Railgun & Heavy Rail Rifle

Lore & history

If the Pulse Rifle was an unpleasant surprise for Imperial commanders during the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the T'au Railgun was a nightmare that forced the Departmento Munitorum and the Adeptus Astartes to rethink armoured warfare entirely. Mounted in the sleek turret of the TX7 Hammerhead Gunship and carried on the shoulders or arms of XV88 Broadside Battlesuits, the T'au Railgun is the undisputed pinnacle of kinetic anti-tank weaponry in the forty-first millennium.

When a Hammerhead's Railgun fires from the far horizon, there is no slow-moving shell or glowing plasma globe; a hypersonic crack splits the air as a solid, super-dense projectile crosses the entire battlefield in a fraction of a millisecond. Imperial tank crews reported watching a sister Leman Russ or Predator suddenly shudder as a fist-sized entry hole appeared in its front glacis plate and a corresponding exit hole blew out the rear engine deck—while every crewman inside was instantaneously liquefied by the vacuum shockwave and incandescent spall pulled through the hull in the slug's wake.

Design, mechanism & battlefield effect

A T'au Railgun uses a pair of parallel conductive rails lined with room-temperature superconductors to generate a ferocious Lorentz electromagnetic force. When the capacitor banks discharge, a solid sub-calibre penetrator rod of hyper-dense alloy is accelerated down the barrel to a significant fraction of orbital escape velocity, leaving a glowing trail of ionized plasma in the air behind it.

Against massed infantry rather than heavy armour, the gunner can switch the feed to fire a Submunition Round: a canister packed with hundreds of smart micro-flechettes that bursts above the enemy formation in a devastating airburst.

Patterns, variants & doctrine

The largest planet-side versions are the Hammerhead's turret-mounted Railgun and the Titan-hunting Heavy Rail Cannon of the KX139 Ta'unar Supremacy Armour and Tiger Shark AX-1-0. XV88 Broadside Battlesuits carry the twin-linked Heavy Rail Rifle, while Pathfinder marksmen carry the infantry-portable Rail Rifle to snipe Space Marine Terminators and officers.

Notable patterns & relic examples

• TX7 Hammerhead Railgun: The iconic turret-mounted anti-tank accelerator capable of firing either solid hyper-velocity slugs or canister submunitions.
• XV88 Broadside Heavy Rail Rifle: Twin-linked shoulder or arm-mounted rail weapons braced by the battlesuit's seismic anchor feet.
• Pathfinder Rail Rifle: A sniper-portable electromagnetic rifle whose hypersonic dart can punch straight through a line of Space Marines.
• Heavy Rail Cannon: Super-heavy anti-Titan rail weaponry mounted on Tiger Shark AX-1-0 strike aircraft and KX139 Supremacy Battlesuits.

Wielded & Fielded By

Characters (3)

• 
  Commander Shadowsun · O'Shaserra, Supreme Commander of the Fire Caste
• 
  Commander Farsight · O'Shovah, Commander of the Farsight Enclaves
• 
  Commander Puretide · Master Strategist of the T'au

Related weapons & vehicles

LascannonHeavy BolterWraithcannon & D-ScytheSnazzgun, Deffgun & Big ShootaPulse Rifle, Pulse Carbine & Burst CannonTY7 Devilfish Troop CarrierHeavy Mining Laser, Seismic Cannon & Rock Cutter

Primary Faction

T'au Empire