Interesting FireArm: Metal Storm

Metal Storm is a machine gun that is capable of firing 1 million rounds per minute.  Yes you heard me right, that's the number 1 with 6 zero's behind it! which is about 16,600 rounds fired every second which is 16,500 more bullets fired in a second than the currently fastest multi barrelled rotary machine gun.

 

Metal Storm has no moving parts, as all the bullets are fired electronically.  Also there are no spent and ejected cartridge cases as in conventional machine guns, as Metal Storm ammunition is case-less.

The bullets are pre-sealed in the barrels in a stacked configuration. By ' stacked ' it means that all the bullets are one behind the other in the barrels, so in effect the barrel itself is now the ammo magazine.  No reloading of magazines is needed, the operator just replaces the pre loaded barrels.

    

Malfunctions such as typical machine gun jams are now totally eliminated, because as stated earlier, there are no moving parts except that is...the bullet moving up the barrel !!  Therefore this weapons system is 99% dependable and reliable, this is a major leap in weapons technology.  The remaining 1% would be if there was an electrical malfunction...such as a flat battery !

The case-less ammunition has the propellant built in to the actual bullet itself and this propellant is ignited via a small electrical charge, in fact a triple A Duracel™ battery will be enough to operate the gun, so large battery packs and electric generators that are normally associated with guns of this type are not needed.

For example, the Gatling gun or rotary barrel machine gun that fires up to 6,000 rounds per minute has to be operated by a large 240volt electric motor as seen in the image below.

The small electrical current is controlled by computer software, ( just plug a laptop into it ) to the exact barrel and the exact bullet within it, so that either one bullet or the entire amount of bullets can be fired.

1 rpm (rounds per minute), 6, or 60 or 6000, or 60,000 or 600,000 or even 1,000,000 bullets can be fired at the shooters behest.  The bullets can literally be fired out of a single barrel like a storm of solid metal in a continuous almost solid line of hot lead like in this simple illustration below, whereas a bullet is depicted by this symbol rather than more conventionally... 

And Metal Storm is a weapons system that has more than one barrel !

Metal Storm is both the name of the company and the product that it builds.  The company is based in Brisbane, Australia and has a subsidiary base in Washington DC in the USA and a pro-active development base in Seattle, USA.  Metal Storm owns all the rights to the method that the gun fires its ammunition i.e. EBT  or Electronic Ballistics Technology, that was invented by Mr. J. Mike O'Dwyer.

Metal Storm technology can be applied in lots of different ways, one of the ways to use this high capacity firing mechanism is in  Sentry  guns.  These quad barrelled guns lie dormant until sensors detect movement, then they automatically acquire the target and give it a quick million rounds per minute burst of say 600 bullets in 1/1000th of a second !

This machine gun is a user friendly, enemy un-friendly  'plug n play' system.

This is the perfect defence weapons system, literally set it up and forget about it, the gun will do the rest.  Just ensure that your own side know where these guns would be emplaced ! because like landmines, it would be totally indiscriminate of who or what it blows away.

Metal Storm can be mounted anywhere and also has the option of firing different types and calibers of ammunition such as, armor piercing, explosive and shrapnel, 9mm, 40mm, 20mm and even non lethal soft rounds.

Metal Storm electronic ballistic technology can also be miniaturized somewhat, and a handgun is under development that uses the same system as the larger ones as described on this page.

A handgun may not be as practical though as the firer would have to carry a fair few spare barrels otherwise called magazines with him at all times due to the rapid expenditure of the ammunition.  In this case, the pistol would need to be set to fire say a maximum of 3 rounds per trigger pull, you could then get 18 shots x 3 rounds if the capacity was 54 rounds in each gun.

Three bullets hitting the target in the same micro second would make a pistol like this a very lethal force to be reckoned with.

                              

It is understood that the Australian Government did not want to invest any capital in any of these weapons, so Metal Storm went over to the USA, where it is now being developed and may soon see service with the military in the near future.

 

With guns like this mounted  on tanks, armored cars, jeeps, trucks, helicopters, fighter aircraft and well all military vehicles then surely they would dominate any battlefield of the future.  Specially adapted gun carriages could be remotely controlled and sent into hot spots to eliminate enemy positions without the need of endangering military personnel.

