So the concept started with the Gatling gun, the first rotating multi-barrel machine gun, and then was scaled up into the modern minigun. That was then scaled up to the 20mm Vulcan and 30mm Avenger autocannons.
Why can’t we scale it up even further with a multi-barrel rotating artillery cannon? One that shoots 3000 artillery rounds per minute and sends massive barrages of artillery?
In: Engineering
Lots of people talking about heat, some good points about damage.
I haven’t seen a lot of conversations about shell handling.
Rotary canons exist on ships (Goalkeeper/Phalanx etc), AFVs and aircraft. They tend to cap out at around 30mm though. Heat is one reason, but the other is ammo handling.
30mm is a unitary round, combined shell and propellant. That makes handling fairly easy and each round weighs less than a kilo (or two pounds).
There isn’t really an intermediate caliber between 30mm and full size shells for tanks/ships and medium artillery (105-125mm), then up to heavyweight artillery calibers.
A 4.5in (113mm) ship mounted gun can fire rapidly, maybe 25 rounds in a minute. It fires unitary 36.5kg ammunition that is handled almost entirely by power assistance. The loading system occupies a substantial amount of space.
120mm/125mm tank guns use separate shells and propellant to make loading easier. 155mm main caliber artillery is also separate shell and propellant, total weight of 43.5kg.
It’s just not practical to handle 100s of round a minute of bulky and heavy ammunition.
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