The discussion moves from Zumwalt to the technological path that sustained large-gun development might have preserved. Navies and industry would retain experience with very long barrels, erosion and the maintenance burden of high-energy firing. Railgun barrel wear would then be compared with an already demanding conventional-gun baseline rather than with today's smaller weapons. Railguns might remain unattractive at six- or eight-inch scale yet compete more plausibly in the 12- to 16-inch range. The counterfactual leaves the wear problem intact but changes the knowledge base and scale against which it is judged.
Chapter · 59:37-1:00:53
Big-gun expertise changes the railgun trade-off
A fleet that kept developing very large guns would judge railgun barrel wear against a different engineering and maintenance baseline.