Victory

"Smell that?... Do you smell that?"

"What."

"Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that... I love the smell of napalm in the morning... Ya know, that gasoline smell... It smells like... victory."

-Apolcalypse Now


That quote from a great movie based losely on a greater book was the first thought that entered my mind when I skimmed this article, which talks about a Destroyer the U.S. is working on that utilizes a rail-gun to launch artillery shells a great distance. This destroyer has the range to cover the entire country of North Korea from the sea. I was always more of a fan of Artillery than Missiles for long-range munitions, and this tool certainly gives Artillery the edge in my opinion. The thing with missiles is that they can be countered by other missiles, whereas artillery shells are a lot harder to counter.
Another article on the ship, this article states clearly that the artillery shells launched by this destroyer's rail-gun are in fact guided-munitions (i.e. precision shells that will in fact be guided towards the correct target). This is also very important as the line between combatants and non-combatants becomes increasinly blurry. Every single long-range munition launched in the Iraq war's Shock and Awe campaign was a precision-guided munition. Every time you saw on the news a big bomber dropping bombs on a random hillside, every single bomb was in fact guided towards an exact location designed to cripple the underground tunnel system.

Plus, a neat thing about this piece of artillery is that it can launch 20 shells in a minute, and in such a way as to have every shell land at exactly the same time.

That smells like victory to me.