Minigun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Minigun is a multibarreled machine gun with a high rate of fire (several thousand rounds per minute), employing Gatling-style rotating barrels. More technically, a minigun is an externally powered Gatling gun of rifle caliber, though the term is sometimes used more generally to refer to guns of similar rates of fire and configuration regardless of power source. Although the term was originally specific to a particular weapon produced by General Electric, it has since been applied to a number of other weapons, many of which were derived from that design. The "mini" of the name is in comparison to designs that use a similar firing mechanism but 20 mm or larger shells, such as General Electric's earlier M61 Vulcan.
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[edit] History
[edit] 1890s: Electric motor-driven Gatling gun
The ancestor to the modern minigun was made in the 1860s Richard J. Gatling replaced the hand cranked mechanism of a rifle-caliber Gatling gun with an electric motor, a relatively new invention at the time. Even after Gatling slowed down the mechanism, the new electric-powered Gatling gun had a theoretical rate of fire of 3,000 rounds per minute, roughly three times the rate of a typical modern, single-barreled machine gun. Gatling's electric-powered design received US Patent #502,185 on July 25, 1893. Despite Gatling's improvements, the Gatling gun fell into disuse after cheaper, lighter-weight, recoil and gas operated machine guns were invented.
[edit] 1960s: Vietnam war
In the 1960s, the US military began exploring modern variants of the electric-powered, rotating barrel Gatling gun-style weapons for use in the Vietnam War. The US forces in Vietnam, which used helicopters as one of the primary means of transporting soldiers and equipment through the dense jungle, found that the thin-skinned helicopters were very vulnerable to small arms fire and Rocket-Propelled Grenade attacks when they slowed down to land. Although helicopters had mounted single-barrel machine guns, using single-barrel machine guns to repel attackers hidden in the dense jungle foliage often led to barrels overheating or cartridge jams.
In order to develop a weapon with a more reliable, higher rate of fire, General Electric designers scaled down the rotating-barrel 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon for 7.62 x 51 mm NATO ammunition. The resulting weapon, known as the Minigun, could fire up to 4,000 rounds per minute without overheating. The Minigun was mounted on OH-6 Cayuse and OH-58 Kiowa side pods, in the turret and wing pods on AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters, on door, pylon and pod mounts on UH-1 "Huey" Iroquois transport helicopters, and on many other helicopters and aircraft.
The minigun's multibarrel design helps prevent overheating, but also serves other functions. Multiple barrels allow for a greater capacity for a high firing rate, since the parallel processes of firing/extraction/loading taking place in all barrels simultaneously. Thus, as one barrel fires, two others are in different stages of shell extraction and another three are being loaded. The minigun is composed of multiple closed-bolt rifle barrels arranged in a circular housing. The barrels are rotated by an external power source: usually electric, pneumatic, or hydraulic. Other rotating-barrel cannons are powered by the gas pressure or recoil energy of fired cartridges.
Several larger aircraft were outfitted with miniguns, specifically for close air support, including famous gunship airplanes like the Douglas AC-47 ("Spooky" a.k.a. "Puff the Magic Dragon", converted Douglas C-47s), AC-119 Gunship ("Shadow" and "Stinger", converted Fairchild "Flying Boxcars"), and the original AC-130 "Spectre" Gunship (converted C-130 Hercules cargo planes), the H-53 (MH-53 Pave Low), and the common H-60 family of helicopters (UH-60 Black Hawk/HH-60 Pave Hawk) transport helicopters - a replacement for the aforementioned UH-1 Iroquois. More rarely, the minigun was mounted on Vietnam-era tanks.
