(OT) What if being able to fire 500,000 rounds a minute is not enough

Dagger75 · Jun 28, 2003

http://www.cnn.com/2003/BUSINESS/06/26/australia.metalstorm/index.html

Aint science grand. Also there seems to be a handgun version that has 4 barrals and fires a ton bullets at the target.

We are almost ready to take on Chtulhu

trancejeremy · Jun 28, 2003

Sounds like a rail (or gauss) gun.

"Instead, it uses electronic ballistics technology. Unlike other guns, the only parts which move are the bullets"

haiiro · Jun 28, 2003

This made me gleeful. Specifically, the movie of the 36 barrel prototype firing 180 rounds at 1,000,000 rounds per minute. It ramps up from a lowly 600 RPM in several steps, and wow is it impressive. Go watch it.

Dagger75, this link totally rocks -- one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Thank you.

(Edit: got a number wrong.)

LGodamus · Jun 28, 2003

I wanna mount one on a flat bed truck and go hunting for prarie dogs

ph34r · Jun 28, 2003

LGodamus said:
I wanna mount one on a flat bed truck and go hunting for prarie dogs

We can drive it up in RPM's Avenue and show it off!

Henry · Jun 28, 2003

LGodamus said:
I wanna mount one on a flat bed truck and go hunting for prarie dogs

With that kind of firepower, you could load it up and go hunting for prairies.

Dr. Strangemonkey · Jun 28, 2003

It's not that want one big bullet or a lot of little bullets, it's that I want my gun to fire and a concentration of bullets that could roughly be termed a 'cloud' or 'hail' to appear shortly thereafter.

I'm big into metereological phenomena for my weaponry. Get a little bit of that Thor/Jupiter mojo going on...

Agback · Jun 28, 2003

trancejeremy said:
Sounds like a rail (or gauss) gun.

It isn't. Its a multi-barrelled gun with a whole stack of caseless rounds lined up nose to tale in each barrel. The rounds are set of in very rapid succession by an electronic ignition system.

I read about it in 'The new Scientist'.

Regards,

Agback

LGodamus · Jun 28, 2003

Just in time for my birthday on the fourth of July.....thing could make some really great fire works if it was loaded with multi colored tracer rounds lol

hong · Jun 28, 2003

Agback said:
It isn't. Its a multi-barrelled gun with a whole stack of caseless rounds lined up nose to tale in each barrel. The rounds are set of in very rapid succession by an electronic ignition system.

I read about it in 'The new Scientist'.

Whereas I read about it on sci.military.moderated.

Metalstorm has been around for a long time, generating the odd bit of hype at irregular intervals. The huge firing rate is slightly misleading, since it's basically just a lot of barrels strapped together and fired at once. Lots of bullets divided by a low activation time == big numbers.

IIRC Metalstorm's disadvantages include:

1) Ammunition resupply. After you've shot your load (IYKWIM...) you then have to reload all those barrels and that takes time. It also puts a strain on the logistics tail all the way back to the ammo dump.

2) Engagement times. The launcher is bulky, which means it's hard to slew and elevate.

3) Lack of a compelling application. There just aren't that many areas where you really need such a huge rate of fire; ordinary machine guns or autocannon are normally quite adequate. One application that's been mentioned is ship defense against cruise missiles, where you want to put up as many rounds as possible to create a "wall" against the incoming target. However, see 2) above.

Still, that 500,000 RPM figure makes for good copy....