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 ā¦ I still donāt understand the linear accelerator thing, but it sounds cool 
Found this short video on linear accelerators. Pretty cool too. Donāt 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 
Hereās 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 doesnāt fire bullets but instead projectiles.
Once linear accelerator fires, only the trace tail is visible. The projectile is so fast that itās unknown how big it is. Then again, with multiple times of supersonic speed, you donāt need big projectile to cause massive damage.
My guess, the linear accelerator projectile is small, between 10 to 100 grams.
Thanks, @Aesyle.
Well, I do understand that
indeed, as long as āprojectile(s)ā 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 donāt 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 ā¦ yes indeed.
And if that is the case ā¦ well, that settles it! I want one
Merged four threads all on this same topic.
Thanks,
boston_51
Really cool pictures, @0L0. I didnāt 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 ācartridgesā. 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 ā¦ ehm ā¦ 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 ālinear acceleratorā. 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 
