"China's navy has apparently tested out a hypersonic rail gun," reports Futurism, describing it as "basically a device that uses a series of electromagnets to accelerate a projectile to incredible speeds." But "during a demonstration of its power, things didn't go quite as planned." As the South China Morning Post reports, the rail gun test lobbed a precision-guided projectile — or smart bomb — nine miles into the stratosphere. But because it apparently didn't go up as high as it was supposed to, the test was ultimately declared unsuccessful. This conclusion came after an analysis led by Naval Engineering University professor Lu Junyong, whose team found with the help of AI that even though the winged smart bomb exceeded Mach 5 speeds, it didn't perform as well as it could have. This occurred, as Lu's team found, because the projectile was spinning too fast during its ascent, resulting in an "undesirable tilt." But what's more interesting is the project itself. "Successful or not, news of the test is a pretty big deal given that it was just a few months ago that reports emerged about China's other proposed super-powered rail gun, which is intended to send astronauts on a Boeing 737-size ship into space.... which for the record did not make it all the way to space..." Chinese officials, meanwhile, are paying lip service to the hypersonic rail gun technology's potential to revolutionize civilian travel by creating even faster railways and consumer space launches, too. Japan and France also have railgun projects, according to a recent article from Defense One. "Yet the nation that has demonstrated the most continuing interest is China," with records of railgun work dating back as far as 2011: The Chinese team claimed that their railgun can fire a projectile 100 to 200 kilometers at Mach 6. Perhaps most importantly, it uses up to 100,000 AI-enabled sensors to identify and fix any problems before critical failure, and can slowly improve itself over time. This, they said, had enabled them to test-fire 120 rounds in a row without failure, which, if true, suggests that they solved a longstanding problem that reportedly bedeviled U.S. researchers. However, the team still has a ways to go before mounting an operational railgun on a ship; according to one Chinese article, the projectiles fired were only 25mm caliber, well below the size of even lightweight naval artillery. As with many other Chinese defense technology programs, much remains opaque about the program... While railguns tend to get the headlines, this lab has made advances in a wide range of electric and electromagnetic applications for the PLA Navy's warships. For example, the lab's research on electromagnetic launch technology has also been applied to the development of electromagnetic catapults for the PLAN's growing aircraft carrier fleet... While it remains to be seen whether the Chinese navy can develop a full-scale railgun, produce it at scale, and integrate it onto its warships, it is obvious that it has made steady advances in recent years on a technology of immense military significance that the US has abandoned. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Tangential for sharing the news.

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