Yep, 7.62.

Saw a few rounds cranked off manually when rotating the barrels with a Leatherman to clear it.

One of the guys requested a hand crank for it.

TR

Yet another forward-thinking SF NCO. What was the answer?

TR, were you aware of the manual fire feature before that?

Not sure what Crane told him, but I told him that had been done before about 135 years ago.

BM:

I had heard that it would fire like that, but never seen it done till then, and I suspect that I have 5,000 rounds or so through the a/c and ground versions.

Looks like an important safety tip.

TR

What does the recoil on that thing do to a helicopter? I remember NDD talking about sniper rifles throwing helos around, so it makes me wonder....?

Thank you,

Solid

We had a guy killed like that, gun was not cleared properly before being dismounted from the helo. Then the barrels were spun to clear it.

If you open the Safeing Sector/housing cover the gun will not fire, even if you do rotate the barrels to clear out jams.


As to what the recoil does to the helo, On Huey's the gun is mounted on a pintal just like a M60, In blackhawks in can be in the door or the window. Not being a pilot I cant tell you what it feels like to be in control of the bird when its fired.

TR, were the test weapons hard wired into the vehicle for power or did they have a seperate battery?

Im a big fan of the seperate battery, allows you to use the weapon to defend the crash site if need be.

You could feel the recoil in the frame of the Hummer, if you leaned against it, but it didn't visibly move. It is only 7.62, and the mounts are rated for .50 M-2 and 40mm Mk 19.

Separate battery, wired to charge when the engine is running. Hummer was off and the battery was GTG for the hour or so I was there.

Yeah, I guess that would have been handy in Mogadishu.

TR

Im not sure what the set up was in MOG. When we used GAU's in Blackhawks down here(Before the guy shot down his own helo) we had the sep battery. Dont know if it was because we are using FMS birds or as a result of lessons learned.

The Recoil for the 7.62 is around 300 Pounds, for the 20mm around 1500-2000 pounds and for the 30mm close to 6K pounds !!!

That's a bad ass weapon, but this is badder....

http://www.metalstorm.com/04_videos/...eo_advice.html

Go down to the 36 Barrel Prototype, it's 14 Megs and worth every second of the wait.... (cable download, 15 seconds)

Army helos use the aircraft power. This is actually advertised open source so no OPSEC issues there... There is no seperate battery.
It's not really that big a deal since if the aircraft crashes the guns usually aren't gonna be usable. The mini's do give the birds hell with the vibration. It's not anything that it makes them harder to fly they just develop cracks in the strangest places.

About time you got in here on this discussion :D

Thanks guys.

We were just talking about how we would like to have a mini-gun on our GMV the other day. Now I find that they have one. When can I get it? These little guys on the hills that like to shoot at us will love this thing! Talk about fire support for the assault element.

Talk to your Group Force Mod guy. He was there.

TR