That all makes a lot of sense, especially comparing it to missiles for offensive purposes.
Then my cynical side pops up and asks “cui bono”, (Latin for “who benefits?”, a question asked by thinkers such as Cicero), I’m sure missile developers don’t want to see their gravy train interfered with.
Anyway, thanks for the background, like I said, totally makes sense as you’ve laid it out.
The railgun tech was being developed by BAE and General Atomics, who aren’t exactly homespun upstarts when it comes to having a say in things.
I think it was more a matter of the technology not quite being mature enough for the desired application. There tends to be an overlapping period in military tech development where the technology exists and even works, but it doesn’t work well enough to displace existing systems. There’s always a kind of hindsight factor when new tech, especially radical new tech, get adopted. It’s either adopted too early and everyone complains about the perfectly good, tried & true systems being replaced by fancy high tech junk, or it’s adopted once it’s fully mature and people shake their heads and ask why not sooner.
That all makes a lot of sense, especially comparing it to missiles for offensive purposes.
Then my cynical side pops up and asks “cui bono”, (Latin for “who benefits?”, a question asked by thinkers such as Cicero), I’m sure missile developers don’t want to see their gravy train interfered with.
Anyway, thanks for the background, like I said, totally makes sense as you’ve laid it out.
The railgun tech was being developed by BAE and General Atomics, who aren’t exactly homespun upstarts when it comes to having a say in things.
I think it was more a matter of the technology not quite being mature enough for the desired application. There tends to be an overlapping period in military tech development where the technology exists and even works, but it doesn’t work well enough to displace existing systems. There’s always a kind of hindsight factor when new tech, especially radical new tech, get adopted. It’s either adopted too early and everyone complains about the perfectly good, tried & true systems being replaced by fancy high tech junk, or it’s adopted once it’s fully mature and people shake their heads and ask why not sooner.