Six-barreled Vulcan machine gun. Aircraft gun M61A1 Vulcan (USA). Prototype invented by Gatling

Work on the creation of a multi-barreled machine gun began in the 40s of the twentieth century. This type of weapon, with a high rate of fire and high fire density, was developed as a weapon for tactical jet fighters of the US Air Force.

The prototype for the creation of the first sample of the six-barreled M61 Vulcan was the German twelve-barreled Fokker-Leimberger aircraft machine gun, the design of which was based on the Gatling revolver-battery design. Using this scheme, a well-balanced design of a multi-barreled machine gun with a block of rotating barrels was created, and all the necessary operations were performed in one revolution of the block.

The Vulcan M61 was developed in 1949 and adopted by the American Air Force in 1956. The first aircraft to have a six-barrel M61 Vulcan machine gun mounted into its fuselage was the F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber.

Design features of the M61 Vulcan gun

The M61 Vulcan is a six-barreled aircraft machine gun (cannon) with an air-cooled barrel and ammunition with a 20 x 102 mm cartridge with an electric capsule ignition type.

The ammunition supply system for the six-barreled Vulcan machine gun is without a link, from a cylindrical magazine with a capacity of 1000 rounds. The machine gun and the magazine are connected by two conveyor feeds, in which the spent cartridges are returned back to the magazine using a return conveyor.

Conveyor belts are placed in elastic guide sleeves with a total length of 4.6 meters.

The entire array of cartridges in the magazine moves along its axis, but only the central guide rotor, made in the shape of a spiral, rotates, between the turns of which the ammunition is located. When firing, two cartridges are synchronizedly removed from the magazine, and two spent cartridges are placed into it on the opposite side, which are then placed in the conveyor.

The firing mechanism has an external drive circuit with a power of 14.7 kW. This type of drive does not require the installation of a gas regulator and is not afraid of misfires.

The ammunition load can be: caliber, fragmentation, armor-piercing incendiary, fragmentation incendiary, sub-caliber.

Video: shooting from a Vulcan machine gun

Suspended aircraft installations for the M61 gun

In the early 1960s, General Electric decided to create special suspended containers (suspended cannon mounts) to accommodate the six-barreled 20 mm M61 Vulcan. It was supposed to use them for firing at ground targets with a range of no > 700 m, and equip them with subsonic and supersonic attack aircraft and fighters. In 1963-1964, two variations of the PPU entered service with the US Air Force - SUU-16/A and SUU-23/A.

The design of the suspended gun mounts of both models has the same overall body dimensions (length - 5.05 m, diameter - 0.56 m) and unified 762-mm suspension units, allowing such a machine gun to be installed in the PPU at the most various models combat aircraft. Characteristic difference installation of SUU-23/A is the presence of a visor above the receiver block.

The SUU-16/A PPU uses an aircraft turbine powered by an incoming air flow as a mechanical drive for spinning and accelerating the barrel block of the Vulcan machine gun. The full ammunition load consists of 1200 shells, the loaded weight is 785 kg, the unloaded weight is 484 kg.

The drive of the SUU-23/A installation for accelerating the barrels is an electric starter, the ammunition load consists of 1200 shells, the loaded weight is 780 kg, the weight without equipment is 489 kg.

The machine gun in the hanging container is fixed and fixed motionless. An on-board fire adjustment system or a visual shooting sight is used as a sight when shooting. Extraction of spent cartridges during firing occurs outside, over the side of the installation.

Main tactical and technical characteristics of the Vulcan M61

• The total length of the gun is 1875 mm.
• Barrel length - 1524 mm.
• The mass of the M61 Vulcan cannon is 120 kg, with the feed system kit (without cartridges) - 190 kg.
• Rate of fire - 6000 rounds/min. Instances with a firing rate of 4000 rounds/min were produced.
• The initial speed of caliber/sub-caliber projectiles is 1030/1100 m/s.
• Muzzle power - 5.3 MW.
• The time to reach the maximum rate of fire is 0.2 - 0.3 seconds.
• Vitality - about 50 thousand shots.

The Vulcan M61 rapid-fire submachine gun is currently installed on fighters - Eagle (F-15), Corsair (F-104, A-7D, F-105D), Tomcat (F-14A, A- 7E), "Phantom" (F-4F).

