NEW BREATKTHROUGH IN NATIONAL DEFENSE – AT 12:18 P.M. ET:   Our defenses are deteriorating.  Budget constraints, the ideological left of the Obama administration, and a Republican Congress increasingly adrift, make for a bad combination when the national defense of the United States is involved.  But occasionally we see a piece of technology that may help save the day.  From Fox: 

A warning siren bellowed through the concrete bunker of a top-secret Naval facility where U.S. military engineers prepared to demonstrate a weapon for which there is little defense.

Officials huddled at a video screen for a first look at a deadly new supergun that can fire a 25-pound projectile through seven steel plates and leave a 5-inch hole.

The weapon is called a railgun and requires neither gunpowder nor explosive. It is powered by electromagnetic rails that accelerate a hardened projectile to staggering velocity—a battlefield meteorite with the power to one day transform military strategy, say supporters, and keep the U.S. ahead of advancing Russian and Chinese weaponry.

Keeping ahead will be difficult.  The Russians surprised us by bouncing back from their Cold War defeat to build new, excellent weapons.  Putin means what he says.

In conventional guns, a bullet loses velocity from the moment the gunpowder ignites and sends it flying. The railgun projectile instead gains speed as it travels the length of a 32-foot barrel, exiting the muzzle at 4,500 miles an hour, or more than a mile a second.

“This is going to change the way we fight,” said U.S. Navy Adm. Mat Winter, the head of the Office of Naval Research.

COMMENT:  Let's hope the usual bureaucratic mess in Washington doesn't hinder the development of this new system. 

May 28, 2016