Naval Group SCX 26 concept ship bets on a railgun the US Navy dropped

A mix of classic and experimental weapons

The conventional armament includes more than 100 vertical launch silos for missiles of various classes, a teleoperated secondary gun with 360° coverage, teleoperated munitions (essentially kamikaze drones) and two Rampart modular launchers, a system recently tested at sea. The experimental side is a railgun with rapid-salvo capability and a 100 kW laser.

The logic is cost. A railgun uses no powder: a very intense electric current runs through two parallel rails, and the resulting magnetic field propels the shell at several times the speed of sound. The projectile carries neither explosive nor motor, so it is far cheaper than a missile and safer to store. That fits Naval Group's stated aim of countering "multiple and saturating" threats such as drone swarms without emptying missile stocks.

The company publishes no caliber or range for the weapon, and warns the SCX 26 does not necessarily foreshadow a future program. It is mainly a forward-looking exercise.

Why the US Navy walked away

The US Navy ended its railgun program in July 2021 after roughly 500 million dollars (about 450 million euros) and fifteen years of work. It cited development cost, the difficulty of fitting the weapon on ships, and progress in lasers and hypersonic missiles. In 2018, Admiral John Richardson, then chief of naval operations, told Congress the barrel was the weak link, since it had to withstand extreme electrical discharge, heat and pressure with each shot. The rails wore out far too quickly.

Others keep going. Japan's navy fired a railgun at another ship during sea trials in 2025, and France joined Germany and Japan in 2024 to develop such guns.