how big/strong would you have to be to use an M230 chaingun as a weapon?

The idea is to take a 30mmish chaingun and modify it to be used-able by an infantry soldier.



The weapon configuration will be something similar to the Smartgun used by the Colonial Marines, where the weapon is stabilized and aiming is helped with the arm attached to soldier's sides. Weapon is belt fed into an ammo backpack for the soldier.


How large/strong would somebody have to be to reasonably be expected to be able to use this weapon?

Well, it's round (assuming it's Apache's 30mm chaingun) has the momentum of up to 220 kg*m\s.
Compare it to .50 BMG, which is one of the hardest kicking things a human can shoot. It's round has the momentum of about 45 kg*m\s.

For automatic weapons, it would be 30-06, with momentum per round of 10,5 kg*m\s.

It means about 4-5 times stronger and heavier for single fire and 20 times for auto fire, less if you mean robots\power armor instead of fleshy stuff.

If you went with something medium or low velocity instead of 800 m\s autocannon, you could reduce the needed strenght by 2-4 times.

That's gonna have to be one fuckoff huge ammo backpack.

Also, a chaingun is impractical to have on anything that doesn't have electrical power already and has infantry level strenght limits. An autocannon would do better.

Except you already have a mechanical arm connected to it to help stabilize and aim the thing. That means you have power.

Not that huge of a deal if you have a powersuit or are a cyborg.

Keep in mid it's not entirely relying on arm brute strength. there is the mechanical arm supporting it.

Still, weight, leg and back strength count for absorbing the recoil.

If you're a big bastard, maybe. But only as a single shot weapon. If you wanna go full auto, best brace yourself and have somewhere to mount the gun!

No, if you wanna go full auto, best hope you've got a massive digestive tract, because you're gonna be storing a lot of ammo up your ass. You sure as hell ain't humpin' it on your back. An M230 spits out over 6 rounds per second, each one weighing three quarters of a pound and measuring nearly four and a half inches long.

Here you have actual 30x113 ammo dealer:
http://intl.cbc.com.br/products/ammunitions/military/30x113mm

Also, note how a 20mm autocannon would have about half as much recoil and ammo weight.

As for carrying it, if something is strong enough to fire such a weapon full auto with any accuracy, it's also strong enough to carry an useful amount of ammo (backpack feed probably).
Almost 0,5kg per round gives us 200kg for 400 rounds, which gives us about 67 seconds of fire at 6 rps.

Still, you would probably need something along the lines of a 40k power armored Space Marine to shoot it full auto, and he would still consider it a heavy weapon.


Also, if you used low or medium velocity ammo instead of full sized autocannon ammo, you could cut the weight and recoil so hard even normal humans could use it as a stationary system, so even light power armor could use it easily in the system you described.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM307_Advanced_Crew_Served_Weapon

The gun also weighs about four times as much as, say, a .50 BMG rifle and comes with a very nice muzzle brake, so the felt recoil should be spectacularly better than you would get from just comparing bullet momentum (.50 BMG is an appropriate comparison for automatic as well as single shot, since the ruskies were nice enough to prove that a .50-cal SAW is possible). The requirements for actually carrying this thing and all of its assorted gear should be higher than that needed to handle the recoil.

.50 cal BMG rifles DO have muzzle brakes. Huge ones at that. And you're still supposed to shoot them from a bipod.

As for the Russian SAW, don't you mean this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kord_machine_gun
It's not a SAW, it's a HMG. And it also has a huge muzzle brake. So still, we are comparing weapons that all have muzzle brakes. And you are supposed to fire it from a bipod. Yes, the wiki says you can shoot it from the hip if you are strong, but it also states you aren't going to hit the broad side of a barn if you do so.

So would a seven and a half foot cyborg/android massing in at a thousand plus pounds be about right?

wouldn't another possibility be to use caseless ammo? That does tend to cut down on weight and volume for ammunition, and since we're talking about allot of other future tech going into the weapon, reliable caseless ammunition isn't totally out of the question.