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below the article. We or our visitors will be happy to answer them

In machine gun mode With the advent and constant modernization of aviation weapons, including missiles, part of the nomenclature of which today belongs to a full-fledged class precision weapons, the need for traditional small arms and cannon weapons has not disappeared aircraft. Moreover, this weapon also has its advantages. These include the ability to be used from the air against all types of targets, constant readiness to fire, immunity to electronic countermeasures. Modern types of aircraft guns are actually machine guns in terms of rate of fire and at the same time artillery pieces by caliber. The principle of automatic firing is also similar to the machine gun. At the same time, the rate of fire for some models of domestic aviation weapons is a record even for machine guns. For example, the GSh-6-23M aircraft gun developed at TsKB-14 (the predecessor of the Tula Instrument Design Bureau) is still considered the fastest-firing weapon in military aviation. This six-barreled gun has a rate of fire of 10 thousand rounds per minute! They say that during comparative tests of the GSh-6-23 and the American M-61 “Vulcan”, the domestic gun, without requiring a powerful external energy source for its operation, showed almost twice as much rate of fire, while having half the own mass. By the way, in the six-barreled gun GSh-6-23, an autonomous automatic gas exhaust drive was used for the first time, which made it possible to use this weapon not only on an aircraft, but also, for example, on ground firing installations. A modernized version of the GSh-23-6 with Su-24 front-line bombers are still equipped with 500 rounds of ammunition: this weapon is installed here in a suspended movable cannon container. In addition, the MiG-31 supersonic all-weather long-range fighter-interceptor is armed with the GSh-23-6M cannon. The six-barreled version of the GSh cannon was also used for the cannon armament of the MiG-27 fighter-bomber. True, a 30-mm cannon is already installed here, and for a weapon of this caliber it is also considered the fastest-firing in the world - six thousand rounds per minute. A barrage of fire from the sky It would not be an exaggeration to say that aviation weapons bearing the “GS” brand have essentially become the basis of this type of weapon for domestic combat aviation. In single-barrel and multi-barrel versions with the use of innovative technologies for ammunition of various calibers and purposes - in any case, the Gryazev-Shipunov guns have earned their recognition among pilots of many generations. The development of aviation small arms and cannon weapons in our country has become 30 mm caliber guns. Thus, the famous GSh-30 (in a double-barreled version) is equipped with the no less famous Su-25 attack aircraft. These are machines that have proven their effectiveness in all wars and local conflicts since the 70-80s of the last century. One of the most acute disadvantages of such weapons - the problem with the “survivability” of the barrels - has been solved here by distributing the burst length between the two barrels and reducing the rate of fire per barrel. At the same time, all the main operations for preparing fire - feeding the tape, chambering the cartridge, preparing the shot - occur evenly, which provides the gun with a high rate of fire: the rate of fire of the Su-25 reaches 3500 rounds per minute. Another project of the Tula aviation gunsmiths is the GSh-30- gun 1. It is recognized as the lightest 30 mm gun in the world. The weight of the weapon is 50 kilograms (for comparison, a “six-wolf” of the same caliber weighs more than three times more). A unique feature of this gun is the presence of an autonomous water evaporative cooling system for the barrel. There is water in the casing here, which turns into steam during the firing process when the barrel is heated. Passing along the screw groove on the barrel, it cools it and then comes out. The GSh-30-1 gun is equipped with the MiG-29, Su-27, Su-30, Su-33, Su-35 aircraft. There is information that this caliber will also be the main one for the small arms and cannon armament of the fifth generation fighter T-50 (PAK FA). In particular, as the KBP press service recently reported, flight tests of the modernized