The M61 Vulcan is a hydraulically, electrically, or pneumatically driven, six-barrel, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon which fires 20 mm caliber rounds at an extremely high rate (typically 6,000 rounds per minute). The M61 and its derivatives have been the principal cannon armament of United States military fixed-wing aircraft since 1959.
Designed in 1946 by General Electric, the Vulcan entered service with the U.S. military in 1959. , it was produced by General Dynamics. It is also manufactured under license in Japan by Sumitomo Heavy Industries for Japan's Self-Defense Force and by SNT Dynamics in South Korea.
Development At the end of World War II, the United States Army Air Forces began to consider new directions for future military aircraft guns. The higher speeds of jet-powered fighter aircraft meant that achieving an effective number of hits would be extremely difficult without a much higher volume of fire. While captured German designs (principally the Mauser MG 213C) showed the potential of the single-barrel revolver cannon, the practical rate of fire of such a design was still limited by ammunition feed and barrel wear concerns. The Army wanted something more advanced, combining an extremely high rate of fire with exceptional reliability.https://archive.org/stream/The_Machine_Gun_V5/The_Machine_Gun_V5_djvu.txt M61 Al, CHAG, and GAU-8/A Machine Guns, History of Vulcan
In 1947, the Air Force became a separate branch of the military. The new Air Force made a request for a new aircraft gun. A lesson of World War II air combat was that German, Italian, and Japanese fighters with center line-mounted weapons could attack American aircraft from long range with their cannon main armament. American fighters with .50 caliber (12.7 mm) main armament, such as the P-51 and P-47, had to be close to enemy aircraft in order to cause significant damage to strong parts deep inside the jet. The Hispano cannon carried by the P-38 and P-61, while formidable against propeller-driven planes, had a relatively low rate of fire in the age of jets, while other Allied cannons were notoriously unreliable.
In response to this requirement, the Armament Division of General Electric resurrected an old idea: the multi-barrel Gatling gun. The original Gatling gun had fallen out of favor because of the need for an external power source to rotate the barrel assembly, but the new generation of turbojet-powered fighters offered sufficient electric power to operate the gun, and electric operation was more reliable than gas-operated reloading.
With multiple barrels, the rate of fire per barrel could be lower than a single-barrel revolver cannon while providing a greater overall rate of fire. The idea of powering a Gatling gun from an external electric power source was not a novel idea at the end of World War II, as Richard Jordan Gatling had done just that with a patent he filed in 1893.Archived copy of US Patent #502,185 by R.J. Gatling, for an electric-powered Gatling-gun
In 1946, the Army issued General Electric a contract for "Project Vulcan", a six-barrel weapon capable of firing 7,200 rounds per minute (rpm). Although European designers were moving towards heavier weapons for better hitting power, the U.S. initially concentrated on a powerful caliber cartridge designed for a pre-war anti-tank rifle, expecting that the cartridge's high muzzle velocity would be beneficial for improving hit ratios on high-speed targets. The first GE prototypes of the caliber T45 were ground-fired in 1949; it achieved 2,500 rpm, which was increased to 4,000 rpm by 1950. Due to air combat experience in the Korean War, the USAF decided that high velocity alone might not be sufficient to ensure target destruction and tested alternatives based on the caliber cartridge. These variants of the T45 were known as the T171 and T150 respectively and were first tested in 1952. Eventually, the standard 20×102 mm cartridge was determined to have the desired balance of projectile/explosive mass and muzzle velocity, resulting in an optimum balance of range, accuracy and kinetic energy on target.
The development of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter revealed that the T171 Vulcan (later redesignated M61) suffered problems with its linked ammunition, being prone to misfeed and presenting a foreign object damage hazard with discarded links. A linkless ammunition feed system was developed for the upgraded M61A1, which subsequently became the standard cannon armament of U.S. fighters.
In 1993, General Electric sold its aerospace division, including GE Armament Systems along with the design and production tooling for the M61 and GE's other rotary cannon, to Martin Marietta. After Martin's merger with Lockheed, the rotary cannon became the responsibility of Lockheed Martin Armament Systems. Lockheed Martin Armament Systems was later acquired by General Dynamics, which produces the M61 and its variants .
Description
Each of the cannon's six barrels fires once in turn during each revolution of the barrel cluster. The multiple barrels provide both a very high rate of fire—around 100 rounds per second—and contribute to prolonged weapon life by minimizing barrel erosion and heat generation. The average time between jams or failures is in excess of 10,000 rounds, making it an extremely reliable weapon. The success of the Vulcan Project and its progeny, the very-high-speed Gatling gun, has led to guns of the same configuration being referred to as "Vulcan cannons", which can sometimes confuse nomenclature on the subject.
