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Not sure if this is the right section for this, but I thought it was very interesting. Imagine the future of war if entire armies were carrying these, once they are out of RD and have magazines attached. Posted some of the text check out the site for the rest. If anyone has heard or seen of other weapons in development please post them.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1281426.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1281426.html
O'Dwyer's revolutionary weapons concept is based on an electronically fired gun-and-launcher design with multiple rounds stacked in a single barrel. The only moving parts are the bullets themselves. Beyond creating an astounding fast-firing weapon, the concept makes way for the creation of entirely new types of firearms. Among other things, it will allow the shooter to select from different types of rounds and even between firing lethal and nonlethal ammunition. O'Dwyer's ideas were initially met with skepticism, but now they are being taken seriously by the military and police.
"Nothing succeeds like actually building something and pulling the trigger or, in our case, pressing the button to show what happens," he tells POPULAR MECHANICS.
Applying what he had learned about tube loading and firing rates, O'Dwyer constructed a triple-barrel, a nine-barrel, and a 36-barrel firing prototype design that he lovingly named Bertha. "The reason for the 36 barrels was simply to indicate to ourselves and to others the future versatility of this system, in that with the 36 barrels we had 540 rounds on board and, based on the 45,000-round-per-minute rate per barrel, that gave us a maximum firing rate of 1.62 million rounds per minute," the inventor says. Prior to Bertha's well-deserved retirement, O'Dwyer used the demonstrator to achieve a 180-round burst of 9mm rounds (155 grain weight) at a rate of just over 1 million rounds per minute.
Other recent Metal Storm demonstrator systems have included a "scaled up" 40mm grenade launcher for the military that fires small "shot bursts" at rates equivalent to 6000 rounds per minute, as well as a Variable Lethality Law Enforcement (VLE) handgun. The fully electronic VLE can be easily safety-keyed to a particular individual or group, preventing its use should it fall into the wrong hands.