That weapon is named Linear Accelerator and there are 2x tanks in the game who has it. Military tank in the Marshlands and FNIX tank in the Himfjäll.
Some further info;
i would love to see this in game, yet i am more orientated around smaller targets but tanks are amazing to fight. if i can ask what did that large cannon even do to you? explosive? poision? knock down?
For me, it did nothing. 
The projectile went between my char’s legs, without damaging me at all. That’s how i was able to take the 1st screen of projectile path seen in Steam discussions. Same thing with the FNIX tank at Himfjäll, i stood completely still, aggrod the tank and once it started shooting it’s linear accelerator, the projectile again went between my legs, without ever harming me.
I guess when you move around, you can get hit with linear accelerator (then again, only crazy person would stand still when tank is aggrod and shooting at you 
).
I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure I had that bugger punch through a tree and hit me , could be hit box issues but the trail went right through the tree i was hiding behind and did a ton of damage!
That sounds about right.
Basically, linear accelerator is bigger and badder version of experimental .50 cal.
lol, i am guessing you are that crazy charecter
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so, on the new island, when completing one certain mission outside a cave, there is a tank waiting for you there, with a massive “thing” hanging between its legs, railgun-isch looking? i killed it but when i came to loot its weapons were gone. and i have not seen anything like it after that mission either. does anyone know if it is possible to get one to spawn again?
Unfortunately that is one unique type, there is another in the north of the main island ( and the third i don´t remember).
They only appear during certain missions.
But rest assured, the loot is “normal” you wont even get the experimental Sniper Rifle.
That “thing” is Linear Accelerator and so far, it’s only equipped to two mission specific tanks, which won’t respawn once the mission is done.
Some further reading: Is there a new form of tank
ooooh thank you:D hopefully they add in more of these in the game=) especially as as of recent ive encountered larger and larger packs of enemies, largest was a pack of i dont know how many dogs, 20 isch hunters of fnix and apoc class, 2 fnix harvesters and 3 tanks, 2 fnix and one apoc. THAT was intense:D
’
How is it supposed to work? It is thirty something years ago since I had my semester of nuclear physics and even though I was inclined to continue down that road … well, I did not. But if I recall correctly (I did play around with a cyclotron a bit) it is a device for accelerating electrons in a focused beam. How does that work with bullets?
(I will be satisfied with the answer: “Very well, thank you” 
)
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Here is a short video on the subject, from one of the best science/technology channels on the tube 
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Well, that settles it! I want one 
Anyway, this is a rail gun and not a linear accelerator. In the video it was mentioned that the energy released was 5 MegaAmperes at 1200V for 5 milliseconds (for a rather large projectile, I admit). I think the CERN linear hadron accelerator (well, one of them) delivers a particle beam around 170 milliAmperes for 200 microseconds … I still don’t understand the linear accelerator thing, but it sounds cool
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Found this short video on linear accelerators. Pretty cool too. Don’t mind that the application here is medical. As all other technology used to heal people, it can just as well be used to kill them too
And it is nice to know should you ever be in need of radiation therapy 
Here’s simple animation showing how a linear accelerator works:
In this example the particles accelerated (red dots) are assumed to have a positive charge. The graph V (x) shows the electrical potential along the axis of the accelerator at each point in time. The polarity of the RF voltage reverses as the particle passes through each electrode, so when the particle crosses each gap the electric field (E, arrows) has the correct direction to accelerate it.
The animation shows a single particle being accelerated each cycle; in actual linear accelerators a large number of particles are injected and accelerated each cycle. The action is shown slowed down enormously.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_particle_accelerator#Construction_and_operation
Linear accelerator in-game does look massive (as it should) and people would assume that it fires big projectiles (similar to the 10 KG projectile used by the railgun in above video). Though, it doesn’t fire bullets but instead projectiles.
Once linear accelerator fires, only the trace tail is visible. The projectile is so fast that it’s unknown how big it is. Then again, with multiple times of supersonic speed, you don’t need big projectile to cause massive damage.
My guess, the linear accelerator projectile is small, between 10 to 100 grams.
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Thanks, @Aesyle.
Well, I do understand that
indeed, as long as “projectile(s)” are charged particles with mass in the general area of atoms.
Much, much, much, much less than that (see above). It is charged particles accelerated in an electric field, unlike a rail gun where the propulsion is caused by the magnetic field formed by the current (beautifully simple principle). So if it is a particle beam that makes sense (except for the energy required, perhaps).
I have no knowledge at all about military applications of this nature, and I don’t know how it would be possible to charge a projectile of 10 grams or more sufficiently to accelerate it in a linear accelerator. But (sub)atomic particles … yes indeed.
And if that is the case … well, that settles it! I want one
Merged four threads all on this same topic.
Thanks,
boston_51
Really cool pictures, @0L0. I didn’t know about this thread until @boston_51 merged it 
Forgive me for being nitty-gritty about this, but the gun is fed by a belt of “cartridges”. To me this will only make sense if these cartridges are hadron sources, capable of generating an intense burst of hadrons to be fed to the linear accelerator, which would require a rather … ehm … interesting nuclear reaction that I would prefer not to stand too close to 
Or have I gotten it all wrong?
Gaussgun? But that makes all the difference and a lot of sense. Then we are back to using magnetism as the propellant of the projectile. I got very confused about the term “linear accelerator”. It might be context but that is a very different thing for me. Thanks, @boston_51
The link is worth a visit, by the way. I particularly like the picture of the guy on his way to meet with a tank 