The railgun utilizes two metal rails that, when under a electrical current, utilize the Lorentz force to accelerate a metal projectile to super sonic speeds.

In light of this, **Can the rails be replaced with plasma instead?**

Seeing as plasma also carries an electrical current, I wonder if such a design is possible, how it would work and what would its performance be.

Edit: The way I envision such a system working is to use short range high intensity laser pulse to ignite the air to create the plasma and use that to launch the projectile before the plasma dissipates. The main reason for this is that while it is true that the plan ads would get blown out, it would be easier to repeat the cycle and have a consistent rate of fire instead of having to replace the rails after wear and arc damage. Of course this is my idea and I’m not sure this could work or if there are better designs out there.