Below is an artists impression of a plane equipped with Metal Storm gun pods, imagine this flying over head and deploying a few hundred thousand 20mm explosive shells onto enemy armor.  The word 'obliteration' comes to mind !

If I was in Government, then I would prefer my military to be equipped with this weapon system rather than the other guys.  Read more about this gun and other developments from the companies website.

Metal Storm Weapons

With no moving parts, Metal Storm weapons can lay down a million-plus rounds per minute.

 

To the human ear, the sound of 180 bullets being fired in less than one-hundredth of a second is perceived as one enormous noise. And the fact that some people have heard that noise is testimony to the perseverance of one inventor with a unique vision of the future of weapons technology. "They say that half the engineers in the first company that I worked with wanted me to finish my coffee and leave as soon as possible," says Mike O'Dwyer, recalling the way some of his far-reaching ideas were received.

O'Dwyer's revolutionary weapons concept is based on an electronically fired gun-and-launcher design with multiple rounds stacked in a single barrel. The only moving parts are the bullets themselves. Beyond creating an astounding fast-firing weapon, the concept makes way for the creation of entirely new types of firearms. Among other things, it will allow the shooter to select from different types of rounds and even between firing lethal and nonlethal ammunition. O'Dwyer's ideas were initially met with skepticism, but now they are being taken seriously by the military and police.

"Nothing succeeds like actually building something and pulling the trigger or, in our case, pressing the button to show what happens," he tells POPULAR MECHANICS.

"One of the first things I did was to build a prototype with one short piece of barrel loaded with two projectiles and propellant behind each," O'Dwyer says. "I then fired the leading projectile just to determine whether the system would operate. If it did, the second projectile should stay in the barrel, without being pushed back with the propellant behind it."

Based on the results of that testing, O'Dwyer quickly moved to an expanded firing prototype--a single-barrel design loaded with 15 9mm rounds. "There was nothing particularly optimum about having 15 rounds," he says. "It was just a good number. There was also nothing particularly optimum about 9mm. It was just a convenient size.

"The wedging-system design O'Dwyer used to lock and seal multiple projectiles stacked in a single barrel required each of the 9mm projectiles to be slightly modified from their sporting configurations.

"The 15 shots was a big step for us from two, and electronically firing those 15 shots from a single barrel allowed us to experiment immediately with rates of fire," O'Dwyer says. The smoothbore prototype allowed electronically variable rates of fire ranging from semiauto to the equivalent of 45,000 rounds per minute.

Applying what he had learned about tube loading and firing rates, O'Dwyer constructed a triple-barrel, a nine-barrel, and a 36-barrel firing prototype design that he lovingly named Bertha. "The reason for the 36 barrels was simply to indicate to ourselves and to others the future versatility of this system, in that with the 36 barrels we had 540 rounds on board and, based on the 45,000-round-per-minute rate per barrel, that gave us a maximum firing rate of 1.62 million rounds per minute," the inventor says. Prior to Bertha's well-deserved retirement, O'Dwyer used the demonstrator to achieve a 180-round burst of 9mm rounds (155 grain weight) at a rate of just over 1 million rounds per minute.

New Families Of Weapons

O'Dwyer's experience with the 36-tube Bertha has provided him with a new understanding of the technology--not just the gun. When he speaks of the weapons, he uses the analogy of an inkjet printer. He compares the projectiles to dots of ink exploding out of a print head. O'Dwyer's concept is that of a weapons system capable of delivering a wide range of customized "packages" of varying degrees of lethality.

"While the enormous rate of fire is a major advantage in some significant areas, this is not a weapons system that operates as if it were a shotgun," O'Dwyer says. "This is not an area weapon that deals with a target by overkill. It is about accuracy, precision and electronic controllability."
Other recent Metal Storm demonstrator systems have included a "scaled up" 40mm grenade launcher for the military that fires small "shot bursts" at rates equivalent to 6000 rounds per minute, as well as a Variable Lethality Law Enforcement (VLE) handgun. The fully electronic VLE can be easily safety-keyed to a particular individual or group, preventing its use should it fall into the wrong hands.

Through his company, Metal Storm Ltd., the Australian inventor hopes to apply this technology to a variety of military and commercial products worldwide.