Army and Weapons | Minigun | Minigun is a term used to describe a type of multiple-barreled rifle, Gatling-derived high-level play with fire usually found external support (IE: Pneumatics, Electrical). The gun may fire several thousand rounds per minute. It's often just use the plane. Miniguns may have to take a few seconds to get the barrel spinning before unleashing a heavy load of lead because if it does not wait, round barrel will cut apart and jam it. It can reach speeds of rotation up to 6000 + RPM (revolutions Per Minute). There are several types of miniguns, the most common being GShG-7.62 Minigun and M134, both fire around 6000 rounds per minute.
The
M134 Minigun is a 7.62 mm, six-barrel machine gun with a high rate of fire (2,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute). It features a Gatling-style rotating barrels with an external power source, usually an electric motor. The "Mini" of the name is in comparison to designs that use a similar firing mechanism but larger shells, such as the previous 20-millimeter
M61 Vulcan General Electric, and "weapon" for the smaller caliber sizes of guns, typically 20 mm and higher .
"Minigun" refers to a particular model of weapon, originally produced by
General Electric. But the term "minigun" has been popular come to refer to any externally-powered Gatling gun caliber rifle. The term is also used to refer to the weapons of the same level of fire and sometimes configuration, regardless of power source and caliber.
The ancestor to the modern minigun was made in the 1860s. Richard Jordan Gatling replaced the hand rotate the rifle-caliber Gatling gun mechanism with an electric motor, a relatively new invention at the time. Even after Gatling slowed down the mechanism, electric-powered Gatling gun only has a theoretical rate of fire of 3,000 rounds per minute, roughly three times the rate of a typical modern gun, single barrel machine. Gatling's electric-powered design received U.S. 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 created.
