The Australian company’s name is Metal Storm Ltd. And that’s an apt description of what the company plans to bring to future battlefields.
In mid-July, a team led by Virginia-based SAIC, along with Metal Storm, CAES, and Alliance Technologies, showed US defense officials three new, non-mechanical, variable-speed weapon systems. The firing demonstration involved three prototype weapons–a six-barrel 9mm rifle, a 40mm system, and a 9mm handgun, dubbed the Variable Lethality Enforcement (VLE) model.
Held at the Army Research Laboratory’s Blossom Point facility, not far from Washington, DC, the firing demonstrations were conducted for the manager of an advanced research program being conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. About 100 visitors from all branches of the US armed forces and other government agencies witnessed the demonstrations over a three-day period, Stephen Lee, SAIC’s Metal Storm program manager, told AFJI.
The demonstrations were enough to convince the DoD observers that an investment of $10 million in the new gun technology is a prudent move. That’s how much the Pentagon will pay the team over the next three years to develop single- and multiple-barrel prototype rifles for testing.
These won’t be your run-of-the-mill weapons. The first system the government wants is a rifle with a rate of fire of 90,000 rounds per minute. That’s right–90,000 per minute; 1,500 per second.
To put this rate of fire into perspective, consider that an M-16 assault rifle has a cyclic rate of fire of approximately 700 rounds per minute–less than half of what the new weapons are expected to spit out each second. Even ship-mounted close-in weapon systems–those that are designed for last-ditch self-defense against incoming missiles–spew their ordnance at the comparatively leisurely rate of about 4,500 rounds per minute.
Now, increase by more than an order of magnitude the rate of fire that’s proposed for the new rifles and you’re in the ballpark of a firing rate that Metal Storm engineers have already achieved in a larger weapon system–1,620,000 rounds per minute. That 9mm, 36-barrel weapon holds 540 rounds and spews 11.5 pounds of 9mm projectiles in 1/100 of a second.
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см. http://www.afji.com/AFJI/Mags/2000/Oct./NewTech.html
