"Well in 50 years I'll be 92. You will be close. So money won't do us much good. How about a roadtrip to TJ. Looser buys the beer and "Entertainment""
Lol, yer on brother.
Not sure i agree ramjets would be easier to adapt at all to guns.
The beauty of the scramjet is two fold.
1) No moving parts at all
2) the velocity required to start the combustion process is almost entirely delivered by the guns propellant charge(and this is an area where improvements should be seen as more R&D dollars are spent).
I figure 10 years before a militarily useful prototype is ready, and probably 15 years before it's in service.
I figure it will first appear on the 120mm gun of the Abrams, and then branch out to 155mm land based and naval artillery.
Even a 155mm will see an exponential increase in range and probably a 2-4x increase in impact velocity.
Couple it with simple GAINS guidance, and every 155mm gun in the inventory becomes a true long range precision weapons system.
It will take time, and a lot of $, but to me it's the most readily available of the big 3 21st century technologies we're pursuing(rain guns, lasers, scramjets/shells).
I also think Lasers will come on line a good decade before rail guns do. I'm just not at all impressed with the current state/rate of development of rail guns.