American magazine The National Interest recently published an article stating that Japan's breakthrough progress in electromagnetic railgun technology has drawn high attention from the Pentagon. This new weapon system can fire projectiles at 7 times the speed of sound, and it completed a leap from laboratory prototypes to shipboard testing within just three years — a development pace far surpassing the U.S. Army's similar project, which took 15 years without achieving practical application. The 40-millimeter caliber prototype cannon developed by the University of Tokyo in collaboration with the Ministry of Defense has achieved a breakthrough in continuous firing stability, with projectile initial velocity maintained above 2200 meters per second, a figure that represents a 40% increase compared to the initial version in 2021.
Analysts point out that the Japanese Defense Equipment Agency skillfully integrated Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' expertise in composite materials with Kawasaki Heavy Industries' superconducting technology, achieving an energy conversion efficiency of an astonishing 35%, far exceeding the international average. More intriguingly, the technology-sharing mechanism under the U.S.-Japan security treaty could quickly translate these breakthroughs into defensive capabilities at the Guam base. The sudden addition of a $1.2 billion "Directed Energy Weapons Cooperation Fund" in the Pentagon's 2024 budget was seen by the outside world as a substantive acknowledgment of Japan's achievements.
However, military experts caution that the railgun still faces significant challenges before becoming the "silver bullet" for countering China's anti-access/area denial system. China's engineering capabilities demonstrated on the Fujian aircraft carrier's electromagnetic catapult system suggest its related technological reserves should not be underestimated. Although the current railgun tests conducted by Japan have a range of 200 kilometers, there is still a gap to the 800-kilometer threshold required for operational deployment, and the instantaneous power supply bottleneck of shipboard power systems has not been fully resolved. As stated by the technical director of Lockheed Martin: "Converting Mach numbers from the laboratory into kill chains on the battlefield spans the entire distance of the Pacific Ocean."
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1843223200819335/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.