Miniguns

Back around the Civil War, a  dentist name of Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling developed an idea for a weapon so terrible that it would end war. Cartridge-loading repeaters were in their infancy, but Dr. Gatling ran with the idea and came up with a gun using multiple barrels turning around a central shaft. As a barrel rotated into the firing position, it was fired, then allowed to rotate around the axis while the next barrel was brought to the firing position. This allowed the fired barrels to cool a bit and yet maintain a high rate of fire. Gatling himself added an electric motor (you thought that was a modern concept, too?) for an estimated 3000 round per minute back in the 1890s.

Gatling’s design received U.S. Patent #502,185 on July 25, 1893. Despite his improvements, the Gatling gun fell into disuse after cheaper, lighter-weight, recoil and gas operated machine guns were invented; Gatling himself went bankrupt for a period.

Remember, during the Gatling gun’s heyday, the standard government cartridge was the .45 Government – the projectile ALONE weighed just a bit shy of an ounce. Couple that with a gun shooting 3000 of ’em a minute…your ammo weight alone would have been a problem.

But in the ’60s, a 3000 rpm machine gun was just the ticket for jungle warfare – mount it in a helicopter or plane, use it at a firebase, chamber it in a smaller, lighter cartridge like the 7.62 NATO – NOW you’re talking. And miniguns have become popular…and varied. The Army calls ’em the M134, the Navy and Air Force the GAU-2. Then there is the Dillon Aero version called the M-134D (which has a higher normal rate of fire) and all the other variants. used by the various services in various configurations. (We are ignoring things like the Vulcan – we’re just talking about the rifle-caliber miniguns.) The GAU-17 is current production, GE no longer makes miniguns but several others like Dillon do – and they are in many cases somewhat different designs with non-interchangeable parts.

Militaries work best with common items. Sometimes, the common items may not strictly be the best – but a million of the second best beats hell out of 100,000 of the best here, another best with 100,000 there, yet a third… you get it.  Some bright folks have decided it is about time we standardized.

“NAVAIR is seeking to identify sources that can manufacture the GAU-24/A machine gun in accordance with a Government-owned Technical Data Package (TDP),” the notice explains. “The GAU-24/A machine gun is intended to serve as the common replacement for all other M134-based weapons, currently being used, throughout the Department of War.”

A tentative schedule is laid out, which would see the delivery of an initial five GAU-24/As to the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane) in Indiana for testing within 12 months of a contract award. The Navy is currently eyeing the Fiscal Year 2027 timeframe for the start of that work, which could then run for anywhere between 36 and 60 months afterward, at least.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Pentagon, Science and Technology