Trying to figure out if a mini gun is firing 6000 rounds a minute how much in weight that is. How long would it take a mini gun to fire say 10 tonnes of ammunnition? Stupid discussion triggered by a zombie dream I had which was inspired by the Walking Dead and a lot of cheese 😳

Wikipedia suggests 7.62x51mm NATO weighs 9.5g for a bullet and 25.5g for a complete round.

NATO spec round:

Rifle Cartridge Cartridge weight Weight of loaded magazine 10 kg (22#) ammo load
M14 7.62×51mm 393 grains (25.5 g) 20 rds @ 0.68 kg 14 mags / 280 rds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm_NATO

so call it 300,000 rounds, 48minutes

But your barrel/muzzle would have disintegrated long before that anyway 🙂

I make it just over 1hr 5min to get through 10t. Assuming continuous fire is possible for that length of time and a weight of 25.5g for each round.

are we counting 10 tonnes for bullet weight or round weight? I was going on rounds, afterall, a bullet isnt much use without it’s jacket etc.

no excuse needed to post a vid of Carrie and a Minigun

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC8jnSaCqxY[/video]

Rounds per min 6000×25.5=153000 g = 153 kg
Mins for 10t 10000/153= 65.35947712

Round weight I guess, basically in my dream there was a mini gun on the back of a 25 tonne rigid truck with about 20 tons of ammunition. This was used to shred herds of the undead. A very intense dream, woke up knackered 😉

winston, 25.5g is the bullet weight, the round weight is 34g. (0.68kg/20)

Rifle Cartridge Cartridge weight Weight of loaded magazine 10 kg (22#) ammo load
M14 7.62×51mm 393 grains (25.5 g) 20 rds @ 0.68 kg 14 mags / 280 rds

From wiki it says “cartridge weight” 25.5g

I seem to recall that there was a bloke on the crew of an AC130 Spectre gunship whose job was to shovel empty brass out the back of the plan when the 20mm Vulcan gatlings were firing.

For hoards of undead, I’d recommend either a 50 cal or something with a bit more poke. Maybe the 30mm GAU8 from an A10 mounted on a tripod. One shot from that should take out several walkers

Although of course, thats a maximum cyclic rate of fire and not sustainable – the barrels would melt if you kept firing like that constantly

I believe they dropped the rate to 4000 to combat overheating, but its still never going to take over an hour of use, and they don’t have user changeable barrels.

I reckon you’d be better off with an old fashioned water cooled vickers – in a famous WW1 action a team kept up sustained long range burst suppressive fire for 12 hours, firing off 120,000 rounds through just one gun, pausing only to change barrels – the company of ten guns between them used up 100 barrels and fired a million rounds 😯

(though theres arguments over the level of exaggeration involved)

Now – bring on the zombies:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPv_f_aSyP4[/video]

If a mini gun does that to a tree, you have to wonder what it does to a person.

I beg your pardon winston. Quite right
http://olive-drab.com/od_firearms_ammo_762mm.php
the heavier per unit weight must include magazine weight.

Practicalities

http://what-if.xkcd.com/18/

For hoards of undead, I’d recommend either a 50 cal or something with a bit more poke. Maybe the 30mm GAU8 from an A10 mounted on a tripod. One shot from that should take out several walkers

the GAU8 would need one hell of a tripod mount – including the ammo drum and feed i think its about the size of a VW beetle! Also the recoil is so fierce it actually slows the plane down under sustained fire so on a tripod mount i suspect you’d be in some trouble!

Why the blinkin flip is that called a minigun? It’s massive!

That’s Newton 3 for you – you’re not going to send out a large mass of ammo at high speed without having some effect on where the gun is mounted. In fact I was kind of expecting this was going to be related to recoil when asking about mass of ammo.

Why the blinkin flip is that called a minigun? It’s massive!

Because the military refer to artillery pieces as guns. So in comparison to a 155mm self-propelled gun, it is mini.

Don’t forget to take into account the weight of clips and ammo tins. Anything that’s firing through a minigun would have a significant amount of clip and tin with it as well.

That could seriously add to your weight or subtract from the 20 Tonne on the back of the wagon…

Wouldn’t the wall of zombies (and spent cartridges) stop them in their tracks?