The Army is looking to outfit its M230 chain gun with a system that will feed it 300 rounds a minute — of any kind. The chain gun is already used on the Apache helicopter to extremely lethal effect. This new feeder could make it more fearsome still, the Army promises in its new call for research proposals, by giving an “airborne machine gunner to select a specific type of round for a particular shot.” That includes a new breed of smart bullets that can change course in midair and semi-smart grenades that can figure out where and when to explode.
Today’s machine guns and autocannons use ammunition belts that are pre-loaded with a mix of munitions — from incendiary rounds to tracers. “These mixes are always a compromise and may not be optimum for a particular engagement,” the Army notes. Some guns, like the 242 Bushmaster, use dual-feed mechanisms to introduce a bit of flexibility. Previous efforts to build a choose-your-own-ammo system, like this 1977 trial (.pdf), have generally gone nowhere. The guns jammed up too quickly.
But that was back in days before advanced sensors and algorithms could help machines efficiently sort and pack items, from warehouse packages to farm produce. The Army is hoping to use the same smarts to inventory and pick out ammunition at ultra-high speed. Think of it as a dial-a-bullet device. (The video above, created by the geniuses at Next Media Animation, explains the system. And yes, that’s a Cobra, not an Apache.)
The magazines will be smaller in the prototype system – 400 rounds, versus 1,200 today. But the results could eventually lead to “improved lethality, reduced collateral damage, improved vehicle performance due to reduced ammunition carriage, [and] efficient use of expensive smart rounds,” according to the Army.
This won’t just be a tool of war, the Army promises. If it works, this “smart-feed” system could be deployed to medical research labs to handle “hundreds of identically shaped but uniquely labeled specimen vials,” or to emergency supply centers, to quick dole out food and water. Not even Old Man’s War has tech like that.
Video: Next Media Animation
