The Washington Examiner reported today that the Navy is about to start tests on a second-stage prototype of its favorite futuristic weapon: the railgun, which uses electricity, rather than traditional explosives, to accelerate a shell to fantastic speeds. Here’s where the project stands:

BAE Systems won a $21 million contract in 2009 to develop its prototype. In 2013, it was awarded an additional $35 million contract to build its follow-on, which would fire more shots at once than its predecessor. The Navy expects to have the railgun fully operational in the mid-2020s.
The “bullets” themselves, projectiles that are also under development, are expected to cost about $25,000 each.
Getting the railgun on its ships will help the Navy reduce both risk and vulnerability, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said.
“Probably the biggest vulnerability of a ship is its magazine [ammunition storage], because that’s where all the explosives are. Imagine getting rid of that. And the cost … $25,000 a round,” compared with more than $1 million a shot for the Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missile, Greenert said.
“Get me off gunpowder,” he told the assembled crowd, in town for the Naval Future Force Science and Technology Expo.
Next year, the railgun will undergo its first trials, when it will be installed aboard a Joint High Speed Vessel for shipboard testing.
But the 2016 test will have limitations: the high-speed vessel can be thought of like a high-speed barge — open with a clear deck that can be modified for missions, but is nothing like the platforms the railgun is intended for.

It all sounds very exciting, just over a pretty long timeframe — and potentially, as Mike Fredenburg wrote for NRO last year, with much more disappointing results than the Navy is touting. There are highly advanced traditional guns that Navy could be fitting to ships in the near term; instead, it likes the idea of replacing both traditional gun artillery, anti-missile firepower, and missiles themselves with the railgun. But, of course, the Pentagon has a really great track record of trying to make one technology do many things . . .