Erm..one more thing..if you actually were planning on using a minigun, what makes you think you would be the one doing the hiding?
Stupid comment. Snipers would take you down with a single bullet from any possible location. You won't even know they're there. Exactly why snipers are so deadly.
You cannot fire a minigun from cover or from a prone position, and not using cover is a death warrant for any soldier in any combat zone.
And before you trot our that model you made, let me point out that while it
looks nice, it's also highly impractical with the front handguard. So much so that it would never survive trials; one little nudge or bend on that bottom bar and your gun will violently rip itself to pieces.
Speaking of which the gun itself is 16kg + ~10kg for ammo = 26kg. And we're down well below 30kg with still 80 years to go to UFO:AI timeline.
. . . And we've already pointed out it's not going to get much lighter due to the fact that you'd need a heavy bullet for penetration, and you'll always have an unnecessary electric motor, battery and multiple barrels in a situation where all you really need is a proper machine gun.
80 years..think about it. If you consider when the microgun was made that would mean almost 100 years from the microgun to UFO:AI time.
100 years. Can you even imagine the technical strides made in 100 years?
Yes. They won't change the laws of physics or make people stupid enough to try and field infantry miniguns when normal machine guns will be so much more effective in all stated roles. Hell, by 2084 you will probably see single-barrel machine guns capable of rates of fire above 2000 rounds per minute. So what use is a minigun again?
Just think what we had at the beginning of this century and what we have now. And then tell me in my face you really think it's impossible to fix some small technical problems in that time span.
Except as we've pointed out there are more than technical problems, there is fundamentally faulty logic in thinking that a minigun would be superior to a standard weapon in any capacity by 2084. Rates of fire for normal weapons will increase dramatically, whereas you would have to pile on yet more ammo, yet more weight and yet more volume just to keep ahead of them.
A minigun would not be preferable to a machine gun in any situation. I'm sorry but that's the truth. Higher rate of fire doesn't make up for all the drawbacks. Miniguns are very effective weapons
on vehicles such as tanks, jeeps, helicopters and airplanes, sometimes even from fixed defensive positions, but will
never ever work for infantry. They were never designed for infantry to use, could never be made to effectively replace an infantry machine gun, and will never be good enough at the things required of an infantry weapon. They simply
weren't meant for infantry and no amount of fantasy and imagination will shoehorn them into that role.
P.S. Don't even start with "it's not a machine gun". It's right in the name, the proper military name -- "multi-barreled rotary machine gun".
Regards,
Winter