And Now We Have Rail Guns. For Real.

[cthulhu77]

The new shieldings being developed are making most of the electronics used by the military protected by emp blast...of course, a localized target could be hit and knocked out.
 The most viable use of emp's would be against air stations (tower control, awacs, etc), as all of the ground units have manual over-rides available.  I am not sure if emp would hurt a railgun or not...it might screw up the computer, but not the system itself.

  O.G.R.E. anyone?

[GTX]

how do we protect against EMP's?

There are ways.

Regards,

Greg

[Hobbes]

I am not sure if emp would hurt a railgun or not...it might screw up the computer, but not the system itself.

Correct. The gun uses massive conductors, an EMP won't induce enough current to fry them. Computers are another matter. You can protect them, to a degree: stick them inside a Faraday cage and use optical lines for communication.

And then there's the Russian way: use vacuum tubes instead of ICs. When a MiG-25 pilot defected to Japan in 1976, the initial reaction was to laugh at the silly Russians and their outdated electronics. Now we know that this was a conscious decision, done in part to harden the aircraft against EMP.