Heavy weapons: Difference between revisions

{{Quotebox|align=center|width=550px|quote=I am Heavy Weapons Guy, and ''this''... is my weapon. She weighs 150 kilograms and fires 200-dollar custom-tooled cartridges at 10,000 rounds per minute. It costs ''400,000 dollars'' to fire this weapon... for ''12 seconds''.|source=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY5qJHZCz2I}}

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A [[wp:Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle|multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle]] (MIRV) seems like a harmless-sounding name for what looks like (and is) death raining down from above. The invention of MIRV pretty much guaranteed [[wp:Mutual assured destruction|mutual assured destruction]] during the Cold War since it's almost impossible to defend against all the incoming warheads. Breathtaking/scary pictures [https://web.archive.org/web/20140606052220/http://blog.markloiseau.com/2012/05/mirv-reentry-pictures/ here].

Gatling guns, AKA chainguns, vulcan guns, and miniguns ("If ''that'''s a minigun, I wonder what a ''maxi''gun is!") are often featured in video games (DOOM, Serious Sam, Gunman chronicles, etc., etc.). They use multiple barrels combined with a single loading and firing mechanism, which allows every barrel to cool down between two of the barrel's firing cycles. The firing rate is roughly that of a single barrel times the number of barrels, the limiting factor being the cooling rate.