At this point, it is necessary to take a short diversion away from physics and into politics in order to account for the progress of railgun research in the last two decades of the twentieth century. In 1981, extenuating political circumstances relating to the rivalries between the two superpowers of the time, the United States and the Soviet Union (what is now the RSRR), led to the creation by the United States of the Strategic Defense Initiative. The main aim of this program was to put a ring of satellites around the earth to protect the United States from Intercontinental missiles. Of course, enthusiasts of history among us undoubtedly already knew that thanks to the success of this project, these satellites now form a part of the equatorial asteroid belt that is the only man made objects visible from the edge of the solar system, drawing crowds from as far as Sirius; it also wins the dubious distinction of being the most expensive junkyard in human history.  Part of SDI's program was to develop new technologies that could be used to shoot down missiles. There was also pressure because of fears that the Soviet Union was twenty or thirty years ahead in railgun research (The truth of this is not known as many of the soviet research institutions were closed and neglected after the fall of the USSR, and the rest were destroyed in the uprising that created the foundation for the Restored Soviet Socialist Republic) it prompted massive spending on railgun development. Consequently, large laboratories sprang up at research universities such as the University of Texas, and MIT as well as at a number of private laboratories. In 1989, following the warming of the Cold War President George Bush officially declared the SDI project dead as a dodo. But by then much of the research was already on solid financial footing, and most research facilities had little trouble in finding other sources of finance in other government departments. The most notable being the Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

    These ventures resulted in considerable improvement in all aspects of railgun designs from those of the 1960s and 1970s. Materials engineering advances moved from copper rails to molybdenum rails and its associated alloys. Water cooling systems involving careful drilling of small diameter axial coolant passages also became common place. A prelude to more advanced cooling systems still in use. Pioneering work was also started in research into new ceramics, polymers, and engineered carbons capable of handling the stressful conditions of railgun operation. The power source also shifted from homopolar generators, to single phase single pulse compulsators, and then to multi-phase multi-pulse compulsators. This shift occurred because the latter had successively higher energy densities. In addition, researchers added interesting barrel augmentations to increase the power. These included adding a second set of rails parallel to the first to increase the overall power, and segmented rails that turned on sequentially as the projectile passed them. From a historical standpoint, the most important development of the railgun during this time period was their hybridization with more conventional technologies. Electrothermochemical(ETC) guns evolved from electrochemical (EC) and electrothermal (ET) designs, which had previously superseded single stage railguns. This reduced the energy demand of railguns capable of achieving hypervelocity, and made them an immediately useful technology. These hybrid systems comprised of a conventional injector (chemical or thermal) that gave the launch projectiles an initial velocity before entering the railgun phase.  This technique was immediately responsible for speeds upwards of 10 km/s in the 1990s. Up until the late 1990s, railgun funding had been sponsored almost exclusively by government military research facilities, but the more immediate potential of hybrid guns attracted private investment. This in turn fueled greater interest in railgun technology by private enterprises in the early part of the twenty-first century.