The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy indirectly confirmed tests of electromagnetic railguns on a warship through a profile of a female scientist on its official website, experts said.
On Thursday, navy.81.cn published a report about Zhang Xiao, an associate research fellow at the PLA Naval University of Engineering. The report mentioned that Zhang is a key figure in China's research into "electromagnetic launching technology," and she is also a core member of the team led by Rear Admiral Ma Weiming, also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Ma's team is responsible for research into the most significant areas for the Chinese navy, including nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, and Zhang has also made her own contributions to the navy.
"After hundreds of failures and more than 50,000 tests," Zhang has successfully developed the largest "repeating power supply system" in the world, the report said.
"The repeating power supply system is the power source of an electromagnetic railgun. The US started developing it earlier than China and has carried out more experiments and tests, and both the US and China's railguns run on the same operating principle. But thanks to the repeating power supply system, China's railgun has a more stable and continuous power supply," Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times.