000 per shot
It sounds like a lot, but that's a lot cheaper than a missile. And that matters a lot for the military. They'll be rolled out as functional tech at 2017.
I'm not sure how much I trust Russia Times as a source on cutting-edge US Naval tech, so I did a little reading on my own. I found
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; I also verified that
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, the primary source for both third-party articles, would indeed be the right person to ask. Finally, I went to the
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, which more or less confirms the information in a blurb on the front page.
With that said, I'm not sure how much our supposed or future "adversaries" have to worry about railgun projectiles. The railgun looks like a great asset in littoral fire support and in surface warfare, but the majority of our current threats come from fast attack craft (FAC)/fast inshore attack craft (FIAC), mine, subsurface (think silent diesel submarines with torpedoes), and ballistic missile antagonists. Warship-to-warship combat hasn't happened on a large scale since the Second World War.
In other news, Angela Merkel turned 60 on Thursday. Happy birthday to my favorite politician from East Germany. :3
Finally,
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. One thing I'll say about Russian cover-ups: they aren't exactly subtle. Putin accuses
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(Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL)) but... yeah. To me this is just another link in a long chain of Russian attempts to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and maintain its hegemony in Eastern Europe.