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In perhaps the most audacious upgrade of high-speed weaponry since the introduction of the Gatling Gun, Australian inventor Mike O'Dwyer has developed a machine gun that can fire bullets at a rate of 1 million rounds per minute.

Sorry if this might be old news or already been posted before, I just learned about it and I'm sure it's the same for a lot of you.

http://www.metalstorm.com/ and http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,46570,00.html.

We have had countless Metalstorm threads, its very old news. The technology is useless and is in most variants version of a battery gun or single barreled, none are Gatling.

Notice how the new article is from 2001

Not new, not practical, not even a Gatling gun.

Well crap. Sorry about that, one of my friends was all excited and linked it to me. I completely didn't notice the date.

If you need to fire a million bullets per minute, there's something wrong with your bullets.

GrandAdmiralPrawn wrote:If you need to fire a million bullets per minute, there's something wrong with your bullets.

Moreover, the fucking stupid system can only garner that rate of fire for a fraction of a second. Metal storm is a stupid idea that has no practical applications of any kind. Since we have had several threads about this already, and everyone is of the opinion that it's a crappy idea, I'll close the thread unless anyone wants to bring up a new point or argue that it's actually worth looking into.

There was one suggestion of using the system with mortars instead of bullets.

Shinova wrote:There was one suggestion of using the system with mortars instead of bullets.

To which I must say.... why do we need to fire that many mortars at a single target?

Shinova wrote:There was one suggestion of using the system with mortars instead of bullets.

Which is beyond fucking stupid, they've also proposed artillery systems and some insanely stupid replacement for landmines by using Metalstorm to fire thousands of 40mm grenades instead. The people pushing the technology are idiots and Metalstorm has zero useful applications in any caliber.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:
To which I must say.... why do we need to fire that many mortars at a single target?

There is no need at all, the system would be vastly inferior to rockets for delivering large payloads and awful compared to field guns for everything else.

Whoever came up with the mortar obviously has no comprehension of how much it would weigh.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:

Shinova wrote:There was one suggestion of using the system with mortars instead of bullets.

To which I must say.... why do we need to fire that many mortars at a single target?

I suppose to annihilate everything in a wide area, but in today's world that kind of situation doesn't come up.

And even if you DO want to wreck an entire large area, carpet-bombing seems much simpler.

GrandAdmiralPrawn wrote:And even if you DO want to wreck an entire large area, carpet-bombing seems much simpler.

Or just nuking it.

Shinova wrote: Or just nuking it.

Or you use something called a rocket, loaded with something known as DPICM, also known as cluster bomblets.

Well, it would probably make a great last defense system against incoming missiles. Blanket that damn sky so not even a bacteria gets through.

Trytostaydead wrote:Well, it would probably make a great last defense system against incoming missiles. Blanket that damn sky so not even a bacteria gets through.

A single gatling works just fine for that. And for the same weight you could have a massively higher caliber galting, which means you can actually shoot down the missile before it's so close the fragments still cause heavy damage. And of course the Metalstorm system is going to run out of ammunition almost instantly, modern CIWS track there own bullets in flight so that future rounds will intercept. There's no way the mount can do that with a burst lasting a fraction of a second. Plus when the gatling does run out of ammo it's easy to swap in some more, unlike Metalstorm where you've got to change the barrels. This one more job in which Metalstorm sucks shit.

Though against the latest supersonic anti ship missiles, you either need a big gun firing guided shells, or a missile system.

Sea Skimmer wrote:
A single gatling works just fine for that. And for the same weight you could have a massively higher caliber galting, which means you can actually shoot down the missile before it's so close the fragments still cause heavy damage. And of course the Metalstorm system is going to run out of ammunition almost instantly, modern CIWS track there own bullets in flight so that future rounds will intercept. There's no way the mount can do that with a burst lasting a fraction of a second. Plus when the gatling does run out of ammo it's easy to swap in some more, unlike Metalstorm where you've got to change the barrels. This one more job in which Metalstorm sucks shit.

Though against the latest supersonic anti ship missiles, you either need a big gun firing guided shells, or a missile system.

Eh. The "bullet wall" is still pretty impressive. But the handgun does have intriguing possibilities for law enforcement or the average home defense. Though I think they should get rid of the "talking" and maybe find a more intuitative way to reload

It's a very cool system. I'd love to see it fire sometime.

Of course, it'd also be cool to drive a Stryker sometime. Or fire a SA-80. That doesn't make it practical.

Actually Metal Storm does have a few practical uses, but not many of them are actually being promoted...

The O'Dwyer handguns aren't a bad idea for police and other law enforcement, but without doubt they need some tweaking.

Maybe as a CIWS some of them have potential...

But a few of the proposals spoke of using the tech for agricultural and mining purposes, which made a strange kind of sense.

Perhaps they could use it as a one-time booby trap in a mayan temple or something?




[Pointless thread locked ~ Stormbringer]