XM214 Microgun

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XM214 Six-Pak
XM214 Microgun
Type	Rotary barrel machine gun
Place of origin	United States
Service history
In service	US Army
Production history
Designer	General Electric
Designed	1970s?
Variants	None
Specifications
Cartridge	5.56x45mm NATO
Action	Mechanically driven rotary breach
Rate of fire	variable from 400 to 4,000 RPM
Muzzle velocity	3,250 fps
Feed system	Belt

The XM214 was a prototype 5.56x45mm NATO rotary barreled machine gun designed to be man-portable. It was designed and built by General Electric, but it never reached mass production. Also known as the Microgun, the XM214 was a scaled-down version of the M134 "minigun", firing standard NATO 5.56 x 45 mm ammunition.

1 History
2 Comparable weapons
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

The XM214 was first developed for aircraft applications. Later General Electric developed it into a man-portable weapon system, known as the GE Six-Pak. The complete Six-Pak system weighed 85 pounds (38.5 kg) with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, comparable in weight to some heavy machine guns. The XM214 itself weighed nearly 27 pounds, or 12 kg. The system could be carried by a team of two soldiers and mounted either to an M122 tripod or a vehicle's pintle mount. Length overall is 1,041 mm , gun only is 686 mm long. Width (including ammunition case) is 444 mm. Sighting was usually by optical telescope.

The Six-Pak consisted of the XM214, the ammunition package, and the power module, and the ammunition module consisted of two 500 round cassettes mounted to a holding rack. Linked ammunition was fed through a flexible chute to the gun; when the first cassette was empty, ammunition would then feed from the second cassette, tripping a visible signal that a new cassette needed to be added to the rack. The power module contained a 24 volt nickel-cadmium battery, a 0.8 horsepower motor, and solid state electronic controls. Unless the battery were plugged into a vehicle's power supply, the battery's charge would be depleted with 3,000 rounds.

Using the electronic controls, the weapon's rate of fire could be adjusted from 400 rpm all the way up to 4,000 rpm. Later editions of Jane's Infantry Weapons claimed a theoretical cyclic rate of up to 6,000 rpm. The electronic controls also contained a burst limiter and handled the automatic clearing of the gun after bursts.

[edit] Comparable weapons

More conventional weapons such as the CETME Ameli and the FN MINIMI possess a practical cyclic rate that is not much slower than the rotating-barrel minigun, due to the need to constantly reload the rapid-firing minigun. Moreover, these weapons are smaller and lighter, and do not require heavy batteries to operate, and require less ammunition for the same duration of fire, allowing a single operator or small team to provide suppressive fire for a longer period with the amount of ammunition that they can carry.