rapid-fire aircraft gun 9A1-4071 (this is the name this gun received) with testing of the entire ammunition load in various modes were carried out on the Su-27SM aircraft. After completion of the tests, development work is planned to test this gun on the T-50. "Flying" BMP Tula KBP (TsKB-14) became the “Homeland” of aviation weapons for domestic rotary-wing combat vehicles. It was here that the GSh-30 cannon appeared in a double-barreled version for Mi-24 helicopters. main feature of this weapon is the presence of elongated barrels, due to which increased starting speed projectile flight, which here is 940 meters per second. But on the new Russian combat helicopters - Mi-28 and Ka-52 - a different cannon armament scheme is used. The basis was the well-proven 2A42 gun of 30 mm caliber, mounted on combat vehicles infantry. On the Mi-28, this gun is mounted in a fixed movable gun mount NPPU-28, which significantly increases maneuverability when firing. Shells are fired from two sides and in two versions - armor-piercing and high-explosive fragmentation. Lightly armored targets on the ground can be hit from the air at a distance of 1500 meters, air targets (helicopters) - two and a half kilometers, and manpower - four kilometers. The NPPU-28 installation is located on the Mi-28 under the fuselage in the bow of the helicopter and operates synchronously with the sight (including the helmet-mounted one) of the pilot operator. The ammunition is located in two boxes on the rotating part of the turret. The 30-mm BMP-2 gun, also placed in a movable cannon mount, is also adopted for service on the Ka-52. But on the Mi-35M and Mi-35P, which essentially became a continuation of the legendary Mi-24 series of helicopters, they again returned to the GSh cannon and the 23rd caliber. On the Mi-35P the number of firing points can reach three. This happens if the main guns are placed in two universal cannon containers (placed on pylons on the sides of the vehicle), and another gun is installed in a non-removable bow movable cannon mount. The total ammunition load of aircraft cannon armament for 35-series helicopters in this version reaches 950 rounds. Shooting...with a break for lunch They do not abandon cannon weapons when creating combat vehicles in the West. Including ultra-modern fifth generation aircraft. Thus, the F-22 fighter is equipped with the above-mentioned 20-mm M61A2 Vulcan with 480 rounds of ammunition. This rapid-firing six-barreled gun with a rotating block of barrels differs from the Russian gun in a more primitive cooling system - air rather than water, as well as pneumatic or hydraulic drives. Despite all the shortcomings, including, first of all, a small caliber, as well as an archaic link feed system shells and limited ammunition at a very high rate of fire (four to six thousand rounds per minute), the Vulcan has been the standard armament of US combat aircraft since the 50s. True, the American military press has reported that delays in the ammunition supply system have now been dealt with: a linkless ammunition supply system seems to have been developed for the M61A1 cannon. The AH-64 “Apache”, the main one, is also equipped with an automatic cannon. attack helicopter US Army. Some analysts call it the most common rotorcraft of its class in the world, without, however, citing any statistical data. On board the Apache is an M230 automatic cannon with a caliber of 30 millimeters and a rate of fire of 650 rounds per minute. Significant disadvantage of this weapon - it is necessary to cool its barrel after firing every 300 shots, and the time of such a break can be 10 minutes or more. For this weapon, a helicopter can take on board 1200 shells, but only if an additional fuel tank is not installed on the vehicle. If it is available, the volume of ammunition will not exceed the same 300 rounds that the Apache can fire without the need for a “break” for mandatory cooling of the barrel. The only advantage of this weapon can be considered the presence in its ammunition of shells with an armor-piercing cumulative element. It is stated that with such ammunition the Apache can hit ground targets equipped with 300 mm of homogeneous armor. Author: Dmitry Sergeev Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense/Russian Helicopters/
Instrument Design Bureau named after. Academician A. G. Shipunov

