lauraw darlin', minor nit. I think you dropped a zero of the rate of fire of a typical machine gun. :)

600 rounds, not 60.

Sorry, my bad. It was the reporter who made the error, not lauraw. I should have known!

600 rounds, not 60. The mistake is in the original article.

The better link, incidentally:

Metalstorm, Inc.

We fix.

Fanks.

As I point out here, cyclic rates for crew-served weapons are more typically in the 750–900 round per minute region. With multi-barrel Gatling-type weapons, rate of fire can exceed 10,000 per minute (although of course that is only sustainable for a few seconds at best). It's another example of the clueless media not even knowing enough to know they're talking crap.

LauraW., does the warporn industry pay women more than men?

You'll have to hit the paypal button to get a response to that question, Arafel.

I won't tease you because you're a girl, but Laura, I'm pretty sure that Ace covered this a lonnng time ago (like, over a year ago).

In fact, the whole Metal Storm concept's been around a while. From what I understand, there's some skepticism here, for some reasons (I'm not that familiar with the program, but one would think that if it worked as advertised, we woulda bought it by now).

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Dave,

ARE YOU SAYING THAT ITS OLD???

The big problem with Metalstorm (as with any extremely high-rate weapon) is what the experts call "running out of ammo."

The secondary issue is that it's a pain in the ass to reload (you have to swap out preloaded barrels). That's not too bad for point defense setups, where you might need a lot of bullets all at once instead of several times over a couple of minutes.

I won't tease you because you're a girl, but Laura, I'm pretty sure that Ace covered this a lonnng time ago

Yeah, but it's being re-covered in the media because of an upcoming DOD test.

I'm not that familiar with the program, but one would think that if it worked as advertised, we woulda bought it by now)

It works as advertised. Reloading is not necessarily a huge deal, as barrels can be swapped out. As an anti-missile/personnel defense weapon, that's not a huge consideration if it does its job right. (think computer targeted curtain of lead hitting incoming object)

It can be difficult to get a defense contract, but once a company does, watch out. It's also a matter of taking concept to final, field-adequate working prototype. They do have a smaller arrangement with the Feds to develop an electronic sidearm, last I checked. What's crazy-delicious about that is, since it's an all electronic controlled firing system, a weapon could be specified for an individual via biometric recognition. Thus, a criminal couldn't take the weapon away from you and use it on you, as it wouldn't fire for them. Lotta potential.

Ticker: MTSX (I own some. Buy it and drive my portfolio up.)

whoops, I see that cirby covered a lot of that in much fewer words.

This stuff has been in the works for years.

Nice video, including target effects in slo-mo.

Jason

I should have mentioned that one prime potential use for this is anti-missile capability. Instead of trying to hit it with a slug or something guided, you just point it in the general direction and pull the trigger.

Think phalanx on crack.

The upside is more reliability of the weapon (no moving parts), more reliable kills (tracking becomes pretty much a non sequitur) but the downside, as the article mentions, is that once it's expended, it's expended. No "reloading" as we're accustomed to.

Jason

MetalStorms figure heavily in the John Ringo Novels "When the Devil Dances" and "Hell's Faire." The wepon you described is mounted in packs on an Abrahms Chassis, and launches a total several thousand 120mm rounds in a few seconds.
It is described as so unplesent to fire that when the even more obscene Shiva Tank needs to use them metalstorms as shims to get out of a ditch, the crews cheer in relief.

If you like warporn, You'll like Ringo. It's SF, but written by and Airborne, and involves the most fun and obscenely cool weapontry ever.

But the terrorists will only use it against us!

Still waiting on the hover tanks.......Hmmmmm......Anytime now.

Yeah,

The problem with this guy is that it is very much an answer looking for a question. There's just not a lot of niches for this particular beast to fill. I mean, sure Phalanx on crack, but why not just use a Phalanx? You know, so you can shoot down several missiles in succession, rather than making absolutely sure that the first one is dead-dead?

It's very much one of those things that just doesn't seem to have an application as yet.

BRD

After the first 100,000 rounds per minute, the rest is just gravey.

Looks like the auto sentry from 'Aliens'.

Does this make anyone else wonder wonder why we haven't been to the moon in 30 years?

Nobody to kill there.

One of these days, one of these days...

The problem isn't the ROF, its the reloading.
The other problem is that with 100,000 rounds going down range, only a fraction are going to hit the incoming target, where are the rest of the bullets going to go? Its like that scene in the 3 Amigos. "The bullets!"

Quote: "Time will tell."
It already has. This is the same technology breakthrough product yada yada yada that they were hyping in the mid-90s. Nobody wants it.

The things you learn when you actually read the article.

This is a test of a 40mm explosive round for the metalstorm system, something that (AFAIK) hasn't been done before. Old system, new round.

The 60 rpm figure isn't a typo, it's the rapid fire rate of the mk19 grenade launcher, which this system is looking to replace. Of course the better number to compare to the 240k rpm is the mk19's cyclic rate, which is something around 350 rpm.

Which leads me to the question: WHY, god, why? I mean, these are freaking GRENADES, things that go boom. They're number two on the list of things where close counts. Why do you need to put 15 FUCKING GRENADES in one place? Seriously, is 6 grenades a seconds just too damn slow? Are we honestly worried that we're not killing the badguys enough, they need to be more dead?

Earth to Pentagon: If it ain't broke, don't fucking fuck with it. If you need to spend money that badly you can put it in my paycheck.