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
There are multiple rocket launchers that do the job far better. Artillery fires the shell with a high angle and then comes down and explodes on the target firing multiple rounds that are large enough calibre to be useful as artillery would result in very poor accuracy for the later shots.
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.
There is a whole other problem that has been ignored so far: counter battery fire.
Modern war uses radar to track incoming artillery rounds, feeds that information to artillery units and then fires artillery back at the first artillery unit. And if successful the first artillery unit fires off several rounds and then explodes because the counter battery fire hit them.
So modern artillery involves firing 1-2 rounds, and then immediately packing up and moving 1-2 miles down the road before the counter battery artillery gets involved. So a drum fed artillery system would never be able to sustain fire because counter battery would destroy it long before it could empty the clip.
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You theoretically can make a Gatling howitzer. The biggest problem is that it would need very robust design or it would destroy itself with the heat and recoil. It would need to be too heavy for the typical artillery truck to tow it and so expensive that you couldn’t really have very many.
It’s not worth the effort to get a single six-barreled howitzer when six one-barreled howitzers will do the same job just as well, especially when you can form several times more six-gu artillery units for the cost of a single Gatling howitzer. Six howitzers are a battery, the fundamental building block unit of artillery.
The other big problem is the feeding mechanism. Ammunition for tank guns and anything larger isn’t typically packaged as a single cartridge with primer, propellant, and projectile held together in a brass case. There are a variety of reasons for this. One of the most important ones is that a 120mm cannon’s ammunition is heavy enough that a human loader can’t really handle the weight of both projectile and propellant at once, so they have two-piece ammunition. That’s a tank gun. Howitzer ammunition is even heavier. Again, in order to design a mechanism which can handle large quantities of self-contained 155mm cartridges, you need something ridiculously heavy and robust.
Because artillery is an area weapon, not a point weapon, you aren’t going to get much more of an effect than if you fired a few rounds from a normal howitzer and covered the area in shrapnel and other fun stuff.
What you are going to do with a Gatling howitzer is consume a lot more ammunition to accomplish very little more than a normal howitzer. How many people do you think you can hire at the ammunition factory, what about materials? Where do you plan on storing all of this extra ammunition? How many extra trucks, drivers, mechanics, and other resources (including fuel) do you want to use on transporting this extra ammunition to wherever the Gatling howitzer is?
>That was then scaled up to the 20mm Vulcan and 30mm Avenger autocannons.
The M134 Minigun is a scaled-down Vulcan designed for helicopters, not the other way around.
Do you know why Gatling guns made a comeback starting in the 1960s? They’re for situations where the firing platform (nearly always) and the target (in most cases) are both moving fast and any good aim that you line up will be gone almost instantly. Usually, this means aircraft-mounted weapons firing at aircraft. The Vulcan is for fighter jets to shoot at other aircraft (it has since been repurposed so that the Phalanx CIWS can put a lot of shots from a slow-moving ship in the direction of a fast-moving missile, the C-RAM is a Phalanx on the back of a parked truck), the Avenger is for CAS to shoot at tanks that were obsolete 50 years ago, the Minigun is so that helicopters don’t have to slow down and become an easier target when they need to put a lot of my lead in a specific area. This isn’t how you use artillery.
I’ve been near artillery firing. The concussion from just one shot is insane. Plus you’d plow through an entire 5-ton truck full of ammo in several seconds.
What we do is have 18 cannons lined up and they keep firing.
It’s been said heat is a big reason why but I wonder when we’ll get rail guns that can shoot larger rounds faster since there isn’t any explosions to contend with?
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.
Engineering problems have solutions so the short answer is, we can. The real question is, how do you keep it supplied? Do you take my meaning? What use is firing 3000 shells if your logistics can’t possibly keep up?
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