Man-Portable Mini-Guns?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

There might be one advantage to the gatling even in such limited uses. I saw a stat once that conventional machineguns put 7% of their rounds on target (however they were defining that) but electric gatlings put 9% on target.

That's not really a feature; you want a bit of dispersion anyway because the normal use of automatic weapons is area fire, not trying to drill a hole with a stream of bullets.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

the normal use of automatic weapons is area fire, n.

That's _one_ normal use. In air-to-air combat and point defense you want that concentrated stream of projectiles to try and get even one hit. Otherwise you end up having to use conventional guns (even big ones whose shells have proximity fuses) in massed abtteries.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That's _one_ normal use. In air-to-air combat and point defense you want that concentrated stream of projectiles to try and get even one hit. Otherwise you end up having to use conventional guns (even big ones whose shells have proximity fuses) in massed abtteries.

I mean, you kind of need a spread there too (hence why those large shells typically need explosive fuses, to turn them into area attacks and maximize the chance of some fragments hitting the target), but the high velocities involved often handle that for you - you basically place a stream of bullets in front of the target so that said target will fly through it and get hit. I'm not sure if more or less spread is more useful there, although I suspect it's typically better the less spread you get. But the topic is weapons being used by infantry, and I think anti-air and active-defense are more appropriate for more emplaced weapons (are typical HMG tripods even compatible to shooting at high-flying targets? do you basically use it while lying on your back for that?).

Between their generally-extreme weight, recoil, and rate of ammunition consumption, I think you'll largely need superscience to justify them as man-portable. The weight can be handled as for modern MG's, with it split amongst multiple members of the squad, although things like powered exoskeletons (even just load-bearing ones like are being experimented with currently) would help there. I think the recoil you can take care of with a tripod, but superscience inertial compensators or similar might be able to make it possible to fire from the hip (that or just being really heavy, but that would typically call for power armor and that's a bit more than just infantry). But the ammunition consumption is the big part - the whole point of a gatling-style weapon is to get an extreme RoF, which means it doesn't take it long to chew through a heavy weight of ammunition. Hammerspace or portals (like appeared to be in use in Ultraviolet), something like Mass Effect's "hypervelocity grains of sand," a weapon like the pistol from Doom 2016, etc would all make carrying enough ammo to use it for more than a few seconds much more feasible.

[King Leonidas]

Originally Posted by HANS

Not really. In the first video, the chap is shooting blanks, like the actors in TERMINATOR 2, PREDATOR, etc. He can still barely hold on to the thing.
In the second video (and all similar ones I have ever seen), the chap fires one shot and the recoil (not Rcl) completely blows him off target. So no, absolutely not viable as a handheld weapon. And that's before the weight of the ammo etc. dragging you down ...

Cheers

HANS

Not saying it's practical for the common man. or anything like that. it's shooting 7.62 nato. a 5.56 version for a 220 kilo+ 230CM man is feasible, is it practical maybe not but doable. you would then probably need another NPC or player character carry extra ammo for you to load the gun. perhaps just the extra backpack of ammo for a quick change

[RyanW]

The big issue is that the rotary cannon is basically a means of achieving extreme rate of fire and little else. There's usually a better use for weight budget in ground combat.

The M134 prop in Predator was barely man-portable. Add more than a couple of seconds worth of ammunition and a battery (or, as in the film, a cable connection to an out-of-shot power supply) and it's about as man-portable as a sofa. Furthermore, in part to make the recoil manageable even while firing blanks, the rate of fire was reduced to only a little more than a standard machine gun (that was done also to prevent it being a stationary blur on film).

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Rupert

The problem is that while it might be able to smooth out the recoil and generally make it nicer, a minigun is still recoiling with 5-10 times the force of a GPMG, and that momentum has to move something.

It could be mounted so it moves a number of counterbalanced springs or pneumatic pistons. Sure, the energy has to go somewhere, but not necessarily into the shooter's body.

Originally Posted by Rupert

I suspect they'd find themselves firing short bursts and recovering between them, which negates some of the RoF advantage of a minigun because it has to spin up for every burst, costing rate of fire.

That would also conserve ammo. The point about delay in firing due to the gun having to spin up for every burst is the deal breaker, though. There's no benefit in putting a lot of shots in a small area if you can't do it fast.

Originally Posted by Rupert

A man-portable minigun is very much a solution in search of a problem.

Very much so. If you want a gun that provides very high RoF, not-unreasonable recoil, and low enough weight that it doesn't break the poor sod who has to carry it on the battlefield, use an MG42.

If you want a cinematic man-portable minigun, you have to ignore inconveniences like realistic recoil and ammunition consumption.