Re: New firearms technology

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bell, Brian K" <Brian_Bell@dscc.dla.mil>
Subject: RE: New firearms technology

> The device describes seems interesting. As I read it the gun has
> multiple shells loaded in the barrel with propellant inbetween. Then
> the shells propellant is ignited sequentally. Then the weapon would
> need to be fitted with a new barrel before it could fire again. It
> mentioned fireing 180 rounds in 0.1 second, but it did not state
> what a sustained rate of fire would be. How long does it take to
> switch barrels? It it took only 1/2 second to change barrels, you
> would need 5 barrels for continous fire. It would seem that the
> spent barrels and the full barrels would take up an awful amout
> of space compaired to the same number of shells in a magazine.
> True, you would put out a lot more shells, but you would run out
> of ammo at an accelerated rate as well.

There are applications where high instantaneous rates of fire are
desirable,
but high sustained rates are not a must. Anti-missile defence and
aircraft
cannon are two cases in point. In such applications, metal storm could
be
used without too much of a strain on logistics.

Greetings
Karl Heinz