Frag Out! Magazine

www.fragoutmag.com The troublemaker was the Works 11 – Polish representa- tive of Dillon Aero. This time it organised a presentation of the distributed equipment for armed forces, partic- ullary for the Special Forces. A leading actor of the show was a six-barreled, electrically driven 7,62 mm Dillon Aero M134D Minigun machine gun. The Dillon Aero has three versions of M134D that differ with the materials from which are made the relevant com- pounds (steel or titanium), and consequently – with their weight and final price. A user has a choice of the steel, titanium or mixed-built machine guns, and a weight dif- ference between the lightest (titanium variant) and the heaviest (steel) one reaches nearly 6 kilograms. In the case of the vehicle which the most often is armoured with such one machine gun, it is not very significant, but if it comes to the aircrafts usually armed in two, three or even more Miniguns – it will matter a lot. M134D is 7.62 mm x 51 calibre weapon, fed from M13 dis- integrating cartridge belt which is connected to the gun by the elastic, 2.1-meter-long metal sleeve with weight of 2.7 Kg. It fires at a constant, non-adjustable rate of 3000 rpm – in the case of the Humvee vehicle a standard ammu- nition box has just such a capacity (a full one has a weight of 93 kg, and an empty one – 12.3 Kg). The M134D is capable to provide only full automatic fire and the instructors recommend to fire with the short one- , two-second bursts. Certainly, it can also shoot with the longer bursts, because this machine gun is adapted to providing an intensive, covering fire and in this role proves the best. From the moment of pulling a trigger to the first round takes 0.5 second, and stopping a barrel group after releasing a trigger lasts for 0.25 second. An engine is pow- ered by 24-28 V DC and an amperage of 58 A. A lifecycle of the barrel group is estimated at 100 000 shots, and of the entire machine gun will withstand even 1 500 000 million shots, whereas, according to a declaration of the manufacturer, a MRBF or Mean Rounds between Failures i 30 000. The average recoil forces while shooting is of 67.5 kilograms and peak might be up to 86 kilograms. Firing M134D Minigun makes an outstanding impression – even a sound of the fire burst merging into one noise can have a psychological impact on the enemy, and an intensity of the led fire causes that supressing an enemy is rather a simple task. Therefore the M134D is proposed as an armament of the Polish SOF M-ATV MRAP class vehicle, which are currently armed with 12.7 mm M2 heavy machine guns, a 7.62 mm machine guns or 40 mm automatic grenade launchers. During a show old Ford Escort was used as target, and after a several seconds was full of holes (a shooting distance was circa 130 metres), and then it simply burnt down. Handling of his machine gun is rather simple, and shooting form it – although requires certain skills – also is not very complicated, even if a rear sight is damaged. 4 000 rounds of ammunition stock were depleted rather quickly, especially that some shooters were strongly engaged in this activity and an instructor had to bring them back to reality. It is hard to blame them because shooting from the M134D brings a real great joy.

• Cover