Tag Archives: minigun
Just because it was unauthorized, doesn’t make it any less awesome
In response to rough treatment by the locals along Route 19 in South Vietnam, U.S. Army Transport Corps drivers went to uparmor their vehicles to make it from Point A to Point B without having to be medevaced.
At first, this was just sandbags and M60s. Then came M2s, 1/2″ steel plate, and more handheld weapons such as M79 bloop guns.
Then, needing bigger rides to carry more guns, they stepped up from 2.5-ton to 5-ton trucks with everything from surplus M113 hulls and “borrowed” M134 Mini Guns aboard.
How about that M134 on the back to discourage disreputable merchants and ward off road rage at 6,000 rounds-per-minute?
More on these in my column at Guns.com
You bump into the coolest things at SHOT
So I am in Nevada for SHOT Show and got to spend all day on the range yesterday, where I came upon this bad boy.
Arizona-based aviation and defense company Profense was showing off their PF556, a down-sized version of the M134 Mini-Gun in 5.56mm rather than the more traditional 7.62x51mm.
As the gun only weighs 38-pounds, all-up it tips the scales at 110-pounds with a 1,500-round hopper.
The electrically-driven system (48 VDC) uses a fully programmable digital GCU that uses full brushless motor control of the weapon and ammo booster, allowing an adjustable rate of fire between 600 at 4,000 rounds-per-minute at the flip of a switch.
PF says the mount can be used on vessels, ROVs, vehicles, and other applications– including remote use.
PoR…
Now that is a party favor
In the Minigun biz, Garwood is a household name. Mr. Garwood himself, who started a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company specializing in an improved generation of the multi-barreled 7.62mm machine gun in 1999, allegedly told the ATF that a number of M134G rotor housings– considered the receiver of the Minigun– were destroyed, but the parts, controlled items under the National Firearms Act, were recovered in a 2017 search warrant at a suspected cross-border weapon smuggler’s home in Texas with their markings partially obliterated.
The U.S. Attorney’s office was not pleased…more in my column at Guns.com
Forget Minigun, here’s the Microgun
Sure, you know the M134 Minigun, but how about the hand-held XM556 Microgun that tips the scales at about one-fifth the weight?
The Minigun, which weighs in at about 85 pounds in its traditional format and fires 7.62x51mm NATO about as fast as a fat kid can go through a stack of twinkees, is well-known and loved among those who ain’t got time to bleed. However, Empty Shell LLC of Spring, Texas went all-in on a tiny little variant of the Mingun that they like to call the XM556 Microgun.
And it only weighs 16 pounds, but still rips out green tip at 2,000 rounds per minute.
