How do the bullets leave the barrel? The Metal Storm website explains it best:
The bullets are stacked in a barrel, with each bullet separated by a propellant load, such that the leading propellant can be reliably ignited to fire the bullet, without the resulting high pressure and temperature causing unplanned blowby ignition of the trailing propellant load, and without collapse of the projectile column in the barrel. This unique concept has been accomplished through the invention of a bullet which on the one hand expands and locks in the barrel in response to high pressure immediately in front of the bullet. As a consequence, each bullet in turn can be fired in sequence from the barrel, and an individual barrel tube, loaded with numerous rounds and exclusive of any ammunition feed or ejection system, breech opening, or any mechanical operation whatsoever, when provided with an electric priming system is, in effect, a complete weapon. (It's no surprise that O'Dwyer currently owns 51 patents.)
Now that is scary you could stick you infantryman,tanky , just about everyone where the sun don't shine if that hits the armed forces there is no way that you would want to be anywhere on a battlefield with that. [smilie=30.gif] [smilie=68.gif] [smilie=68.gif] [smilie=Bolt.sml[1].gif]
an Australian may have designed it but the Australian gov once again didn't have the vision to buy it. instead he sold it to the us for 700 odd million. and once again a great Australian invention goes begging.
as far as it being useful to kill tanks...I don't think so you don't kill tanks with conventional bullets these days you need a shaped charge or high velocity projectile. metal storm hasn't got the velocity to kill a tank and why put 100 high explosive shaped charge projectiles when 1 rpg, lancer or at4 can do the same job with less expense
metal storm hasn't got the velocity to kill a tank
CRAP!!!!!
it doesn't need to have the Velocity, when there hit with over a million rounds per minute, nothing is going to stop that, only an em burst will stuff em...
But think of Metal Storm equipped on a Gunship or Troop Transport Helicopter. Ya give it some AP or HE rounds instead of conventional bullets and it's going to rip through anything before the troops get onto the ground, saving the rpg/at4/lancer for when they're all alone.
its all well and good firing that many rounds a second however when it comes to the battle fields I think this gun will see its end of days.
Yes it can fire a mind blowing amount of bullets in a second but it can only targer one target at a time, they need to stop working on the gun and start working on a better tracking system. If they did as well with that as they have with thr MS tech then they will be able to annialate armys in seconds and save countless lives. It would turn the tide of any fire fight. A weopon that can fire 1000 rounds in a second and target 500 things in that same second would be much better then hoping that all the Enermy are sitting one behind the other.
Thats my 2cents. I could think of more reason that this tech is to advanced for its own good but I dont have time.
Take a look at the RPM of the Vulcan Canon. It's main advantage is its high RoF against anything on the battlefield. It also employs one of the most advanced tracking systems known to man... (wo)Man itself, sitting behind the controls at about 10-30ft, with the finger on the trigger.
The main drawback of the Vulcan Canon is the spinup/spindown between cycles.
However, the Metal Storm has no recycle time. Pull the trigger and the bullets come out instantly. Which means all the gunner has to do is: Point, Pull, Kill/Suppress.
Also, the Metal Storm is extremely accurate in short bursts. So 1,000 bullets on a target in under a second... That's suppression of the most extreme kind.
metal storm hasn't got the velocity to kill a tank
CRAP!!!!!
it doesn't need to have the Velocity, when there hit with over a million rounds per minute, nothing is going to stop that, only an em burst will stuff em...
a metal storm with a million bullets would weigh more than 10 howitzers. and even then you get only 1 min of fire. the bullets alone weigh nearly 7.5 tones plus propellant plus barrels, i think you can only get 8 to a barrel or by the time the last one is firing the barrel is too hot and you start getting warpidge and preignition of the propellat. so 1000000 divided by 8 = 125000 barrels @ what half a kilo each? so another 62.5t so assuming that the propelent is the same weight as the bullet your looking at 77,500kg thats more than a standard b-double!!! and you still have to take into account the wieght of the vehicle. how is somthing like that going to move ANYWHERE let alone in deserts and such. sorry even a system half or even quater the size is unrealistic. no doubt that even a 1000 round burst would be very damaging if all 1000 were to hit the same spot but they don't, they hit in a square pattern about 30cm x 30cm.
