A railgun works by sending the electrical current THROUGH the projectile itself (thus causing the immense heat release, and partial vaporization of both the projectile and the rails into plasma.

A coilgun uses a series of electromagnetic coils that wrap around the barrel of the weapon, and a ferromagnetic kinetic impactor. The coils generate tremendous EM fields that pull the impactor along the barrel; as it reaches the first coil, that coil shuts down, and the next one is powered up; and so on for the entire length of the weapon. Repeat the action with powerful enough EM fields and a fast enough coil firing sequence, and you can easily accelerate the round to impressive speeds.

In both cases, the advantage is that there is no chemical combustion/detonation that propels the round; this means no hot gases, no combustion residue, no spent casings, and increased efficiency.

The only problems we have is an atmosphere, which creates significant drag on the impactor. Otherwise, railguns/coilguns are IMO chillingly powerful and effective weapons. The expected performance of a warship-level railgun is to deliver 302760000 Joules of energy on impact.

That means you being hit by two EMD GP50 125-ton locomotives plus a few railcars.
At 100 miles per hour.
Falling from space.

And secondly magnetism does not violate Newtons laws. Mysterious magnetism pushes rod, mysterious magnetism pushes gun. Anyone ever held two magnets near each other? They’re both repelling. If you put a magnet on the ground and a magnet above it, the magnet above pushes the one on the ground down and vice versa.

Saying that the impulse is in a circular motion makes absolutely no sense. The laws of the conservation of momentum state that the sum of all changes in momentum are zero. Guess what the sum of impulses in a circle are: zero! Guess what the impulse on the rod if: REALLY BIG! That means the total change in momentum would be non-zero and would violate a fundamental law. Fail.

Just because you took a physics class and know the name of Gauss and Maxwell doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about.

Military simply has the funding to get the proper materials, put them together in precision, and have vessels large enough to power them. The technology all exists. It’s just scary when they are all brought together, and you can really Reach out and touch someone. Almost quite literally without noise, and with them not being able to detect it.

Not to say that a good enough system couldn’t detect it.. however. Unlike a tomahawk, You can’t spoof the shell, you cannot shoot it down, and you certainly can’t do much to protect yourself from it.

This same technology I hope, will be used to send space shuttles into orbit someday.