All I Want For Christmas Is A New Railgun

2008 test - the "flame" is plasma, not a chemical propellant

Take a projectile and put it on a small sled, then insert the two into the mother of all straight-line super-duper electromagnetic devices and you have the U.S. Navy's prototype rail gun. This new military toy has been developed  in part by the weapons geeks at BAE, the former employer of OTR's older son. Some test firings took place late last month and the video looks pretty exciting. It isn't every day that you can watch a projectile leave the muzzle at 5000 mph and head for a target that could be one hundred miles away.

Here is a brief Discovery Channel video produced around 2006 that offers us some background on railgun technology. Looks like they have come a long way toward that smaller, faster gun.