Work on the creation of a multi-barreled machine gun began in the 40s of the twentieth century. This type of weapon, with the highest rate of fire and high density of fire, was developed as a weapon for tactical jet fighters of the US Air Force.

The prototype for the creation of the first standard six-barreled M61 Vulcan was the German 12-barrel Fokker-Leimberger aircraft machine gun, the design of which was based on the Gatling revolving battery design. Using this scheme, a perfectly balanced design of a multi-barreled machine gun with a block of rotating barrels was created, while all the necessary operations were carried out in one revolution of the block.

The Vulcan M61 was developed in 1949 and adopted by the American Air Force in 1956. The first aircraft to have a six-barrel M61 Vulcan machine gun mounted into its fuselage was the F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber.

Design features of the M61 Vulcan gun

The M61 Vulcan is a six-barrel aircraft machine gun (cannon) with an air-cooled barrel and ammunition with a 20 x 102 mm cartridge with an electric capsule type of ignition.

custom_block(1, 80009778, 1555);

The ammunition supply system for the six-barreled Vulcan machine gun is without a link, from a cylindrical magazine with a capacity of 1000 rounds. The machine gun and the magazine are connected by two conveyor feeds, in which the spent cartridges are returned back to the magazine using a returnable assembly flow.

Conveyor belts are located in elastic guide sleeves with a total length of 4.6 meters.

The entire array of cartridges in the magazine moves along its axis, but only the central guide rotor, made in the shape of a spiral, rotates, between the turns of which the ammunition is placed. When firing, two cartridges are synchronizedly removed from the magazine, and two spent cartridges are placed in it on the reverse side, which are then placed on the conveyor.

The firing mechanism has an external drive circuit with a power of 14.7 kW. This type of drive does not require the installation of a gas regulator and is not afraid of misfires.

custom_block(1, 70988345, 1555);

The ammunition load can be: caliber, fragmentation, armor-piercing incendiary, fragmentation incendiary, sub-caliber.

Video: shooting from a Vulcan machine gun

Mounted aircraft mounts for the M61 gun

In the early 1960s, General Electric decided to make special mounted containers (mounted cannon mounts) to accommodate the six-barreled 20mm M61 Vulcan. It was supposed to use them for firing at ground targets with a range of no > 700 m, and equip them with subsonic and supersonic attack aircraft and fighters. In 1963-1964, two PPU variants entered service with the US Air Force - SUU-16/A and SUU-23/A.

The design of the mounted cannon installations of both models has similar overall body dimensions (length - 5.05 m, diameter - 0.56 m) and unified 762-mm mounted units, which allow the installation of such a machine gun in the PPU on a variety of models of combat aircraft. The corresponding difference in the SUU-23/A installation is the presence of a visor above the receiver block.

The SUU-16/A PPU uses an aircraft turbine powered by an incoming air flow as a mechanical drive for spinning and accelerating the barrel block of the Vulcan machine gun. The full ammunition load consists of 1200 shells, the weight when equipped is 785 kg, the weight without equipment is 484 kg.

The drive of the SUU-23/A installation for accelerating the barrels is an electronic starter, the ammunition load consists of 1200 shells, the weight when equipped is 780 kg, the weight without equipment is 489 kg.

The machine gun in the hinged container is fixed and fixed motionless. An on-board fire adjustment system or a visual shooting sight is used as a sight when shooting. Extraction of spent cartridges during firing occurs outside, over the side of the installation.

The main tactical and technical properties of the Vulcan M61

• The total length of the gun is 1875 mm.
• Barrel length - 1524 mm.
• The mass of the M61 Vulcan cannon is 120 kg, with the feed system kit (without cartridges) - 190 kg.
• Rate of fire - 6000 rounds/min. Instances with a firing rate of 4000 rounds/min were produced.
• The initial speed of caliber/sub-caliber projectiles is 1030 / 1100 m/s.
• Muzzle power - 5.3 MW.
• The time to reach the highest rate of fire is 0.2 - 0.3 seconds.
• Vitality - about 50 thousand shots.

Vulcan M61 rapid-fire submachine gun, in current time installed on fighters - Eagle (F-15), Corsair (F-104, A-7D, F-105D), Tomcat (F-14A, A-7E), Phantom (F-4F ).

Automatic device - clock Nerf Vulcan

A student from Germany Michelson, using the popular toy blaster gun Nerf of the Vulcan system, designed a rather funny, but very useful automatic device, excellent for protecting the area.

With the help of several additional drives, conventional electronics and computer programs, the Nerf guard weapon can automatically recognize, track a target, and then hit it. With all this, the owner of the weapon can be in shelter.

The trigger mechanism of the mechanized Nerf Vulcan device is connected to a laptop and hardware and software ( integrated circuit) Arduino Uno with processors. It is triggered when a web camera tracking and scanning the area around it detects the movement of an unnecessary object. In this case, the webcam is installed on the front panel of the laptop, and the computer program is configured for movement.

The GSh-6-23 aircraft gun remains unsurpassed for more than 40 years

“You lower the nose of the car a little, carefully turn it towards the target so that it is easily caught in the sight mark. You press the trigger for a split second and it feels like the plane is being shaken by a giant, but you can clearly see how it flies towards the ground fire tornado. At this moment, you won’t envy the enemy who is there, even if it’s a conditional one,” a pilot of the Russian Air Force shared with the Military-Industrial Courier his impressions of the use of the six-barreled GSh-6-23 aircraft cannon.

