The M134 Minigun is one of the most lethal weapons ever fielded in the history of warfare. It has a
fire rate of over 6,000 rounds per minute and has proven its worth in numerous conflicts.
But even this behemoth pales in comparison to a unique prototype
with a much more devastating rate of fire. The Metal Storm gun, a design with 36 barrels,
has an impressive rate of fire of over 1.62 million rounds per minute,
equaling 180 rounds in a .01-second burst. It employs caseless 9-millimeter ammunition
that can fire a wall of 24,000 rounds that move at speeds of Mach 5. And it can
literally tear apart any tank that stands in its way!
After decades of undivided supremacy,
the Minigun may finally have an opponent for the fastest fire rate out there…
Rate of Fire
The Harquebus or Hackbut and the musket were the first widely produced firearms in history,
with the former being developed by the Spanish in the mid-15th century.
Both weapons were fired from the shoulder with a support mechanism against which
the recoil was transferred from a hook on the gun.
The harquebus employed a smoothbore matchlock with a stock resembling a
rifle. The fire rate was extremely slow, and the effective range was less than 200 meters.
In the mid-16th century, it was replaced by the musket, which was larger, heavier, and more
powerful. But despite its superior firepower, it was still cumbersome and slow to reload.
It was until the mid-19th century that things began to change with the introduction of the
breechloading rifle. Troops could now fire up to three times per minute with proper training,
and with linear formations, fire volleys were now more accurate and lethal.
Nonetheless, the effectiveness of repeating rifles paled when compared to the devastation
brought to the battlefield with the introduction of the Gatling gun and the Maxim machine gun.
Guinness World Record
The Maxim machine gun and its derivatives changed the course
of modern warfare forever. The Maxim could fire between 500 and 600 rounds per minute.
The United States military and General Electric developed the M134 and the M61A2 20-millimeter
gun during the Cold War. Both weapons were based on the Civil War-era Gatling
gun design and had an approximate rate of fire of over 6,600 rounds per minute.
In other words, the state-of-the-art weapons and their unique configuration based
on a 150-year-old design had the capability to fire more than 100 rounds every second.
The M60 and M61 were part of Project Vulcan and were
first used during the Vietnam War with F-105 Thunderchiefs.
The M134 Minigun, a smaller caliber iteration of its big brother,
the 20-millimeter Vulcan cannon, was also used for the first time during the war
against North Vietnam aboard American helicopters such as the Kiowa, Cobra,
and Huey, as well as several fixed-winged aircraft used for close-air-support.
The M134 Minigun and the Vulcan held the Guinness World Record
for the fastest rate of fire of any military weapon for decades. However,
it all changed when James Michael O'Dwyer developed the Metal Storm gun.
Metal Storm Limited
James Michael O'Dwyer grew up in Queensland, Australia,
and spent over 15 years developing his rapid-fire gun prototype. As such, O'Dwyer founded Metal
Storm Limited in 1994, a research and development company based in Brisbane.
O'Dwyer’s 36-barrel prototype was quite unique for the era. Unlike
the M61 Vulcan or the M134 Minigun, his gun featured no moving parts but
still managed to fire over 180 rounds in less than one-hundredth of a second.
While the Minigun could fire 7.62-millimeter ammunition at
6,000 rounds per minute, O'Dwyer´s Metal Storm employed special caseless
9-millimeter ammunition that could fire one million rounds per minute.
To achieve such a fire rate, O'Dwyer employed a superposed load consisting of multiple
projectiles loaded nose to tail in a single gun barrel with propellant packed between them.
O'Dwyer basically used the same idea behind a typical Roman candle,
a traditional type of firework, and took it to the next level. The Roman candle used
the concept of superposed load, except the propellant continued to burn in the barrel,
igniting the charge behind each subsequent projectile. The process continued until all
projectiles placed in the barrel were discharged in order from the first and only ignition.
During the mid-16th century, Italian inventor Giambattista della Porta applied the concept
in firearms for a shoot-on-demand capability. However, it never went past the testing phase,
as the inventor could not find a way to eliminate the unintended propellant ignition.
One Million Rounds
O'Dwyer’s patents proved that he had developed a method in which the projectiles placed in series
along the barrel could be fired selectively without any unintended propellant ignition.
The Metal Storm gun had no moving parts except its 9-millimeter bullets,
and it had no trigger, hammer, or breech block.
Despite its incredible ability to stack multiple projectiles in a
single tube and fire them electronically in order, it all came at a cost: the gun
was stacked and could not be moved or turned. During an interview with the History Channel,
Russell Zink from Metal Storm Limited explained that a computer controlled
the fastest gun in the world to establish the desired rate of fire.
The range could go from a single round to over a million rounds per minute,
and 180 bullets could be fired in a small fraction of a second
from the 36 barrels of the weapon system at speeds close to Mach 5.
If the rate of fire could be sustained, the Metal Storm would go past one million rounds per minute.
Such incredible power meant no armor in the world could stop the uninterrupted barrage of caseless
9-millimeter ammunition, and it could easily tear apart any main battle tank in the world.
However, for this to happen, the armored vehicle had to be directly in front of the gun as it fired
and remain in the same position to successfully destroy it, which was unlikely to happen.
An Unlikely Asset
Although the Metal Storm concept was impressive in theory,
it proved impractical when applied to reality.
One of the downsides was its mobility, which drastically reduced its application,
as it was intended as a stationary weapon used in setting up ambushes.
The tremendous rate of fire was useless if the gun could barely move. As such, the Metal Storm had
to be placed directly in front of the objective. In addition, it was heavy, and the time to prepare
it was tediously slow. The operators needed to load the ammunition for only one burst, as it
was never produced with a projectile quantity that could fire for more than five seconds.
Moreover, the gun was extremely costly.
Its considerable rate of fire meant that every burst was costlier than any other machine.
In 1997, the Chinese government offered O'Dwyer over 100 million dollars to develop
the 36-barrel gun, but he refused and informed the Australian Department of Defense of the offer.
Although the Australian government never showed clear signs of wanting to purchase the design,
O'Dwyer kept working on improving the prototype and received some funding from the US military.
Future Use
In 2007, the US Navy announced it was buying one prototype for one of its vessels. However,
no progress was ever made on buying it due to legal issues related to Metal Storm Incorporated.
The US Navy's interest was mostly in testing O'Dwyer’s gun with the
sophisticated Phalanx System, but more details were never provided.
The company also partnered with iRobot to develop a droid armed
with a 40-millimeter grenade launcher based on the 36-barreled stacked projectile volley gun,
but none of the projects ever came to fruition.
Then, in 2012, the Metal Storm company was placed in voluntary administration.
Three years later, DefendTex, an Australian defense company, acquired the company’s
intellectual property but decided not to pursue the development of the Metal Storm gun.
As such, the M134 Minigun still holds the record
for the fastest rate of fire of a military weapon in service.
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