The personal railgun-a small study in system integration

A personal railgun system for sporting use crystallizes all the challenges of railgun system integration. This paper describes a study of the integration of a small caliber (5 mm) railgun into a completely self-contained man portable system. The study starts with terminal ballistic considerations and continues though selection and sizing of the four major components including the barrel, energy storage, switching, power conditioning, and prime power generation. Although the resulting system is at the high end of the mass range, when compared to conventional rifles, it is surprisingly close.