Holy ♥♥♥♥, look at this.
This is the world's most advanced and lethal automatic gun ever concieved. Ever.

This thing is capable of shooting 16000 rounds per second.
And it shoots 40mm grenades. At 16000 rounds per second, that's about enough to destroy the entire state of Rhode Island in under 3 hours. Luckily, the gun is used by the US military, meaning we won't lose our precious Rhode Island so fast.


Just something I wanted to discuss.

I honestly don't see why some people are fapping over metal storm.
10000 ROUND P SECND!!1!

You're going to run out of ammo pretty damn fast at that rate, it's hardly economic.

There's a reason this technology isn't being implemented anywhere- because it's next to useless.

Also, everyone already knows about this. Even if they didn't, why does it need a thread?

How is it useless? It doesn't jam, break, or stop. It may be inconvenient spending a few hundred thousand dollars for the ammunition, sure, but it's still powerful as ♥♥♥♥.

It's useless because nobody ever needs to fire that many grenades in a second at one thing

The only feasible use is area denial or to replace the ciws goalkeeper's. And even then it's pretty ridiculous. Area denial is pretty damn useless now a days, since the battlegrounds also house civilians and the goalkeepers are doing a good enough job while being less expensive to maintain, so there really aren't any practical uses.

I do understand that it is a marvel of engineering, but it's way to damn impractical.

They could take this design and simply replace the firing pins on guns, giving you a hybrid system. Possible jams with the loading mechanism but no jamming from the firing mechanism.

@Duh
Modern centerfire primers of good quality are very reliable as-is, bringing electronics into the equation for just that purpose would likely be detrimental, in price and reliability. Cycling jams are far more relevant to current weapon reliability concerns than primer/firing pin failures.

@Nonsequitorian "You could use the recoil to provide energy for the next shot."
One of us is misunderstanding something. Either I don't know what you mean, or you didn't know that recoil operation autoloading mechanisms are already a thoroughly developed 100+ year old technology?


While the 16000rpm grenade launcher is of course impractical, the metal storm system does have useful advantages in other configurations.
Insane rates of fire can be useful for missile defense.
While a big draw to the design is the potential for crazy rates of fire, it has other advantages.
Chiefly, mechanical simplicity and reduced weight/size as compared to conventional auto/semiauto weapons serving the same function. Let's compare 5rd capacity semi automatic under-barrel-attachment shotguns. Metal Storm, Conventional.

Yeah, I was about to say, you realize that automatic weapons (which encompass non-revolver "semi-auto" pistols and the like) use a recoil-based loading system?

The US army is starting to use the M4 carbine more than the M16 nowadays. They're trying to gradually phase out the M16 because the M4s are lighter and cheaper. They were planning on phasing out the M4 with the XM8, but I think that got scrapped. Know why? We really don't need SUPER AWESOME HIGH EFFICIENCY FRANGIBLE SABOT INCENDIARY ROUND 9001 RPM TACTICAL RED DOT weapons. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's why the M16 is still being used by the US army. Even though the M4 hasn't fully replaced the M16 yet, there's already a competition going on to see what will replace the M4 once it's time to phase that out- and look. Notice how all the guns are pretty similar; no radical changes in design.

Special operations units don't get "cool" guns. I don't know where that idea popped into your head. They get guns suited to whatever the heck they're doing. Most of the time, for the SEALs and Berets, that usually equates to MP5s, developed in the 60s. They're not using prototype weaponry, or weapons that are even remotely new. They're using thoroughly tested, tried-and-trued weapons, because the differences between those weapons and the new SUPER AWESOME ELECTRONIC WEAPONS is negligible, really. They don't have enough of an incentive to really change.

The supposed benefits of personal metal storm weapons are that they are easier in a logistical sense when you don't have to transport casings or magazines, that extremely short bursts can be fired that are highly accurate, fired rounds being at a higher than normal velocity due to several rounds being fired before all of the rounds leave the barrel and reliability.
Exotic weapons aren't being implemented because doing so is prohibitively expensive and doesn't really offer enough benefits to make disposing of a ridiculous amount of equipment worthwhile.
Generally speaking, you wouldn't fire at 1 million rpm or somesuch; the weapons that do are proofs of concept.
Reloading is apparently done with sticks of ammunition.
Single barrelled weapons using the same technology offer the advantages outlined above.
If by "cool guns" you mean the same guns, but smaller and lighter and maybe firing a sharper, high velocity round instead, then okay. Otherwise, no.
They use MP5s not just because they've been shown to be effective, but also because, again, changing the rather large stock of weapons for something else is prohibitively expensive and prone to transitional problems. Changing to the P90 or MP7, for example, would require training for everyone that has to use them, replacing the stocks of ammunition, replacing the stocks of other parts, etc. and then having to faff about with other things when transition doesn't go perfectly.

The HK416 is pretty much just an M4 with a different method of gas-operation, a modified pistol grip, and a different receiver. Woo. You probably couldn't even tell the difference between them.

Hey guys c'mon, there are new-gen weapons being used by spec ops teams out there. For instance, the Anti-aircraft Gatling Shotgun. With optional bayonet launchers.

Both are gas operated. I'd say if anything, the AR15's direct impingement system is 'more' gas operated than 416's piston system, since it uses gas in more ways.
Which was a root of M16's legacy of jamming like a bunch of jazz muscians after-hours. Blasting gas into a complex mechanism was thought to be a self-cleaning feature, but if that gas has powder residue because cheap unideal powder is used, it's like designing a house where the toilet flushes into the fridge, powering it and washing your food with the water. A piston system powers the fridge with the toilet's flush, but keeps the dirty water away from it at all times, and disposes of it. To extend the analogy farther than needed, recoil operation powers the fridge with your chewing of the food, externally powered actions have regular fridges and toilets, manual actions have a fridge powered by petals that you work after using a regular toilet, revolvers are stuffing two days of food in your mouth and then swallowing each meal at the right time, and metal storm is a food that has layers that are digested on command allowing a huge breakfast to also serve as lunch and dinner. And now we're back on topic.

Whoops. Meant to put "a different method of [gas-operation]". Good catch, Azukki