why can’t we make an artillery minigun?

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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

29 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

You could build one with (say) 6 barrels that fire 6 shots very quickly. A barrel can do e.g 6 shots in 60 seconds then it needs so cool down. So your sixshooter could do 6×6=36 shots in one minute before the barrels all need to cool down.

This isn’t really much of a minigun but it’s a whole artillery battery in one really heavy/complex/expensive vehicle. If something breaks on this vehicle it probably can’t fire at all. But 5 of 6 self propelled guns can work if one breaks down. So that’s one reason to not build fewer more complex vehicles.

Finally: no one needs the effect. That’s of course the primary reason this isn’t a thing. Modern self propelled guns can fire 6 times in one minute and adjust the elevation for each shot such that they all land at the same time. Basically: no matter how slow the rate of fire was, the rate of impact can be as high as you want.

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