ONR Does Guns

Anytime ONR has a gun contract, I'm interested. From yesterday.

The Institute of Advanced Technology at University of Texas, Austin, Austin, Texas, is being awarded a $9,129,778 cost plus fixed fee contract to perform railgun assessment including laboratory testing and scalability between small and medium scale launcher, pulsed power assessment and conceptual prototyping and assessment of electromagnetic railgun contractor development items including advanced containment launcher and pulsed power systems. This contract contains options, which is exercised, would bring the contract value to $12,063,851. Work will be performed in Austin, Texas, and work is expected to be completed Jan. 31, 2012. Contract funds in the amount of $10,000 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under the Office of Naval Research Broad Agency Announcement Number 08-001. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Va., is the contracting activity (N00014-09-C-0187).

How much power does an electromagnetic railgun take? I'm assuming a small launcher needs less than a medium or large launcher, but how small could small be.

I'm just wondering if an electromagnetic railgun could ever work on something like the LCS. What do ya think?