Railguns just seem to have no advantage compared to missiles.

The only locations where railguns seem to make sense are in space, or low-gravity environments like the moon - specifically for launching cargo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver

Even on Mars, to reach escape velocity you would need a 200km long track:

https://marspedia.org/Mass_driver

This should be celebrated. Not spending money on projects that don't have a purpose is obviously the correct choice.

It seems however that it's being deprioritized in place of hypersonic missiles, which are a frightening and potentially destabilizing technology in their own right.

China already has several variants of hypersonic missile “carrier killers”, DF-21/26 for example; US DoD development of such technology is to maintain force parity, and long range ordinance protects high value assets (carriers) from close range combat.

I hope learnings from this railgun make its way into broad military power control electronics, and trickle down to consumers if there is value.

it won't. its incredibly impractical to power

The amount of electrical power to shoot a single round was immense, the greatest known energy used to propel a projectile from a railgun was 33 megajoules.

I've heard that before

Railguns are interesting devices but it was clear there was never going to be a viable combat model. At best, these might be used to do more research for a launch platform used by the space transportation industry. It really is useful there.

In almost total ignorance of the Navy and its affairs, the news coverage over the past few years sure paints them as utterly boned. If the problems aren't as severe as they seem then it must have taken some effort to look so fucked up. Paranoia might suggest its a sucker play; they're waiting for an excuse to reveal the hovercarrier tech [1].

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-56286719