  Railguns are capable to far exceed the muzzle energies of current naval deck
guns. Therefore one of the most promising scenario for the future application
of railguns in naval warfare is the long range artillery. Hypervelocity
projectiles being propelled to velocities above 2 km/s reach targets at
distances of 200 km or more. At the French-German Research Institute the
PEGASUS launcher is used for investigations with respect to this scenario. The
6 m long barrel has a square caliber of 40 mm. The power supply unit is able to
deliver 10 MJ to the gun. Within this investigation, a complete launch package
is being developed and experiments are performed that aim at showing that this
package can be accelerated to velocities ranging from 2000 m/s to 2500 m/s. A
launch package consists out of an armature, a sabot and the projectile. The
armature ensures the electrical contact during launch and pushes the sabot with
its payload through the barrel. The sabot guides and protects the payload
during the acceleration. At the same time the accelerating forces generated at
the armature needs to be transferred to the projectile. After the launch
package has left the barrel, the sabot should open and release its payload, the
projectile into free-flight. Here the current status of the launch package
development and results from experiments with the PEGASUS railgun are
presented.
