Metal Storm Guns - A single 20 mm (0.787 in) Vulcan M61 round 578 in the front of the 6-barreled Gatling gun protects the pilot and his aircraft from close combat.
Metal Storm, 3 Minute Primer: Until the invention of the first repeating rifles in the mid-1800s, the average soldier could fire about three rounds per minute. The really skilled might be able to get away with the occasional fourth round, which is why armies lined up en masse for centuries - it was basically the only way to ensure that some rounds would hit their targets.
Metal Storm Guns
Weapons like the Gatling gun and the Maxim machine gun changed things enormously. It was capable of firing 500-600 rounds per minute, and over the decades weapons such as the General Dynamics M61A2 achieved rates of fire of an impressive 6,000 rounds per minute.
Million Rounds Per Minute: Meet The Metal Storm 'gun'
Still, even this impressive weapon pales in comparison to the Metal Storm, an experimental weapons platform capable of firing a million rounds per minute.
While this may sound like the latest high-tech super weapon, Australian company Metal Storm Inc. in fact, it began developing the 36-barrel prototype system in the 1990s. Unlike modern machine guns, this weapon is unique in that it has no moving parts, but can fire 180 rounds in less than one hundredth of a second. With special caseless 9mm ammo, no armor in the world can stop it.
The US Navy seems to have been impressed and even announced in 2007 that it would buy the system for use on its ships. However, more than ten years later, nothing happened. However, as Business Insider reported, this was the result of legal problems with their contracts and applications.
Having a weapon that can fire 1.62 million rounds per minute, all traveling at speeds approaching Mach 5, may sound like the kind of weapon any military would want, but the question remains how and where can be used. A million 9mm rounds can cut through a tank like a hot knife through butter, but that tank would still have to be pretty close. Furthermore, the target would have to stay directly in front of a weapon that fires so fast that it could not even "sweep" the battlefield effectively, like the WW1 machine guns.
Beretta 9mm Px4 Storm Semi Automatic Pistol With Magazine And Full Metal Jacket Ammunition On Background Of Shooting Target Stock Photo
So unless an army is going to attack the lane, the Metal Storm weapon's defensive capabilities seem limited. This is made worse by the fact that it is also extremely heavy, takes a lot of time to prepare for an effective single-use setup, and costs a lot of money to fire even a fraction of the ammo - and much of it can be wasted.
However, the company's designers had other ideas, and this included an "enlarged" 40 mm grenade launcher using a similar multi-barrel concept.
Therefore, the M134 minigun will likely retain its place in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the highest rate of fire of a military weapon.
Peter Suciu is a writer from Michigan who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He is the author of several books on military headgear, including The Military Headgear Gallery, which is available on Amazon.com.
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Professional Biography: 1945 Editor-in-Chief Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed more than 3,000 published pieces to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites over a two-decade journalism career. He writes regularly on military technology, firearms history, cyber security and international affairs. Peter is also a contributor to Forbes. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
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