The GSh-6-23M, 23 mm caliber with a rate of fire of 10,000 rounds per minute, was developed by two great Russian gunsmith designers Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev back in the early 70s. Since the adoption of the “six-barreled general gun” into service in 1974, it has been carried by the legendary Su-24 front-line bombers and the equally famous supersonic heavy interceptors Mig-31.

From “cardbox” to “Vulcan”

In the mid-50s, when the first homing ones, such as the American AIM-9 Sidewinder, began to enter service with fighter aircraft, aviation experts began to talk about the fact that machine guns and cannons on combat aircraft would have to be abandoned in the near future. In many ways, these conclusions were based on the experience of the past Korean War, where jet fighters fought en masse for the first time. On the one hand, these were Soviet MiG-15s, on the other, American F-86 Sabers, F9F Panthers, etc. The MiGs, armed with three guns, often lacked the rate of fire, and the Sabers lacked the firing range, sometimes also the power of the six 12.7 mm machine guns they had.

"The idea of ​​Shipunov and Gryazev provided a much more compact placement of the gun and ammunition, which is especially important for aviation technology, where designers fight for every centimeter”

It is noteworthy that the newest American carrier-based fighter F-4B Phantom-2 at that time had only missile weapons, including the ultra-modern mid-range AIM-7 Sparrow. The F-4C guns adapted for the needs of the US Air Force were also not installed. True, in Vietnam the “Phantoms” were initially opposed by those who only had cannon armament Soviet MiG-17s, in which Vietnamese pilots sought to conduct close-in air combat to avoid being hit by guided missiles.

In “dog fights,” as such battles are called in Western aviation slang, the American aces were not always helped by the short-range AIM-9 missiles with a thermal homing head, which were considered the best at that time. Therefore, the command of the Air Force, as well as Navy and Corps aviation Marine Corps had to urgently develop new ones tactics fight against Vietnamese fighters, first of all, to equip the Phantoms with suspended gun containers with 20-mm six-barreled M61 Vulcan aircraft cannons. And soon the F-4E fighter entered the US Air Force. One of the main differences of the new model was the standard six-barrel Vulcan installed in the bow.

A number of recently published studies on the air war in Vietnam argue that the decision to arm the Phantom 2 with a cannon mount was not driven by the need to combat Vietnamese MiGs, but by the desire to make the fighter more suitable for attacking ground targets. For an impartial assessment, it is worth turning to the numbers. According to the Pentagon, during the entire war in South-East Asia The cannon armament of American fighters shot down from 39 to 45 Vietnamese fighters, including supersonic MiG-19 and MiG-21. And in total, according to the calculations of American military historians, Northern Vietnam lost 131 MiGs, so aircraft guns account for 35–40 percent of total number cars shot down by US pilots.

Be that as it may, it was with the advent of the F-4E Phantom-2 that cannon armament, rejected in the late 50s, began to return to the arsenal of fighters, fighter-bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and other vehicles.

One of the most popular in the arsenal of the Western Air Forces was the already mentioned M61 Vulcan. It is noteworthy that American fighter The fifth generation F-22 Lightning is also armed with this six-barreled cannon, albeit specially modernized.

The American company General Electric, which developed and produced Vulcan, had never before worked on small arms models. Moreover, the company's core business has always been electrical equipment. But immediately after World War II, the American Air Force opened a promising topic for the creation of aircraft cannons and machine guns, the rate of fire of which should have been at least 4000 rounds per minute, while the samples were required to have sufficient range and high accuracy when striking air targets.

In traditional small arms designs, implementing such customer requests was quite problematic. Here we had to choose: either high accuracy, firing range and accuracy, or rate of fire. As one of the solution options, the developers proposed adapting to modern requirements the so-called Gatling gun, which was used in the USA during their Civil War. This design was based on the design of a 10-barrel rotating block developed by Dr. Richard Gatling back in 1862.

Surprisingly, despite the participation of eminent weapons developers and manufacturers in the competition, the victory went to General Electric. When implementing the Gatling scheme, it became clear that the most important part of the new installation was the external electric drive that rotates the block of barrels, and with its extensive experience, General Electric did a better job of developing it than its competitors.

In June 1946, the company, having defended the project before a special commission of the US Air Force, received a contract to implement its scheme in hardware. This was already the second stage in the creation of new aviation shooting systems, in which Colt and Browning were also supposed to take part.

