Missle Defence via. railgun

Rail guns are capable of firing a projectile at such high speeds that both the target an the projectile can be vaporized upon impact. This makes rail guns eligible candidates for missile defense. The United States Department of Defense has proposed several ideas.

One proposed idea is mount railguns on satellites in space. When an attacking ballistic missile is fired towards the U.S. the satellites would fire at it hopefully destroying it. A disadvantage of this method is that the kick of the railgun could throw the satellite severely off course. It is also very hard to aim at missile that is moving at high speed when the gun itself is also traveling at high speed. On top of that all, it is very expensive to launch satellites into space.

Another proposed idea is to simply put a railgun on the ground and fire at incoming missiles. The only disadvantage to this is air resistance. The air can severely slow the projectile down. The friction from air resistance could also severely damage or even destroy the projectile.

Despite their disadvantages railguns could soon become a very effective and practical method of missile defense.