http://www.cnn.com/2003/BUSINESS/06/26/australia.metalstorm/index.html And it has a COOL name too! Gun whips up a Metal Storm By CNN's Geoff Hiscock Friday, June 27, 2003 Posted: 12:22 PM EDT (1622 GMT) Metal Storm's high-speed gun, capable of firing at a rate of a million rounds a minute. BRISBANE, Australia (CNN) -- Imagine a gun that fires a million rounds a minute -- enough to shred a target in a blink of an eye, or throw up a defensive wall against an incoming missile. This is Metal Storm, a weapons system that forsakes old-style mechanics for the speed of electronics. Its inventor is Mike O'Dwyer, a one-time grocer in the Australian city of Brisbane. He's spent 30 years and much of his own money to develop the technology. Now, finally, the doors are opening for him at the Pentagon, the U.S. Defense Department's headquarters. O'Dwyer says that the real value comes from Metal Storm's electronic capability to deliver rates of fire and different types of projectiles very precisely. The weapons range from a handgun that can only be operated by an authorized user to a grenade launcher that can fire either lethal or non-lethal ammunition. While much of the technology is a closely guarded secret, the firing mechanism has no moving parts. Instead, it uses electronic ballistics technology. Unlike other guns, the only parts which move are the bullets. The Metal Storm handgun employs electronic locking, which can limit firing access and stop unauthorized use. It can even be programmed not to fire within, say, the grounds of a school. Its grenade launcher can give the same defensive security as a minefield, but without physically putting any explosives in the area being guarded. Instead, sensors can alert an operator to any intrusion. The operator can then decide whether to use lethal or non-lethal grenades to warn off -- or destroy -- the intruder. O'Dwyer is a passionate advocate of applying technology to modern warfare and the rise of networking in defense thinking. A 16-pod grenade launcher -- one of the Metal Storm range. "Where network-centric warfare is going is moving the principal systems of weapons from the big, heavy, slow stuff to the small, light, fast, inexpensive (weapons), many of (which) -- and here's the important part -- is very smart." It's this promise of speed and flexibility that has got the American and Australian military to commit $60 million in research and development funding for O'Dwyer's array of weapons. Metal Storm started in a small Brisbane workshop, where all the prototypes have been built. Increasingly, the project looks to the United States, where most of its staff are now based and where it hopes to clinch sales to defense agencies and police forces next year. Going global has been in O'Dwyer's sights for many years. It's a target that gets a little larger and a little closer every day.
A broker friend emailed me some stuff about them a month or so ago. Interesting to say the least. Definitely check out their website, they've got a dozen or so video demonstrations of the various weapons, and tons of specs & other cool info.
here's a link with an interactive flash thing... pretty neat www.ecemedia.de/lutkat/infografik/iactive.html
The same place you store the computer program to guide the anti missile shield program to 100% accuracy, in your imagination. I imagine barrel overheating would happen after about .001 seconds. The Phalanx uses a plastic Sabot around an inner tungsten or depleted uranium bullet, but that frictions gotta add up when you ramp up the rounds per second by a factor of a two hundred.
One million rounds a minute, that barrel has got to get hot hot hot. Is there some kind of coolant system on it? I'm to lazy to read the link right now but I'm sure I will later. So does it say anything about keeping the barrel cool or is that not even a problem? Blatz
Funny about the overheat, I edited my post to reflect the same question. Phalanx and its related systems do somewhere between 3000 and 6000 rpm. The plastic Sabot may have something to do with the issue of overheating - but then you have to ask - why doesn't the plastic melt? Some more details about the Metal Storm invention - sounds like a rail gun. http://www.gunsaregood.com/gatling.htm . . . The last high-tech Gatling gun worth talking about is the futuristic Metal Storm. While this 36-barrel gun is still in the prototype stage, it shows amazing potential. The inventor, Mike O'Dwyer, has developed a gun that he says will fire up to one million rounds a minute. The Storm achieves this unbelievable rate of fire by replacing traditional gun parts with electrical charges. The most innovative aspect of this gun is that bullets are loaded not only in the magazine but the entire barrel itself. The electronic charges fire at different parts of the barrels, sending the bullets down the barrels in fractions of a second. The company claims that the barrels fire so fast that the barrels literally push the bullets ahead of them faster which increases the round's velocity. The U.S. and the Australian militaries have invested millions of dollars on the project but it is still years away from being deployed. . . .
Or if they are like the Defense Department, have it fail every field test and call it a success. None of the videos show this million round per minute weapon. They only show sixteen barrel grenade launchers with a max 600 rpm or about 40 rpm per barrel.
I can't wait go to bar, pick a fight with a million dudes, then boom! whip out my METAL STORM! Take that boys!
Whip it out being a relative term since even with one gram bullets we're talking about one ton for a one minute burst. Maybe more like the sci-fi chaingun weapon in Snow Crash where the guy had to haul it around like a suitcase and dip the coolant intake/outtake in a body of water.
I'm just being silly. It would be impractical to shoot such a weapon more than a few fractions of a second due to ammo considerations alone.
Definately not a rail gun. The guy uses caseless amunition, as on the Heckler and Koch G11 but uses an electronic fireing mechanism to ignite the powder in order. This is why he can have multiple rounds in sequence. He just wires up the fireing mechanism in series. If you want real genuine rail guns, check out Power Labs. The guy scavanges old industrial ovens in order to get capacitors that aren't for general sale in order to up the power on his monsters. He also makes gauss guns, lasers, and other cool toys. Cool video, too.
Good points This weapon could be a technological breakthrough, it's pretty interesting. Reading that article made me think right away to Demolition Man (Stallone, Snipes) and Jude Dredd (Stallone yet again haha) where guns could only be fired by their users. That would make the world a much safer place cuz maybe some guns wouldn't be sold to the wrong people.
Thank you for the links. I've only used the H&K G11 in Jagged Alliance 2. Some cool guns in that game.
