In 2016, the U.S. Navy is going to test a railgun—a weapon that can repeatedly launch a projectile at more than 5,000 MPH—from a boat. In 2018, they're going to do it again. And in the 2020s, the Navy is going to figure out just what to do with a gun that seemed like science fiction decades ago.
The U.S. Navy's Zumwalt destroyer, the most technologically advanced warship ever built and the first of its eponymous class, was set to be christened October 19, but then politics intervened. Late last month, the U.S. Navy finally launched the Zumwalt from a shipyard in Maine (though without a baptismal spray of champagne). Popular Science reported on the Zumwalt's incredible strength and stealth last year; check out the details, including how the warship might have changed the course of a historic Korean War battle, in our October 2012 cover story.
This northern summer, billions of cicadas will rise from under the US East Coast, shed their grub-like bodies, and clumsily fly to perches in trees, where they will make a terrible racket. The insects are singing to attract mates, but this year, they'll have the ear of the U.S. Navy, too. Researchers at the U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center are dissecting cicadas in an effort to develop a better underwater sensor. Yesterday they presented a paper on their work at the International Congress on Acoustics.
For the U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman, it's shaping up to be a banner year in unmanned flight. While the carrier-based autonomous X-47B continues to hit milestones aboard the USS George H.W. Bush somewhere off the East Coast, out west in Palmdale, Calif., today the Navy flew its MQ-4C Triton maritime drone for the first time, marking the beginning of a sea change (pardon the pun) in the way the U.S. military patrols the oceans. The drone flew for 80 minutes and reached an altitude of 20,000 feet.
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