Guest Editorial 18th IEEE International EML Symposium

The Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science contains selected extended papers from the 18th International Symposium on Electromagnetic Launch (EML) Technology, held at Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, October 24-28 2016. The China Electrotechnical Society and the U.S. Institute for Strategic and Innovative Technologies (ISIT) hosted this event under the sponsorship of the IEEE's Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society and platinum sponsor BAE Systems. The EML Symposium is a biennial event that serves as the principal forum for the discussion, interchange, and presentation of research on critical technologies for accelerating macroscopic objects or projectiles to hypervelocities using electromagnetic or electrothermochemical launchers. The EML Symposia have a long-standing international reputation as a catalyst for stimulating research in the fields of pulsed electric power, electromagnetic, and electro thermochemical launch.