[geeks] Just when you thought the usa was gun happy :-)

[Michael A. Turner]

	The discovery channel had a feature with this gun on it. Very
impressive when firing. Makes a whoomp sound and whatever it was aimed at
disappears. 
	I also noticed the lack of mention of the reloading of these
weapons. The show didn't contain any when I watched it, very interesting to
note that this is still not being addressed. I suspect that it will turn out
that you have to replace the barrels after every shot. I suspect that heat
is going to play a factor then, I am sure those barrels get red hot under
that type of a firing rate. 
	The main use I would see for these is point defense weapons against
missiles for vehicles and ships. The rate of fire is high enough that you
could destabilize an incoming RPG round before it hit a vehicles. even if it
only changed the shape of the warhead it would be effecting but I suspect
that it would be able to detonate the round away from the vehicle. Being
able to simply place tubes on a vehicle and a rudimentary detection system
would make retrofitting old vehicles possible. After an action simply
replace the spent tubes. 

Michael A. Turner
Systems Engineer
WHRO
michael.turner at whro.org
http://www.whro.org


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kurt Huhn [mailto:kurt at k-huhn.com]
> Sent: Friday, June 07, 2002 8:43 AM
> To: geeks at sunhelp.org
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Just when you thought the usa was gun happy :-)
> 
> 
> Kevin Lee wrote:
> > 
> > DO NOT START FLAME WAR....
> > -----------------------------------------
> > 
> > Just a cool article.....about the AUSSIES...
> > 
> > http://www.feer.com/articles/2002/0206_13/p034innov.html
> > 
> > 1 million rounds a second...thats a lot.
> > 
> 
> Good idea, bad implementation - at least for infantry situations. 
> Reloading the weapon seems to be an extremely laborious process
> involving an activity not unlike a muzzle-loading rifle - 
> either that or
> you need to fit a new barrel to the reciever to reload.  The website
> doesn't seem to have any info on reloading, at least that I could find
> (www.metalstorm.com).  That seams to be the most major flaw in this
> platform design - sure it can fire 1 million rounds per minute, but if
> it takes you 15 minutes to reload, the effectiveness is greatly
> decreased.
> 
> The handgun idea is also a neat toy, but severely lacking in terms of
> reload time and effectiveness.
> 
> However, for semi-permanent placements like border crossings, 
> phalanxs,
> and as a replacement for minefields, this may have excellent 
> application
> possibilities.
> -- 
> Kurt
> kurt at k-huhn.com
> _______________________________________________
> GEEKS:  http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/geeks