New super-gun to be tested in Feb
24 Jan. United Press International (Hat Tip to Prairie Pundit) - New super-gun to be tested in Feb.
Quote:
Next month a new high-explosive munition will be fired in Singapore and then tested again by the U.S. Army, heralding what may be a sea change in weaponry: a family of guns that can fire at speeds of up to 240,000 rounds per minute, albeit in short bursts.
A Metal Storm gun of any size -- from a 9mm handgun up to a machine gun size or a grenade launcher -- has no moving parts other than the bullets or munition inside the barrel. Rather than chambering a single slug for each shot - very quickly in the case of machine guns -- the bullets come pre-stacked inside the barrel and can be shot all at once, or one at a time, as the shooter decides through the electronic controls.
Because there are no moving parts, the weapon is less likely to jam, and will presumably need less maintenance.
Lashing many barrels together dramatically increases the number of rounds fired per second. Once fired, however, each spent barrel has to be reloaded.
Its 40mm answer to the MK19 - the current automatic grenade launcher in use by the U.S. military - chambers up to 15 rounds in the barrel at once. They can be squeezed off one at a time or fired almost simultaneously. According to the company, this gives the Metal Storm gun 4,000 times the rounds-on-target capability of the MK19, which has a rapid fire rate of 60 rounds per second.
Starting in 2006 the company will demonstrate its prototypes with applicability that is especially likely to interest the U.S. military. The grenade launching weapon system can be mounted on an unmanned ground combat vehicle, an unmanned aerial vehicle, and might be used as a defense against rocket-propelled grenades and mortars...
