Heavy weapons
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...
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY5qJHZCz2I
Large yield
Vacuum bomb
This displaces the explosive charge into the surrounding air (in the form of powder or liquid spray) before the detonation takes place.
- Russia's "father of bombs", tested on 9/11, 2007, is a response to US MOAB (conventional bomb) used in 2003.
- The FOAB is 4 times as powerful as the MOAB, and thus comparable to the smallest nuclear weapons.
- The dispersed explosives of the FOAB are apparently produced using nanotechnologies.
- It's unclear whether this kind of ordnance will trigger a new arms race.
- (What is clear is that no one will use this except against 3rd parties. geyser)
- German article
- http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/International-Vakuum-Bombe;art123,2377878
- English article
- http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/13954
- Russian video
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ee_cDX7ys
Auto-aiming
Sentry guns and smart guns are common in science-fiction.
- The closest real-world counterpart is CIWS (close-in weapon systems)
You can see this weapon in Ghost in the Shell 2 - Innocence (battleship firing at the puppet master location).
- The Sturmanderung-Camp is supposed to have a CIWS too.
The current placeholder is "MARS" (mobile anti-rocket splatter).- (MARS is already the German name for MLRS. BTW, stop making placeholder acronyms already: they suck ^_^ geyser)
Fast firing rate
Gatling guns
Gatling guns AKA chainguns AKA vulcan guns AKA miniguns ("If that's a minigun, I wonder what a maxigun 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.
Kashtan etc
The fastest chainguns in operation are Kashtan and AK-630 (6,000 and 5,000 round/min, respectively)
- They equip Russian Navy cruisers.
GAU-8_Avenger
That one is used on the famous A-10 Thunderbolt II "tank killer" aircraft.
- The ammunition is stored in a large cylinder-shaped container and fed to the gun by a belt.
- A similar, but much smaller variant is carried by the Vulcan Raven in Metal Gear Solid.
Metal Storm
That one is closer to a volley gun than to a chaingun, the only difference being that a volley gun uses several barrels.
- Bullets are loaded/reloaded in a single barrel as a "tube" of specially designed, assorted rounds, and fired in a sequence.
The theoretical firing rate of 1,000,000 round/min is as usual limited by the cooldown of the single barrel, and by the feeding rate of the ammo.
- The guns are intended for CIWS systems, and in that respect are similar to the more conventional gatling gun arrays.
- photos
- http://www.metalstormserver.com/freedomweb/index.php?submenu=Graphics&src=photo&category=Photos
- video
- http://www.myvideo.de/watch/1355388 ( alternative http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-7993209051502788528 )
Related
- The German Infanterist der Zukunft program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IdZ
- For an overview of similar projects worldwide, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Soldier