--- title: "China Uses Giant Rail Gun to Shoot Smart Bomb Nine Miles Into the Sky" description: "China's navy has apparently tested out its hypersonic rail gun — but during a demonstration of its power, things didn't go quite as planned." date: "2024-05-16" modified: "2024-05-16" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/china-rail-gun-smart-bomb" categories: - "Off-World" - "Space" tags: - "china" - "hypersonic railgun" - "military tech" - "the digest" --- # China Uses Giant Rail Gun to Shoot Smart Bomb Nine Miles Into the Sky ![China's navy has apparently tested out its hypersonic rail gun — but during a demonstration of its power, things didn't go quite as planned.]() *\Image: Weibo / Futurism\* ## Meet Your Macher China's navy has apparently tested out a hypersonic rail gun — basically a device that uses a series of electromagnets to accelerate a projectile to incredible speeds — but during a demonstration of its power, things didn't go quite as planned. As the [*South China Morning Post* reports](), the rail gun test lobbed a precision-guided projectile — or smart bomb — nine miles into the stratosphere. But because it apparently didn't go up as high as it was supposed to, the test was ultimately declared unsuccessful. This conclusion came after an analysis led by Naval Engineering University professor Lu Junyong, whose team found with the help of AI that even though the winged smart bomb exceeded Mach 5 speeds, it didn't perform as well as it could have. This occurred, as Lu's team found, because the projectile was spinning too fast during its ascent, resulting in an "undesirable tilt." ## Gun for Everybody Successful or not, news of the test is a pretty big deal given that it was just a few months ago that reports emerged about China's *other* proposed super-powered rail gun, which is intended to [send astronauts on a Boeing 737-size ship into space]() (NASA had [begun building its own astronaut-shooting]() railgun in the 1990s, but had to abandon it due to lack of dinero.) As with many space technologies, there's the propensity for some [messy overlap with military tech](). As such, news about the smart bomb rail gun test, which for the record did *not* make it all the way to space, could well freak out officials stateside. Chinese officials, meanwhile, are paying lip service to the hypersonic rail gun technology's potential to revolutionize civilian travel by creating even faster railways and consumer space launches, too. Despite the big promises of politicos, there are still lots of technical kinks that'll need to be ironed out before a giant rail gun is ready to shoot humans — or weapons — into space, not least of which the spinning and tilt issues demonstrated by the Naval Engineering University researchers in this test. **More on Chinese military tech:** [*China Working on Super-Fast Submarines Powered by Lasers*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()