on a side note the energy that would hit the target 1m away would be 874 833 750jules which is 209 090 284.4 calories. now to put that into perspective 1 calorie is the amount of energy it takes to heat 1g of water by 1 degree. so 1000 bullets hitting a tank 1m away releases enough heat to bring 2090L of water from 0C to boiling. all this in 0.06 of a second!!!
a DU round has an energy of 6 512 523 900.573 613 calories which is enough to bring 65125.23900573613L of water from 0c to boiling and apart from having more than 3 times the energy of 1000 9mm bullets the impact area is only 3cm wide. so 3 times the energy hitting 1 tenth the area!!!
Last edited by ADF-Baby on Fri Oct 05, 2007 10:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
nah explosives wouldnt work. they'd get whats called "fratricide" where the explosion of the first would detonate the next which would detonate the next and so on and so forth, the explosions getting further and further away each time and so neutralizing the effect. not to mention the reactive armor on tanks these days which reduce the threat from even shaped rpg charges.
please read my previous post again. i've added to it.
The problem with this system is that it can only target one this in a 30cm x 60cm square and all the bullets fire so fast they will kill the same target 1000 times b4 it hits the floor. how ever as for suppressive fire you need a constant flow of bullets generally moving in a ark pattern from left to right and so on. This seams to be something this system is lacking. Again if it has a computer tracking system which allowed it to track and engage 500 units in that split second it fires those 1000 bullets then it would be useful other wise it is honestly a waste of ammo. Generaly speaking inf are trained to put 2 bullets in the chest and one in the head. That's pretty much a perfect kill. the MS system would put 500 in the chest and head, which to me seams like over kill. I'm not bagging this system im just saying it has some draw backs.
As far as I can see there is no point firing 1000 rounds and killing 1 or 2 people.
This reminds me of a problem they had in Nam. Allot of the US Army service men which were issued with the new M16A1 would waste ammo. Not because they couldn't aim. However it was because the original M16A1 was only manufactured as semi-auto and full auto, and in the heat of battle they would expend the clip in the matter of seconds which would mean maybe 1-2 kills to 19 rounds.
Then they would need to reload which would take as long as it did to expend the clip. This is the reason they made the later variants of the M16A1 with the Burst function. No matter what you would have to pull the trigger time and time again allowing more time to acquire a target and therefore a better use of the ammo provided.
ADF-Picton wrote:This reminds me of a problem they had in Nam. Allot of the US Army service men which were issued with the new M16A1 would waste ammo. Not because they couldn't aim. However it was because the original M16A1 was only manufactured as semi-auto and full auto, and in the heat of battle they would expend the clip in the matter of seconds which would mean maybe 1-2 kills to 19 rounds.
Then they would need to reload which would take as long as it did to expend the clip. This is the reason they made the later variants of the M16A1 with the Burst function. No matter what you would have to pull the trigger time and time again allowing more time to acquire a target and therefore a better use of the ammo provided.
Well, wasn't there was also the problem of warpage? Too many bullets were fired through the barrels causing the barrels to warp slightly, causing misfires, jams and inaccuracy?
They dont have to fire their entire load in one hit. it can fire a burst of 10 or 20 then switch to a different target. the targeting system is the easy part. They already have it for all the attack choppers and even the new one on the hummers. its not an automated system.
yeah but you missing the point it doesn't matter how fast it fires because it is never going to be able to obtain a target fast enough to be fully utilized. There is a only one good point that I can see which is that it cant jam... which makes it better for unmanned situations. The fact that it can fire a million bullets in a min is overkill. I agree this is a step in the right direction but I believe we will see a huge change in the technology and the delivery system b4 it is ever seen on the battle field.
