Reporting in from the range (again!)...

[Army]

25mm is BORING. No thunder, no blast, no big red fireball, no rolling echo that lasts for around 30 seconds as it bounces down the valley. Oh well, they do put on a nice ricochet light show at night though...

Howdy all! I've been able to get on now and then, but we wired directly into the land-line out here, and depending on how much traffic is using the phones, I can sometimes get this 'puter to run at about 30k! woohooo, I'm surfing now!!

I may be home on Thursday, but that depends on how soon the crews can qualify, I'm still looking at next Saturday.

(Sarah, you had better be doing your homework:) )

I've not been too busy this time out, only a few Chain Guns have gone south, but those are easy to fix. Biggest headache has been the M240C .30 cal machine guns. These have been in storage so long that the cosmoline has hardened in the extractor plunger groove, locking it up solid which makes the extractor fail to pull out the fired case. It is a bit of a pain to pull the plunger out when it is "glued" in, but a little judicious use of a deadblow and it falls right out! (Armament saying:"if you can't file it down or repair it with a hammer and screwdriver, it ain't worth fixin'") At least these crews are better trained and ready than the normal rotations through here. These guys actually know which end of the gun the pointy part exits from

Tom: I'd liked to take a whack as the AGD historian, if it's not taken already?

Talk to you guys later!

[zvanut]

thanx for reporting Army

[DarkPhoenix]

Hey, Army! Good to hear from you. I wish I could relate with your experiences, but being in the Navy, it is very hard to. The only weapons I have been given the priveledge of firing are 5"/54cal, 20mm CIWS, 50cal, M60, M14, 9mm Berretta, Mossberg 12 gauge, and my favorite, the SM-2 standard missile.

[Cha0tic]

hey army, its nice to hear from you. take some pictures some things being blown up :)

[AGD]

Weee wanna hear more about CHAIN GUNS!!!

AGD

[DarkPhoenix]

Speaking of chain guns, what is the cyclic rate of the army chain guns? The closest Naval equivalent would be The Close-In Weapon System or CIWS. It shoots 20mm depleted uranium or tungsten rounds from 3000 to 4500 rounds per minute, depending on which model.

[Army]

AGD and Dark Phoenix: the Hughes M242 Chain Gun, known as the Bushmaster, is a 25mm truly recoiless automatic cannon. It has three rates of fire: single shot (semi-auto), 100rpm, and 200rpm (+-25rpm). It utilizes a dual-feed system to bring either armor piercing or high explosive belted rounds into the feed slot. The gunner or commander can choose at what speed and what ammo to fire by pressing the correct switches on the ammo select box, this box also routes power to the firing solenoid of the M240C coaxial machine gun (coaxial means it is hard mounted next to the main gun, and is aimed and fired using the same sights and turret drive systems). Combat ammo is loaded to over 4000fps and will destroy any light armor vehicles or fortified bunker/buildings.

It is called a chain gun because of its unique bolt cycling property. The bolt is mounted to a "H" shaped frame called a track, which rides a rail back and forth. A large chain, which looks suspiciously like a Harley timing chain, has a square stud as a link, this stud rides inside a portion of the bolt track perpendicular to the rail. At each corner of the track is a cog which the chain moves around the track by. A 1.5 horse power motor is geared to a drive cog, which rolls the chain in a square pattern around the track, forcing the stud to drive the bolt and track back and forth into and out of the breech/chamber. The feed assembly brings the ammo into contact with the bolt as it goes forward, chambering a round, firing it, and extracting the empty case. As the bolt goes forward again, an arm sweeps the empty clear of the bolt and positions it to be pushed out of the vehicle by another arm. A recoil dampner and very efficient muzzle brake combine to virtually eliminate recoil. If you could hold this bad boy up, you could fire it with control.

A 30mm version is on every Apache helicopter.

Dark Phoenix would find that it is not nearly as exciting as a CIWS firing as you can hear each round shooting

[DRAGONSLAYER]

Thanks Army! Keep up the good work.
God Bless!

[Webmaster]

The Apache has a 30mm? I thought it was a 20mm similar to the Vulcan...

What is on the A-10 Warthog - I know its a 30mm with depleted uranium shells typically for breaking tanks open...

[dansim]

i always loved my mortar when i was stationed in lovely fort drum 60mm to light to fight to heavy to run!

[XspyX]

Yea, it was a 30mm on the A-10. I just watched a thing on Desert Strom last night. I think if I remember they used depleted uraninum because its denser than the metal of the tank or truck, so it will pierce and rip shtuff up.

I like the shots you get of a missle flying into a building. When the camera is in the nose of it...and then just static. Mwahahahaha

[CHl2IS]

army army army.....

yeah, everyone thinks that the little 30 cal guns are great and all, but i have a 68 cal gun. and its got interchangeable barrels also. sure, the chainguns are great and all, but my gun can do 15 bps, if its connected to my electronic locating cool device (elcd for short). oh yeeeah

[MJS1214]

Ok,and WHERE are theese mouth-watering chain guns positioned?(not the ones on the apaches and the warthogs but the ones that army is gettin fed-up with)

[Army]

MJS1214; The M242 is mounted in the M2A2/A3 Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and the M3A2/A3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicles known collectively as the Bradley IFV. The Marines also mount it in their LAVs (Light Armored Vehicles).

The 30mm ammo of the Apache and the 30mm of the A10 Warthog are different, the A10 version is a much larger and more powerful cartridge. The A10 mounts the GAU-8 Avenger Gattling gun, which can run as fast as 4200rpm. The short story of the A10, is that the airplane was designed around the gun:) With 10,000 pounds of recoil per shot, the aircraft is actually forced to slow down when firing. To put that into perspective, a .308 round generates about 16 pounds of recoil! The gun is also offset from the centerline of the plane, so the rotational forces are counter-balanced by the weight of the plane.

They fly Warthogs onto our impact range 3-4 times a year. The BUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPP from the gun is b i t c h i n'.
From where we are to the impact area, we hear the explosions first, then the gun firing, so it sounds like: "BDBDBDBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.............BUURRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRP", way too cool.

[Army]

I just LOVE stupid people, they give you so much to laugh about!

An officer just dropped off a .30 cal barrel that had a bullet stuck in it. Very rare, but it happens.

Well, turns out that the crew simply unpacked a brand new barrel, put it on the gun, and proceeded to try to fire.

Problem was, brand new barrels have a cardboard tube, like a thick straw, in them to absorb any moisture that may get inside. The dorks did not remove it. I just spent about ten minutes, pounding out the stuck bullet from the chamber. Seems that since it didn't fire, they simply tried to chamber another round, which only bashed the first bullet further into the cardboard. After I got the bullet out, I noticed that it is a tracer that, theoretically, could have ignited from the pressure of the second bullet being driven into it. Too bad it didn't, that would have made a better story:)