During research, testing and development work, the company had to experiment with the number of trunks (in different time it varied from 10 to 6), as well as with calibers (15.4 mm, 20 mm and 27 mm). As a result, the military was offered a six-barrel aircraft gun of 20 millimeter caliber, with a maximum rate of fire of 6,000 rounds per minute, firing 110-gram shells at a speed of over 1,030 meters per second.

A number of Western researchers claim that the choice in favor of the 20 mm caliber was due to the requirement of the customer, the US Air Force, that arose in the early 50s, who considered that the gun should be quite universal, equally suitable for conducting aimed fire at both air and ground goals.

27-mm shells were well suited for firing on the ground, but when used, the rate of fire dropped sharply and recoil increased, and later tests showed the relatively low accuracy of a gun of this caliber when firing at aerial targets.

15.4 mm shells had too little power against the intended enemy on the ground, but a gun with such ammunition provided a good rate of fire, albeit with an insufficient range for firing air combat. So the developers from General Electric settled on a compromise caliber.

The six barrels of the M61 Vulcan cannon, adopted in 1956, together with the bolts, were concentrically assembled into a single block located in a common casing, rotating clockwise. In one revolution, each barrel was sequentially reloaded, and a shot was fired from the barrel located at the top at that moment. The entire system operated using an external electric drive with a power of 26 kW.

True, the military was not entirely satisfied with the fact that the mass of the gun ended up being almost 115 kilograms. The struggle to lose weight continued long years, and as a result of the introduction of new materials, the M61A2 model installed on the F-22 Raptor weighs just over 90 kilograms.

It is noteworthy that currently in the English-language literature all shooting systems with a rotating barrel block are called Gatling-gun - “Gatling gun (gun).

In the USSR, work on the creation of multi-barrel aircraft guns was going on even before the Great Patriotic War. True, they ended in vain. Soviet gunsmiths came to the idea of ​​a system with barrels combined into one block, which would be rotated by an electric motor, at the same time as American designers, but here we failed.

In 1959, Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev, who worked at the Klimovsky Research Institute-61, joined the work. As it turned out, the work had to start virtually from scratch. The designers had information that the Vulcan was being created in the USA, but at the same time not only those used by the Americans technical solutions, and performance characteristics new Western system remained secret.

True, Arkady Shipunov himself later admitted that even if he and Vasily Gryazev had become aware of American technical solutions, they would still hardly have been able to apply them in the USSR. As already mentioned, the designers of General Electric connected an external electric drive with a power of 26 kW to the Vulcan, while Soviet aircraft manufacturers could only offer, as Vasily Gryazev himself put it, “24 volts and not a gram more.” Therefore, it was necessary to create a system that would not operate from an external source, but using the internal energy of the shot.

It is noteworthy that similar schemes were proposed at one time by other American companies participating in the competition to create a promising aircraft gun. True, Western designers were unable to implement such a solution. In contrast, Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev created a so-called gas exhaust engine, which, according to the second member of the tandem, worked like an internal combustion engine - it took part of the powder gas from the barrels when fired.

But, despite the elegant solution, another problem arose: how to fire the first shot, because the gas exhaust engine, and therefore the gun mechanism itself, is not yet working. For the initial impulse, a starter was required, after which, from the first shot, the gun would operate on its own gas. Subsequently, two starter options were proposed: pneumatic and pyrotechnic (with a special squib).

In his memoirs, Arkady Shipunov recalls that even at the beginning of work on a new aircraft gun, he was able to see one of the few photographs of the American Vulcan being prepared for testing, where he was struck by the fact that a belt loaded with ammunition was spreading along the floor, ceiling and walls of the compartment, but was not consolidated into a single cartridge box. Later it became clear that with a rate of fire of 6000 rounds per minute, a void forms in the cartridge box in a matter of seconds and the tape begins to “walk.” In this case, the ammunition falls out, and the tape itself breaks. Shipunov and Gryazev developed a special pneumatic tape pull-up that does not allow the tape to move. Unlike the American solution, this idea provided a much more compact placement of the gun and ammunition, which is especially important for aircraft, where designers fight for every centimeter.

On target, but not right away

Despite the fact that the product, which received the AO-19 index, was practically ready, there was no place for it in the Soviet Air Force, since the military themselves believed: weapon- a relic of the past, and the future belongs to rockets. Shortly before the Air Force rejected the new gun, Vasily Gryazev was transferred to another enterprise. It would seem that the AO-19, despite all the unique technical solutions, will remain unclaimed.