Most aircraft versions of the M61 are hydraulically driven and primed electrically. The gun rotor, barrel assembly and ammunition feed system are rotated by a hydraulic drive motor through a system of flexible drive shafts. The round is fired by an electric priming system where an electric current from a firing lead passes through the firing pin to the primer as each round is rotated into the firing position.Air Force Manual 11W1-12-4-32
The self-powered version, the GAU-4 (called M130 in Army service), is gas-operated, tapping gun gas from three of the six barrels to operate the gun gas-driven mechanism. The self-powered Vulcan weighs about more than its electric counterpart, but requires no external power source to operate, except for an electric inertia starter to initiate gun rotation, allowing the first rounds to be chambered and fired.
The initial M61 used linked ammunition, but the ejection of spent links created considerable (and ultimately insuperable) problems. The original weapon was soon replaced by the M61A1, with a linkless feed system. Depending on the application, the feed system can be either single-ended (ejecting spent cases and unfired rounds) or double-ended (returning casings back to the magazine). A disadvantage of the M61 is that the bulk of the weapon, its feed system, and ammunition drum make it difficult to fit it into a densely packed airframe.
The feed system must be custom-designed for each application, adding to the complete weapon. Most aircraft installations are double-ended, because the ejection of empty cartridges can cause a foreign-object damage hazard for jet engines and because the retention of spent cases assists in maintaining the center of gravity of the aircraft. The first aircraft to carry the M61A1 was the C model of the F-104, starting in 1959.
A lighter version of the Vulcan developed for use on the F-22 Raptor, designated M61A2, is mechanically the same as the M61A1, but with thinner barrels to reduce overall weight to . The rotor and housing have also been modified to remove any piece of metal not absolutely needed for operation and replaces some metal components with lighter-weight materials. The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet also uses this version.
The Vulcan's rate of fire is typically 6,000 rounds per minute, although some versions (such as that of the AMX and the F-106 Delta Dart) are limited to a lower rate, and others (A-7 Corsair, F-15 Eagle) have a selectable rate of fire of either 4,000 or 6,000 rounds per minute. The M61A2's lighter barrels allow a somewhat higher rate of fire, up to 6,600 rounds per minute.
Ammunition Until the late 1980s, the M61 primarily used the M50 series of ammunition, which includes armor-piercing incendiary, high-explosive incendiary, and training rounds. The gun typically fires a projectile at a muzzle velocity of about .
A new PGU-28/B round was developed in the mid-1980s: a semi-armor-piercing high-explosive incendiary (SAPHEI) round, providing improvements in range, accuracy, and power over the preceding M56A3 HEI round. The PGU-28/B is a "low-drag" round designed to reduce in-flight drag and deceleration, and has a slightly increased muzzle velocity of . However, the PGU-28/B has not been without problems. A 2000 USAF safety report noted 24 premature detonation mishaps (causing serious damage in many cases) in 12 years with the SAPHEI round, compared to only two such mishaps in the entire recorded history of the M56 round. The report estimated that the PGU-28/B had a potential failure rate 80 times higher than USAF standards permit. Due to safety issues, it was limited to emergency wartime use in 2000.Jane's International Defense Review: IDR, Volume 36, Issues 1–6. Jane's Information Group, 2003. "In 2000, the newer-technology PGU-28/B ammunition for the M61 was restricted to emergency wartime use after a series of mishaps."
Practically no powered rotary cannon is supplied with sufficient ammunition for a full minute of firing, due to weight (at 6,000 rpm, the projectiles alone would represent a mass of about for one minute of firing; and by including the brass shell, filling and primer the weight is approximately double that at ). In order to avoid using 600 to 1,000 rounds carried by aircraft all at once, a burst controller is generally used to limit the number of rounds fired at each trigger pull. Bursts from two or three up to 40 or 50 can be selected. The size of the airframe and available internal space limits the size of the ammunition drum and thus the ammunition capacity. When vehicle-mounted, the only limiting factor is the vehicle's safe carry weight, so commensurately larger ammo storage is available.
The main types of combat rounds include: Designation Type Projectile weight [grains] Bursting charge [grains] Muzzle velocity [m/s] Description M53 API ? incendiary 1,030 RHA penetration at 0 degree impact angle and range. M56A3/A4 HEI HE and incendiary 1,030Nose fuzed round, no tracer. effective radius to produce casualties to exposed personnel. Fragmentation hazard out to . RHA penetration at 0 degree obliquity at range. PGU-28A/B SAPHEI 1,050Multi-purpose fuzeless round with an incendiary charge in the nose setting off the HE behind it with a slight delay to maximize lethality against aircraft. No tracer or self-destruct. A zirconium pellet at the bottom of the HE cavity provides additional incendiary effect.
Applications and first combat use