Re: [SG,DS] Power Armour Weapon

> In addition to the added weight of the barrels, the drive mechanism is
also relatively heavy (you need a lot of torque to get 20 pounds of
metal
spinning in a second or two).  IIRC a 5.56mm minigun weighs over 30 lbs
for
just the gun, 1000 rounds of ammo another 35 lbs, a truck battery to run
the
gun 30 lbs.  So for 100 lbs of weight, you get about 10 seconds of
firepower.

You can reduce the weight by a thrid and the torque problem by a half by
going with a three barrel design and lower cyclic rate (also about
half).
Note that this is a simple modification of the gun by removing half of
the
barrels.  A redesigned mini-gun optimized for three barrels would cut
the
weight to about 60% of a six barrel version.  Example is the GE M61 at
120
kg versus the GE M197 at 66 kg.  There are numerous other three barrel
gattling guns in existence, and no reason a 5.56 version couldn't be
built.
My personal favorite is the XM188E1 30mm Aden/DEFA at 50 kg and 2,000
rpm...
But the gun I'm basing this idea is the GECAL 50.  The six barrel
version
(8,000 rpm) weighs 96 lbs, the three barrel version (4,000 rpm) weighs
66
lbs.  Note that the GE XM 214 5.56 mini gun has a maximum rate of fire
of
10,000 rpm; but is usually set at 4,000 rpm or less.  This means you
could
expect a maximum of 5,000 rpm for a three barrel version.  This should
be
more then enough for most applications...

rpm means rounds per minute

ias