Rail gun

A rail gun is a device which employs electromagnetic induction rather than expanding gas or mechanical action to accelerate projectiles.

Usage

Peace Walker Incident

Main article: Peace Walker Incident

In 1974, a rail gun was used by the Chrysalis AI weapon, which was destroyed by Big Boss. After it was defeated, Big Boss and the Militaires Sans Frontières salvaged its rail gun, as well as its radome, to build Metal Gear ZEKE.

Chryalis Custom3 — Side view of the rail gun employed by the Chrysalis AI weapon.

A man-portable version was also developed by the MSF. It required a separate exterior dynamo that employed an experimental microwave power transmission mechanism (which was under similar development in other countries), and at least two people to operate it due to its large consumption of electricity. There was also research being conducted on rail gun technology throughout the developed world during this time.^[1]

Post-Peace Walker

The rail gun technology was further developed for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but was later scrapped. In 1993, rail gun testing was restarted,^[2] eventually culminating in the technology's advancement in the early 2000s, as the result of a joint venture between ArmsTech and Livermore National Labs.^[3]

Shadow Moses Incident

Main article: Shadow Moses Incident

In 2005, Metal Gear REX was equipped with a rail gun on its right shoulder, which was ostensibly designed to provide it with missile defense capabilities. However, it was actually designed without the chief designer's knowledge to enable it to launch stealth equipped nuclear weapons. By using a rail gun rather than rocket propellent, a warhead could be launched that would be undetectable. This also exploited a specific loophole that existed in anti-nuke treaties, since weapons fired from a rail gun were not technically ballistic, so limitations on ballistic weaponry did not apply. A country could therefore use REX to secretly attack any desired target without fear of retaliation through military or legal force. Solid Snake was successful in disabling REX at Shadow Moses Island, removing the danger that the Metal Gear posed. ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker, seconds before his death from FOXDIE, also implied that this feature, had it been uncovered during the incident to the public, would have resulted in the weapons manufacturing company being shut down, and with him facing a costly inquiry.^[4] The United States Government then covered up the whole incident and REX was left on the island. REX's rail gun also had some glitches in regards to its warhead delivery system, to which served as the reason why ArmsTech president Baker entrusted the MO Disc of REX's test data to Snake as well as why Jim Houseman severely needed the data.^[5]

The Manhattan Incident

See also: Tanker Incident and the Big Shell Incident

In 2009, a man-portable rail gun was the main weapon of Fortune, the leader of Dead Cell. It had an extremely long reload cycle making it most suitable as a sniper rifle. It also had a massive recoil effect, as well as having a huge amount of bugs and errors (mostly related to the rail plasma and the inner rail electromagnetic release) due to it being a prototype model, making it far too dangerous for normal use in combat to the enemy and to the user, as well as being cited via evaluations to be unacceptable to be used as a field weapon for those reasons. Fortune was able to use it in normal combat without the gun accidentally discharging due to "being lucky."^[6] Fortune used the rail gun until her death at Revolver Ocelot's hands.

Guns of the Patriots Incident

See also: Liquid Sun, Solid Sun, Third Sun, Twin Suns, Old Sun, and Naked Sin/Naked Son

In 2014, Liquid Ocelot sent Vamp and Naomi Hunter to Shadow Moses to retrieve the rail gun attached to REX. The facility's stockpile of stealth "naked nukes" was the only way to directly attack JD's satellite without the Patriots knowing about it.

Crying Wolf, of the Beauty and the Beast Unit, used a man-portable rail gun against Solid Snake on Shadow Moses. The technology was provided to Liquid Ocelot by Vamp, following Fortune's death, and placed in Wolf's hands.^[7] However, Snake was able to defeat Wolf and he ended up procuring the weapon himself. While compact, the rail gun packed as much firepower as a tank turret. It had the most penetrative power of any weapon in Snake's arsenal and dealt extremely high damage to targets. Snake later used it to hold off an entire division of Suicide Gekko.

Desperado Incursions

During one of Raiden's missions for Maverick between 2014 and 2018, Raiden managed to retrieve several amounts of blueprint data, at least one of which related to the Blade Wolf, where it was shown to have a man-portable railgun. Although the LQ-84i itself did not possess the weapon by the time it and Raiden fought in Abkhazia, its mass-produced models, the Fenrirs, possessed the weapon system.

Behind the scenes

While a rail gun in 1974 may seem far-fetched, rail guns are not as futuristic as is commonly thought. The first patent for a rail gun design was issued in 1918, and in late 1944, the Luftwaffe Flak Command were developing a 128mm rail gun design for antiaircraft use; Allied studies in 1947 concluded that the design was functional, but that each gun would require enough power to light half of Chicago. The first large-scale working rail gun was constructed in 1950 in Australia, and used to gather scientific data.

The explaination for the rail gun making nuclear warheads untraceable was largely erroneous:

This is because a rocket engine applies force to an ICBM over a prolonged period of time; for example, a Trident ICBM's boost stage, which accelerates the missile to roughly 20,000 feet per second, lasts roughly two minutes. If Rex's railgun is imagined to be around 50 feet long, it would have to accelerate the projectile to the same speed in the 0.005 seconds before the warhead left the weapon.

Imagining the warhead to weigh 862 kilos (the size of a Mark 23 nuclear gun round for a 16" / 50 Calibre Mark 7 battleship gun), it would have 16,016 megajoules of kinetic energy at launch. Since no machine is 100% efficient and most are nothing like this, it would not be exaggerating to imagine the railgun's wasted energy (in the form of recoil, heat and mechanical deformation of the rails) would be the same amount of energy again, meaning the heat energy emitted by Rex on firing would be the equivalent of the detonation of about four tons of TNT. This and the superheated trail caused by the round's passage through the atmosphere would mean a Metal Gear firing its main weapon would be easily detectable by existing systems designed to spot ICBM launches.

The rail gun as it appeared in Metal Gear Solid 2 was not completely digitalized: Rather, a wooden prop was created for motion capture sessions, although its size in-game made it so that it would end up heavy. At one point, Fortune's motion capture actress complained about getting "covered in bruises" every time she used it.

Rail Gun Ray — Fortune's rail gun concept artwork with Metal Gear RAY concept artwork.

The rail gun, which can be used in Metal Gear Solid 4, possesses 3 levels of charge. A Lv.1 charge is comparable to the DSR-1's punch, while a Lv.2 charge is comparable to explosives. A Lv.3 charge is even more powerful, allowing an instant kill on a Gekko, with one shot to the head. Ammo in-game is scarce and should be used sparingly, though more can be bought from Drebin 893 if the player has earned enough Drebin Points. However, its long charge time puts it at a disadvantage against multiple close range targets, especially during Act 4 where some areas had more than one Gekko to deal with, and when the players hold off a group of Suicide Gekkos near the end.

In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, the rail gun has no use in single-player mode, as it requires an external Dynamo, making it a CO-OPS exclusive weapon. It was unlocked by getting an S-rank against Custom Chrysalis.

"An electromagnetic accelerator cannon currently being researched throughout the developed world. It fires projectiles with a kinetic energy of over 10 megajoules, on par with those of a tank cannon.
Naturally, this makes the rail gun orders of magnitude more powerful than anything else, able to destroy almost any target in a single shot. On the other hand, it also consumes an enormous amount of electricity, making it essential to have a CO-OPS teammate nearby to charge the weapon between shots."

―Weapon description in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

"A remote charging system for the rail gun, employing an experimental microwave power transmission mechanism under development in several countries.
This device is absolutely essential in order for the rail gun to unleash its full power. When using the rail gun in CO-OPS play, make sure somebody on the team has one."