General > Discussion

regarding gatling/minigun

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Aiki-Knight:
Yeah but who can carry thousands of rounds? Seriously - ammo is heavy. Thousands of rounds would weigh hundreds of pounds.

TrashMan:
Caseless ammo...you can squeeze 3-4 times as much ammo in the same space.

F'course, depending on the RoF even 1000 rounds would be depleted within seconds. A microgun can fire at 6000RPM or 100 bullets per second (for comparison, standard assault rifles usually fire 3-4 bullets per second, with some newer ones more, the M-60 fires 10 bps)

At 3000RPM (which is still hellafast! ) your minigun would spit out 50 bps ... if he were to carry a total of 1000 bullets, that would be enough for 20 seconds of max speed fire. That's why you usually fire in short, controlled bursts and have RoF settings.



Or laser miniguns....just carry a huge battery/generator on your back

Winter:

--- Quote from: TrashMan on June 08, 2008, 12:33:32 pm ---At 3000RPM (which is still hellafast! ) your minigun would spit out 50 bps ... if he were to carry a total of 1000 bullets, that would be enough for 20 seconds of max speed fire. That's why you usually fire in short, controlled bursts and have RoF settings.
--- End quote ---

The weapon would still be unnecessarily heavy, take far too long to spin up to be used as an assault rifle, and run out of ammo far too quickly to be used as a machine gun. So you're really combining the worst of both worlds in the worst way.

Regards,
Winter

TrashMan:

--- Quote ---The weapon would still be unnecessarily heavy, take far too long to spin up to be used as an assault rifle, and run out of ammo far too quickly to be used as a machine gun. So you're really combining the worst of both worlds in the worst way.

--- End quote ---

Methinks the ammo would make most of the weight.

With advanced materials and minituarization you could make the gun itself far lighter. Then you can get creative with the way it fires. You can have a trigger that controls the spinning and a second one that starts shooting..Thus you can spin the gun up to full speed and carry it around spinning.
Or if you create a god enough rotor, the spin acceleration can be faster, thus shortening the time needed for a spin up/spin down.

Ammo, as always, is the biggest problem, but it's not like the army doesn't use other weapons that have ammo issues. Shoulder-mounted rocket launchers? You usually get one missile - especially with those integrated systems.

That said, every weapon has it's specific uses and employment doctrine. A minigun would be used against superior enemy numbers, preferably clustered enemies - it's not an assault rifle and shouldn't used as such, it's a very specific support weapon.
You wouldn't carry a minigun if you expected a protraced engagement, and you would have other soldiers carrying extra ammo for it when you do carry it into battle.
One would use short, controlled bursts to conserve ammo and proper RoF setting for the situation. A single 1-second burst should be enough to kill anything you're pointing at(and it's sorroundings).

Winter:

--- Quote from: TrashMan on June 08, 2008, 02:45:52 pm ---That said, every weapon has it's specific uses and employment doctrine. A minigun would be used against superior enemy numbers, preferably clustered enemies - it's not an assault rifle and shouldn't used as such, it's a very specific support weapon.
You wouldn't carry a minigun if you expected a protraced engagement, and you would have other soldiers carrying extra ammo for it when you do carry it into battle.
One would use short, controlled bursts to conserve ammo and proper RoF setting for the situation. A single 1-second burst should be enough to kill anything you're pointing at(and it's sorroundings).

--- End quote ---

You're still missing the point. There are no short controlled bursts with a minigun. It was not made for short controlled bursts and will never be able to compete with a weapon that doesn't require spinning up barrels in a twitchy urban combat scenario. It will also never be as light, as manoeuvrable or as useful as an ordinary assault rifle or machine gun in ANY role it could possibly fulfill.

Miniguns are completely unworkable as an infantry weapon and no amount of future technology wank is going to change that. Ever.

Regards,
Winter

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