But in 1966, after summarizing the experience of the North Vietnamese and American Air Forces in the USSR, it was decided to resume work on the creation of promising aircraft guns. True, by that time almost all enterprises and design bureaus that had previously worked on this topic had already reoriented themselves to other areas. Moreover, there were no people willing to return to this line of work in the military-industrial sector!

Surprisingly, despite all the difficulties, Arkady Shipunov, who by this time headed TsKB-14, decided to revive the cannon theme at his enterprise. After the Military-Industrial Commission approved this decision, its management agreed to return Vasily Gryazev, as well as several other specialists who took part in the work on the “AO-19 product,” to the Tula enterprise.

As Arkady Shipunov recalled, the problem of resuming work on cannon aircraft weapons arose not only in the USSR, but also in the West. In fact, at that time, the only multi-barreled gun in the world was the American one - the Vulcan.

It is worth noting that, despite the rejection of the “AO-19 object” by the Air Force, the product was of interest to the Navy, for which several gun systems were developed.

By the beginning of the 70s, KBP offered two six-barreled guns: the 30-mm AO-18, which used the AO-18 cartridge, and the AO-19, chambered for 23-mm AM-23 ammunition. It is noteworthy that the products differed not only in the projectiles used, but also in the starters for preliminary acceleration of the barrel block. The AO-18 had a pneumatic one, and the AO-19 had a pyrotechnic one with 10 squibs.

Initially, representatives of the Air Force, who considered the new gun as armament for promising fighters and fighter-bombers, placed increased demands on the AO-19 for firing ammunition - at least 500 shells in one burst. I had to seriously work on the survivability of the gun. The most loaded part, the gas rod, was made of special heat-resistant materials. The design has been changed. The gas engine was modified, where so-called floating pistons were installed.

Preliminary tests have shown that the modified AO-19 can show much best characteristics than originally stated. As a result of the work carried out at the KBP, the 23-mm cannon was able to fire at a rate of fire of 10–12 thousand rounds per minute. And the mass of the AO-19 after all the modifications was just over 70 kilograms.

For comparison: the American Vulcan, which had been modified by this time, received the index M61A1, weighed 136 kilograms, fired 6000 rounds per minute, the salvo was almost 2.5 times smaller than that of the AO-19, while American aircraft designers also needed to place on board The aircraft also has a 25-kilowatt external electric drive.

And even on the M61A2, which is on board the fifth-generation fighter F-22, American designers, with the smaller caliber and rate of fire of their guns, were unable to achieve the unique indicators in weight and compactness, like the gun developed by Vasily Gryazev and Arkady Shipunov.

Birth of a legend

The first customer of the new AO-19 gun was the Sukhoi Experimental Design Bureau, which at that time was headed by Pavel Osipovich himself. "Sukhoi" planned that new gun It would become the weapon for the promising front-line bomber with variable wing geometry T-6, which they were then developing, which later became the legendary Su-24.

Terms of work according to new car were quite compressed: the T-6, which made its first flight on January 17, 1970, in the summer of 1973, was already ready for transfer to military testers. When fine-tuning the AO-19 to the requirements of aircraft manufacturers, certain difficulties arose. The gun, which fired well on the test bench, could not fire more than 150 shots - the barrels overheated and needed to be cooled, which often took about 10–15 minutes, depending on the ambient temperature.

Another problem was that the gun did not want, as the designers of the Tula Instrument Engineering Design Bureau joked, “to stop shooting.” After releasing the launch button, the AO-19 managed to spontaneously fire three or four projectiles. But within the allotted time, all the shortcomings and technical problems were eliminated, and the T-6 was presented to the Air Force GLITs for testing with a cannon fully integrated into the new front-line bomber.

During the tests that began in Akhtubinsk, the product, which by that time had received the GSh index (Gryazev - Shipunov) -6-23, was shot at various targets. During control use the latest system In less than one second, the pilot was able to completely cover all targets, firing about 200 shells!

Pavel Sukhoi was so satisfied with the GSh-6-23 that, along with the standard Su-24 ammunition, the so-called SPPU-6 suspended gun containers with movable GSh-6-23M gun mounts, capable of deflecting horizontally and vertically by 45 degrees, were included . It was assumed that with such weapons, and in total it was planned to place two such installations on the front-line bomber, it would be able to completely disable the runway in one pass, as well as destroy a column of motorized infantry in combat vehicles up to one kilometer long.

