Later firearms, especially guns, imposed the struggle to ever greater distances (tens of kilometers in the battleships of the two world wars) until the early twentieth century the carrier extended to hundreds of kilometers the space between the warring fleets, which no longer came to see. The missile, cruise or ballistic hypersonic has reached its highest level of development in the early XXI. But the future of war at sea is electric. Right now there is a race for the development of electromagnetic pulse technology that will change from designing warships mode against each other.
USS Zumwalt
The two main technologies involved are the railgun (or 'railgun') and the mass driver. Its design and use are different, but they have two things in common: they need huge amounts of electricity to operate and can revolutionize naval artillery and aircraft of the future.
The brand new and so far only member of its class, the USS Zumwalt, just made its debut with a video of her sea trials published by the US Navy. With its galactic appearance, protracted development and its high cost, the new boat (classified as a destroyer, though size and function would be more of a light cruiser) has attracted much attention. But there is an interesting detail: the new ship artillery batteries comprises two cannons missiles and high-tech AGS (Advanced Gun System) type.
The AGS have a caliber of 155 mm, as much of the artillery American camp, but are very different: you can not use the same ammunition, are completely automatic in operation and are designed so that they can launch a volume of fire equivalent to a full battery of six shells of the same caliber campaign. They are capable of firing long distance (LRLAP) to more than 100 kilometers away, and its mission is to provide artillery support to forces much further from the coast than was possible until now land.
But the AGS was not to be, originally, the main weapon of the Zumwalt class, which was designed to be equipped with guns that were to be electrical unlike conventional powered explosives. These boats are designed to install on them railguns, but the development of this technology has been delayed and costs have increased so much that they were replaced by the AGS, for now.