At the moment it is just as effective as any other 0.50cal Full auto weponds system out. Apart from the jam free tech.
I believe future systems will have each of the many barrels controlled by them selves allowing the system to engage multiple targets at the same time which would redefine front line weponds systems.
Getting to the point about the tracking system in helicopters like the Cobra and so on. These are computer based systems but they still need a human to push the kill button. So again the system is limited to the speed of the human mind. For a system like MS they need a fully computer driven system which can target enemy forces and tell its self to fire, how ever it will need to be able to tell friendly units apart. This is the point I'm getting at.
One way I think this could happen is the active body armour the US had in development a few years back. I haven't herd anything more on it but it worked using GPS to show other units on a HUD which was built into the helmet. Another part of the system was a computer built into the body armour of the GI with a monitor built into the sleave of his arm which would allow him to see a birds eye view of the battle field and see were all the members of his team are and so on much like the SAI in AA. This was in development when i was 16 how ever I haven't herd anything on it.
If they were able to link the two systems together this would again revolutionize front line combat.
ADF-Picton wrote:yeah but you missing the point it doesn't matter how fast it fires because it is never going to be able to obtain a target fast enough to be fully utilized. There is a only one good point that I can see which is that it cant jam... which makes it better for unmanned situations. The fact that it can fire a million bullets in a min is overkill. I agree this is a step in the right direction but I believe we will see a huge change in the technology and the delivery system b4 it is ever seen on the battle field.
At the moment it is just as effective as any other 0.50cal Full auto weponds system out. Apart from the jam free tech.
I believe future systems will have each of the many barrels controlled by them selves allowing the system to engage multiple targets at the same time which would redefine front line weponds systems.
Getting to the point about the tracking system in helicopters like the Cobra and so on. These are computer based systems but they still need a human to push the kill button. So again the system is limited to the speed of the human mind. For a system like MS they need a fully computer driven system which can target enemy forces and tell its self to fire, how ever it will need to be able to tell friendly units apart. This is the point I'm getting at.
why cant the targets be selected in advanced? using a tv tracking system like they do in the b2's to keep the laser on the right target. or set it to spray an arc of say 45?
ADF-Picton wrote:
One way I think this could happen is the active body armour the US had in development a few years back. I haven't herd anything more on it but it worked using GPS to show other units on a HUD which was built into the helmet. Another part of the system was a computer built into the body armour of the GI with a monitor built into the sleave of his arm which would allow him to see a birds eye view of the battle field and see were all the members of his team are and so on much like the SAI in AA. This was in development when i was 16 how ever I haven't herd anything on it.
If they were able to link the two systems together this would again revolutionize front line combat.
whats stopping the enemy using the signals to track the soldiers. they probably wouldn't be able to get a firm fix on an individual but the signals of 100 or more troops would be sufficient for the enemy to be able to send a few planes in and carpet bomb the area. I know the system your refering to. its very much like the IFF used in the new f18's using burst transmitions which last a fraction of a second over multiple freqs and encripted so that even if it is detected it sounds like static (they actualy use cosmic background radiation as the basis of the encription key) so that the bad guys arent able to triangulate their position. the problem is that it works fine for a flight of 3 of 4 planes with the IFF transmitting every tenth of a second but you get a couple hundred and alof a sudden you start detecting all this static coming from this one vague location. wont work.
yes i understand what you are saying. This maybe why it has not been made into a battle ready state yet.
About the suppressing fire in the 45 degree range I did refer to this in an earlyer post. This is something I believe this system would proform very well at. It cant jam allowing it to fire burst of rounds every now and then.
I think another thing this could be good for is making the enermy think that were is more then one gun emplacement. If you could vary the rate of fire eg. burst of 4, burst of 10 burst of 3 and a few single fire shots this could be possible. Which would slow an enermy advance down.
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