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I parsed the title as: > Most powerful mobile railgun was built by a non-government (i.e. this is the most powerful mobile railgun) when in reality it probabl
by rplnt 11y ago
I parsed the title as:
> Most powerful mobile railgun was built by a non-government (i.e. this is the most powerful mobile railgun)
when in reality it probably is:
> Most powerful mobile railgun that was built by a non-government (i.e. there are more powerful mobile railguns)
Is the title ambiguous or is it just me?
- Rifu 11y agoThe way it's written now (The most powerful mobile electromagnetic railgun built by a non-government) seems pretty non-ambiguous in implying that more powerful mobile railguns have been built by governments.
- rplnt 11y agoI see, thanks. For me it can read either way (and the wrong meaning actually comes to mind first).
- logfromblammo 11y agoIf you want to get technical (and who doesn't?) the giant railguns mounted on navy warships are mobile. They're definitely more powerful than the device in the article. I suspect that government defense contractors have repeatedly built man-portable prototypes that just don't measure up favorably against the .50-cal rifle. The government then mothballs the project again, until better electronics technology comes along. It also seems obvious that anything that did measure up would be classified as a state secret, so we wouldn't necessarily even know about it. So the implication I got is that government-built devices are purposefully excluded, because we have no way of really knowing how powerful the most powerful government-built mobile railgun is.