PLA Small arms
- Thread starter Vanguard1688
- Start date
plawolf
Lieutenant General
For VBIEDs yes, but I don’t think the PAP is really expecting to be facing armoured VBEIDs, just as no western police force is expecting to face such targets in their homelands.
These are very niche specialist systems, most likely designed to deal with foot mobile or motorbike riding suicide bombers, with maybe unarmoued cars/trucks as a maximum, but potentially with multiple such attackers coming at them at the same time.
As such, they seem to be going the same route as naval gun based CIWS, with maximum ROF to allow minimum engagement time per target to facilitate rapid multiple target engagement.
These are assault weapons intended to be used when storming terrorist training camps, so don’t expect to see them deployed on the streets of any major city unless something truly apocalyptical has gone down.
The main problem with a Gatling gun is that it needs to spool up to operating speed before the ammo starts to come out. They also use an horrendous amount of ammo. So they are only useful in specific applications. Typically you are better off with a cannon. The Gatling makes sense to mow down masses of infantry, but regular heavy machine guns can also do that job just fine, their main use has been against aircraft where you want to concentrate a lot of shots on target because you only have a short target window.
One of the most popular guns ever is the 40mm Bofors gun. It is basically an autocannon.
Plus it is not like you cannot use a cannon against aircraft either.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Spool up time is really largely situational and very very short on any case.
Think back on the original hand cranked galtings, did they need a spool up before they can fire?
It can take a little time to spool up to maximum firing rate, but that is mostly an issue with gatlings that are weight sensitive so use a small motor to spin the barrels.
The spooling up isn’t really a pre-requisition to tiring, it’s to build up enough momentum to get up to maximum firing rate ASAP. Think of it as gunning the accelerator just as you are shifting into gear.
If you want rounds out of the barrel as soon as you squeeze the trigger, that’s perfectly possible even with small motors. It just means you get to max ROF in 1.5s instead of 1s with a spool up.
For this application, that initial power ROF may even be an advantage to help better manage ammo expenditure.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Durring spoil up they are firing just at a lower rate of fire.
There were three modes of rotation for a gatling style gun
Hand cranked
Self powered
External power.
Spool up is simply when the gun is getting up to full rotation speed. It's is fully operational at low speed. Handling a loaded gatling Canon on the ground has occasionally resulted in firing as a technical by hand rotatited the barrel assembly enough to result in firing.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Accurate however by rotation they are very stable platforms.
Hardly. The main issue for choice of gatling vs auto cannons have been other factors like weight and size.
Gatling guns are generally heavier that conventional arms in the same calibers. A 5.56x45mm micro gun is a beast compared to a machine gun in the same caliber. The rate of fire and ammo fired on these weapons can get massive and the recoil especially with auto cannon ammo is tremendous.
For example the gau 8 avenger generates more thrust in recoil than either one of the engines the propell the A10 it's mounted in.
The other factor is feed system. You need a system that can keep up with the ammo needs. Box magazine systems are useless for auto cannons.
Drum mags are junk in general.
Stripper clips can't keep up. So either a linked feed but that's impractical beyond 30mm or a Link less system all of which adds weight and complexity.
This is why no one has bothered fielding a modern gatling style cannon over 30mm. It's just not practical to feed. This is also why even smaller versions tend to be vehicle mounted.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Much less spray. Gatling guns are surprisingly accurate. It's because the barrel assembly spinning acts as a gyroscope making it remarkably stable.
The original idea with the Gatling AFAIK was that because the metal alloys of the time did not allow for high sustained rates of fire, due to heating and warping of the barrel, or even the risk of ammo self-ignitions, they simply added multiple barrels to allow each barrel to cool down. A lot of the Gatling guns used in the Civil War were hand-cranked, but later models then and today typically are electrically powered. There are also gas operated gattling guns which use recoil to provide motive power like the Soviet GSh-6-30. It is not like, say, revolver guns did not exist before, with the so called coffee mill guns (like the Agar gun). But like I said due to materials issues they had a lower rate of fire. The Maxim single barrel gun was not only self-reloading but it also had a water cooled jacket around the barrel which had to be drained and refilled once it got too hot. Later automatic weapons used metal heat dissipators, more heat resistant metal alloys, and lowered rates of fire to eliminate the need for water cooling.
Another automatic weapon principle which is sometimes used in high rate of fire guns, besides the gattling cannon, and revolver cannon, are weapons which use the Gast principle. It is basically a twin barreled cannon in which each barrel fires alternatively in a sequence and uses recoil to reload itself. Examples of this are the Soviet GSh-30-2.
Another automatic weapon principle which is sometimes used in high rate of fire guns, besides the gattling cannon, and revolver cannon, are weapons which use the Gast principle. It is basically a twin barreled cannon in which each barrel fires alternatively in a sequence and uses recoil to reload itself. Examples of this are the Soviet GSh-30-2.