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An awesome video demonstrating the effectiveness of the Mini gun compared to the Machine Gun. The M134 Minigun is a 7.62x51 mm NATO, six-barreled machine gun with a high rate of fire (2,000 to 6,000 rounds per minute). It features Gatling-style rotating barrels with an external power source, normally an electric motor. The "Mini" in the name is in comparison to designs that use a similar firing mechanism but larger shells, such as General Electric's earlier 20-millimeter M61 Vulcan, and "gun" for a caliber size smaller than that of a cannon, typically 20 mm and higher. The Minigun is used by several branches of the U.S. military. Versions are designated M134 and XM196 by the United States Army, and GAU-2/A and GAU-17/A by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. "Minigun" refers to a specific model of weapon that General Electric originally produced, but the term "minigun" has popularly come to refer to any externally powered Gatling gun of rifle caliber. The term is also used to refer to guns of similar rates of fire and configuration regardless of power source and caliber. History[edit] Background: electrically driven Gatling gun[edit] The ancestor to the modern minigun was made in the 1860s. Richard Jordan Gatling replaced the hand-cranked mechanism of a rifle-caliber Gatling gun with an electric motor, a relatively new invention at the time. Even after Gatling slowed down the mechanism, the new electric-powered Gatling gun had a theoretical rate of fire of 3,000 rounds per minute, roughly three times the rate of a typical modern, single-barreled machine gun. Gatling's electric-powered design received U.S. Patent #502,185 on July 25, 1893.[1] Despite Gatling's improvements, the Gatling gun fell into disuse after cheaper, lighter-weight, recoil and gas operated machine guns were invented; Gatling himself went bankrupt for a period.[2] During World War I, several German companies were working on externally powered guns for use in aircraft. Of those, the best-known today is perhaps the Fokker-Leimberger, an externally powered 12-barrel rotary gun using the 7.92x57mm Mauser round; it was claimed to be capable of firing over 7,000 rpm, but suffered from frequent cartridge-case ruptures[3] due to its "nutcracker", rotary split-breech design, which is fairly different from that of a Gatling.[4] None of these German guns went into production during the war, although a competing Siemens prototype (possibly using a different action) which was tried on the Western Front scored a victory in aerial combat.[3] The British also experimented with this type of split-breech during the 1950s, but they were also unsuccessful.[5] Minigun: 1960s–Vietnam[edit] In the 1960s, the United States Armed Forces began exploring modern variants of the electric-powered, rotating barrel Gatling-style weapons for use in the Vietnam War. American forces in the Vietnam War, which used helicopters as one of the primary means of transporting soldiers and equipment through the dense jungle, found that the thin-skinned helicopters were very vulnerable to small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attacks when they slowed down to land. Although helicopters had mounted single-barrel machine guns, using them to repel attackers hidden in the dense jungle foliage often led to barrels overheating or cartridge jams.[citation needed] In order to develop a weapon with a more reliable, higher rate of fire, General Electric designers scaled down the rotating-barrel 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon for 7.62×51 mm NATO ammunition. The resulting weapon, designated M134 and known popularly as the Minigun, could fire up to 4,000 rounds per minute without overheating. The gun was originally specified to fire at 6,000 rpm, but this was later lowered to 4,000 rpm. The Minigun was mounted on Hughes OH-6 Cayuse and Bell OH-58 Kiowa side pods; in the turret and on pylon pods of Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters; and on door, pylon and pod mounts on Bell UH-1 Iroquois transport helicopters.[citation needed] Several larger aircraft were outfitted with miniguns specifically for close air support: the Cessna A-37 Dragonfly with an internal gun and with pods on wing hardpoints; and the Douglas A-1 Skyraider, also with pods on wing hardpoints. Other famous gunship airplanes were the Douglas AC-47 Spooky, the Fairchild AC-119, and the Lockheed AC-130.[citation needed] Dillon Aero minigun[edit] The U.S. government had procured some 10,000 miniguns during the Vietnam War. By 1975, production of spare parts had ceased with the Army in possession of a large inventory. By 1985, there were few spares left in the inventory. Units that received miniguns could not maintain them, so by the 1990s only Task Force 160 (later named the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) or 160th SOAR) and some Navy Special Boat Units kept them in regular use. Around 1995, the 160th SOAR began acquiring spare miniguns.