Railgun Installed On Japanese Warship Seen In New Photos

“When it comes to warships, in particular, where physical space is at a premium and where options for reloading missiles at sea can be at best extremely limited, having a weapon system firing lower-cost munitions from a large magazine and that can engage a broad swath of target sets would be a clear boon.”

• Japan’s continued developments in this realm stand in notable contrast to the U.S. Navy’s shelving of its promising pursuit of this category of weapons in the early 2020s after major technical hurdles emerged...
• Railguns, which use electromagnets instead of chemical propellants to fire projectiles at very high velocities, have historically had significant power generation and cooling requirements. 

These demands mean that complete railgun weapon systems are typically physically very bulky...