Caseless ammo would cut ammo weight by about 30%, but wouldn't do anything about full auto controllability.

Yeah, that would be just about right, assuming you still want some reserve for other equipment and sane mobility.

Caseless ammo is certainly a possibility, yes. That's how the Colonial Marines get so many 10mm standard light armor piercing rounds into their M41A Pulse Rifles.

Another option is make the gun a BiL-Pro weapon or Binary Liquid Propellant, where you use two separate liquids that are explosive when combined as a propellant. Separately, they're flammable, but otherwise relatively safe. Only when mixed together do things get deadly downrange. The magazine holds the bullets and nothing else. These are fed into the breach and a fine mist of each liquid is sprayed into the firing chamber similar to an internal combustion engine. The explosion propels the bullet. Ammunition is generally quite compact, but the liquids must be replaced as well, so there's a certain amount of tradeoff going on there.

Or, since you're going with such large rounds anyway, you could look into making these gyrojet rounds. Resurrect the old gyroscopically stabilized rocket gun.

Gyrojets are a poor idea for hi velocity weapon (it will need lots of range to get to max velocity), are inaccurate unless guided, and overall are less effective mass wise for making the biggest projectile move as fast as possible than ordinary firearms.
The gun would be way lighter though.

Something like that actually doesn't sound like to bad of an idea. Since you already need to have a power cord to load the chain-gun, you can just wrap a tube for the chemical spray in along with it. This alleviates the danger of ammo cockoff.

a space marine probably could

or a prince but he tends to sit down and has his chauffeur wake him up whwn its time to pot a few terrys before flying onto the the shoot
although I feel sorry for the two sas bodyguards who have to hang on to the sides of harrys apache

But a Space Marine can't look over his shoulders. How would he adopt the firing position in the opening post?

Master Chief might be better equipped to handle something like a 30mm Smartgun, but it would take everything both he and his MJOLNIR armor have to use, and a spartan would have better things to do in a firefight than lug an impractically huge gun around anyway.

uhhhh, isn't one of the advantages of having super strong half metric ton cyborgs the fact that they can lug impractically huge (for regular humans) guns into firefights?

It seems a Spartan has better things to do than run into a firefight with small arms designed for regular humans.

Such a person would need to have the mass of a small rhino even before he strapped on his 300 kg of gun, ammo and power source and then there is all the other normal shit he would have to carry and he'd have to be armored like a motherfucker since the dude is going to be like a bullet magnet and you can give him all the super muscles you want this guy at this mass and size is not going to be able maneuver and find cover the same way an ordinary soldier would


Where were you hoping to use this guy because he wont be much good if hes buried up to his fucking thighs in soil, mud, snow or sand and for that matter I dont know if you really want him on mountainous terrain or involved in urban combat either

I am fairly sure this is theoritical anyway, since there is no practical application for this weapon usage.

quote="Marduk, post: 7899089, member: 27610"].50 cal BMG rifles DO have muzzle brakes. Huge ones at that. And you're still supposed to shoot them from a bipod.[/quote]

It's certainly more manageable to fire it from a bipod, but it's certainly possible to fire them standing.

No, I am talking about the 6P62.



Depending on source it is either an automatic antimaterial rifle or a light machine gun.

In any case, the strength needed to actually carry around a linkless-feed 30mm chaingun with power supply, ammunition, etc, easily enough to use on a battlefield for an extended time will almost certainly be greater than the strength needed to just stand the recoil.

jesus, 30mm? whats wrong with BMG? you'll carry a shitload more ammo, and slap rounds will chew through two inches of steel armor.
at that point you might as well just use grenades.

Honestly? No. It's that they can hump other supplies that allow them to last longer in the field. Sure, you can modestly upgun the standard weapon, but to this degree? No, it's pointless. Why? Because no matter how strong you are, the actual volume of the ammunition you'll be lugging will be impractical for most environments. You'll be far too large to negotiate anything but wide open streets and you can forget about moving around indoors with anything but the grace of a cyber-enhanced bull in a china shop.