[edit] Variants
| US Army Designation | US Air Force Designation | US Navy Designation | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| XM134/M134 | GAU-2/A | N/A | 7.62x51 mm NATO GE “Minigun” 6-barreled machine gun |
| N/A | GAU-2A/A | N/A | GAU-2/A variant; unknown differences |
| N/A | GAU-2B/A | Mk 25 Mod 0 | GAU-2A/A variant; |
| N/A | GAU-17/A | GAU-17/A | GAU-2B/A variant; optimized for flexible use with an integrated motor and drive assembly and a MAU-201/A or MAU-56 delinking feeder, |
| XM196 | N/A | N/A | M134/GAU-2B/A variant; housing modified by addition of an ejection sprocket; for use in the XM53 armament subsystem on the AH-56 helicopter |
[edit] Designations
G.E.'s minigun is in use in all major branches of the US military, under a number of designations. The basic fixed armament version was given the designation M134 by the U.S. Army, while the exact same weapon was designated GAU-2B/A by the U.S. Air Force. A variant was further developed by the U.S. Air Force specifically for flexible installations, at the time primarily for the UH-1N helicopter, as the GAU-17/A. The primary end users of the GAU-17/A have been the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps, who mount them on as defensive armament on a number of helicopters and surface ships.
[edit] Gun pods and mounts
The GE 7.62x51 mm Minigun has been used in gun pod applications by the United States and with purpose-built mounting hardware used on the aforementioned fixed wing gunship aircraft. In fact, before the purpose-built mounts were created, those aircraft used mounts simply designed to hold the gun pods that had already been developed.
| US Army Designation | US Air Force Designation | US Navy Designation | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| N/A | SUU-11/A | N/A | Gun pod fitted with the GAU-2/A 7.62 mm machine gun |
| XM18/M18 | SUU-11A/A | N/A | SUU-11/A variant; differences unknown |
| M18E1/A1 | SUU-11B/A | N/A | SUU-11A/A variant; differences unknown |
| N/A | MXU-470/A | N/A | Emerson Electric module for mounting a GAU-2B/A minigun; used in AC-47, AC-119G/K, and C-130A/E/H aircraft |
| N/A | N/A | Mk 77 Mod 0 | Machine gun mount for the GAU-2/Mk 25 Mod 0/GAU-17 series of machine guns; deck mount applications |
Various iterations of the minigun have also been used in a number of armament subsystems for helicopters, with most of these subsystems being created by the United States. For more information, check out the page on US Helicopter Armament Subsystems.
[edit] Non-aircraft applications
While the minigun is primarily associated with fixed wing airplanes and helicopters it has occasionally been mounted on land vehicles. Since its creation, the US military have explored ways of using the weapon on vehicles and as a heavy infantry weapon, creating weapons such as the XM214. A pamphlet from the early sixties advertising the Cadillac Gage V100 or (XM706 as it was designated by the US Army) talks of "Firepower for Today's Army" showing a vehicle with the "XM-134/GAU-2B/A Minigun." The rate of fire is advertised as selectable from "500 to 6000 shots/minute."
[edit] The Minigun in pop culture
The Minigun has made appearances in many action movies:
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
- The Matrix
- Predator (film)
- Resident Evil: Apocalypse
- Black Hawk Down
The Minigun has a prominent place in the literature of Robert Rankin where it is frequently mentioned. Examples are as part of a running joke either suggesting that "It is well known to those that know it well that the M134 General electric rotary machine gun is the greatest weapon of all time" or as a wish that the character "had one of those fantastic rotary machine guns, like Blaine used in Predator (film)."
In the Toytown series the weapon has a parallel toy version "the M134 General clockwork minigun."
The Minigun also features in the video games Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2004.
In the first-person shooter Command & Conquer: Renegade, GDI and Brotherhood of Nod officers carry the "Condor" minigun, incorrectly called a Chaingun in-game.
[edit] See also
- GShG-7.62 machine gun
- M61 Vulcan
- XM214 minigun
- M197 Gatling gun
- Blowback Operated Minigun
[edit] References
- http://users.bigpond.net.au/minigun/specs.htm
- http://www.montysminiguns.com/
- http://www.dillonaero.com
- http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/equip/m134.htm
- http://world.guns.ru/machine/minigun-e.htm
- Information on the XM214 from: Gervasi, Tom. Arsenal of Democracy III: America’s War Machine. New York, NY: Grove Press, 1984
