The Navy's Railgun is finally dead

Railguns just seem to have no advantage compared to missiles.

The only locations where railguns seem to make sense are in space, or low-gravity environments like the moon - specifically for launching cargo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

Even on Mars, to reach escape velocity you would need a 200km long track:

https://marspedia.org/Mass_driver

This should be celebrated. Not spending money on projects that don't have a purpose is obviously the correct choice.

It seems however that it's being deprioritized in place of hypersonic missiles, which are a frightening and potentially destabilizing technology in their own right.

Railguns are interesting devices but it was clear there was never going to be a viable combat model. At best, these might be used to do more research for a launch platform used by the space transportation industry. It really is useful there.

In almost total ignorance of the Navy and its affairs, the news coverage over the past few years sure paints them as utterly boned. If the problems aren't as severe as they seem then it must have taken some effort to look so fucked up. Paranoia might suggest its a sucker play; they're waiting for an excuse to reveal the hovercarrier tech [1].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719