Quote:
Originally Posted by Raellus
Back in the mid-to-late '80s, there was a lot of hype/hope about a rail-gun armed vehicle that could rapidly destroy even the most heavily armored MBTs with relatively small projectiles. I'm not clear on why that never panned out. I assume it's because the technology could not be perfected in a cost-efficient manner and, with the end of the Cold War, development was scrapped.
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Electricity storage/generation tech is what is holding back a number of potential battlefield high-tech weapon systems. Rail guns/mass drivers (and battlefield lasers and particle accelerators) need a lot of electricity to power them, and they need to be able to apply it over very short time scales. I expect that over the next 20 years or so we'll see some great leaps forward in the area of small, high output, stable energy generation systems.