Developed at the Dzerzhinets plant, SPPU-6 became one of the largest mobile cannon installations. Its length exceeded five meters, and its mass with ammunition of 400 shells was 525 kilograms. The tests showed that when firing with the new installation, there was at least one projectile hit per linear meter.

It is noteworthy that immediately after Sukhoi, the Mikoyan Design Bureau became interested in the cannon, which intended to use the GSh-6-23 on the latest supersonic interceptor MiG-31. Despite his big sizes, aircraft manufacturers needed a fairly small-sized cannon with a high rate of fire, since the MiG-31 was supposed to destroy supersonic targets. KBP helped Mikoyan by developing a unique lightweight conveyor-free linkless feeding system, thanks to which the weight of the gun was reduced by several more kilograms and gained additional centimeters of space on board the interceptor.

Developed by outstanding gunsmiths Arkady Shipunov and Vasily Gryazev, the GSh-6-23 automatic aircraft gun still remains in service with the Russian Air Force. Moreover, in many ways its characteristics, despite its more than 40-year service life, remain unique.

The Vulcan is a rapid-fire submachine gun, the only gun in the game that allows you to control the hull while the turret is pointed in the desired direction. Vulcan is good both for protecting its own base and for supporting an attack. Often installed on medium hulls. Remember to use modules with Flamethrower protection to reduce self-damage from overheating.

Description

Gun for battle medium range. It has instant damage delivery, limited range and linear damage drop. Outside the striking distance, the damage is not fully dealt. From balloon guns it inherits the mechanics of the striking element in the form of a thin, non-discrete stream of bullets (which do not fan out when the turret is rotated). Before and after shooting, pauses are necessary to spin up and stop the barrels. It can shoot endlessly, but after the tank is empty, the tank begins to gradually heat up, which leads to self-damage from burning and a decrease in its own damage. The duration of burning damage is determined by how long the shooter fires with an empty tank. A “stream” of bullets hits the target physical impact in the form of pressure. The gun has a gyroscope that compensates for a shift in the direction of fire when the body rotates (either independently or due to physical impact from an enemy hit). Possesses vertical auto-aiming.

Gun characteristics

• Damage (hp/s)- damage inflicted on the target a second before overheating begins.
• Total damage before overheating (hp)- damage inflicted on the target during the time from the start of firing until the start of overheating.
• Damage after overheating (hp/s)- damage inflicted on the target after overheating begins.
• Temperature limit- the maximum temperature to which your own tank can be heated if you continue firing during overheating. The higher the value of the parameter, the longer the tank cools down after heating and receives damage from burning.
• Self-heating (conventional units/s)- the value by which the temperature of its own tank increases in one second when firing continues during overheating.
• Turret rotation slowdown (%)- the percentage by which the turret rotation speed decreases when firing.
• Impact force (conventional units)- the physical impact of cannon shells on the target, which leads to the tank moving from its place.
• Recoil (conventional units)- the physical impact of the gun on its own body when fired.
• Time to overheat, in garage - Recharge (s)- the time during which you can shoot without receiving self-damage from burning.
• Spinning of trunks (s)- time from pressing the fire button to the start of shooting.
• Stopping barrels (s)- time from the cessation of shooting to the stop of barrel rotation.
• Turning speed (deg/s)- the maximum speed at which the gun can rotate.
• Turning acceleration (deg/s²)- acceleration with which the gun accelerates to maximum speed turn.
• Weak range (m)- the range at which the damage reduction from distance reaches its limit.
• Full range (m)- the range within which the gun deals full damage. If the range to the target is higher, then the damage decreases linearly up to the range of a weak hit.
• Percentage of weak damage (%)- indicates what percentage of the damage is dealt at a distance greater than or equal to the range of a weak hit.
• Overheat damage percentage (%)- indicates what percentage of the standard damage the gun deals when overheated.
• Gyroscopic effect- the ability of the gyroscope to prevent the sight from being knocked down.
• Auto-aim angle up (deg)- angle of automatic aiming at the target if it is located above the gun aiming plane.
• Auto-aim angle down (deg)- angle of automatic aiming at the target if it is below the gun aiming plane.

• Initially, the gun was called “Vulcan”