The XM214 was a prototype 5.56 x 45 mm NATO rotatary barreled machine gun designed to be man-portable. It was designed and built by General Electric, but it never reached mass production. Also known as the Microgun, the XM214 was a scaled-down version of the M134 "minigun", firing standard NATO 5.56 x 45 mm ammunition.
The XM214 was first developed for aircraft applications. Later General Electric developed it into a man-portable weapon system, known as the GE Six-Pak. The complete Six-Pak system weighed 85 pounds (38.5 kg) with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, comparable in weight to some heavy machine guns. The XM214 itself weighed nearly 27 pounds, or 12 kg. The system could be carried by a team of two soldiers and mounted either to a M122 tripod or a vehicle`s pintle mount.
The Six-Pak consisted of the XM214, the ammunition package, and the power module, and the ammunition module consisted of two 500 round cassettes mounted to a holding rack. Linked ammunition was fed through a flexible chute to the gun; when the first cassette was empty, ammunition would then feed from the second cassette, tripping a visible signal that a new cassette needed to be added to the rack. The power module contained a 24 volt nickel-cadmium battery, a 0.8 horsepower motor, and solid state electronic controls. Unless the battery were plugged into a vehicle`s power supply, the battery`s charge would be depleted with 3,000 rounds.
Using the electronic controls, the weapon`s rate of fire could be adjusted from 400 rpm all the way up to 4,000 rpm. Later editions of Jane`s Infantry Weapons claimed a theoretical cyclic rate of up to 6,000 rpm. The electronic controls also contained a burst limiter and handled the automatic clearing of the gun after bursts.
More conventional weapons such as the CETME Ameli and the FN Minimi possess a practical cyclic rate that is not much slower than the rotating-barrel minigun, due to the need to constantly reload the rapid-firing minigun. Moreover, these weapons are smaller and lighter, and do not require heavy batteries to operate, and require less ammunition for the same duration of fire, allowing a single operator or small team to provide suppressive fire for a longer period with the amount of ammunition that they can carry.
(NOTE: Video that follows is Fictional, and intended to show how an XM214 Microgun where intended to work. And also sorry that the germans cant see films whitout dubbing them and thous ruining them :D)
Weapontype: Rotary barrel machine gun
Manufacturer: General Electric Company
Operation: Mechanically driven rotary breach
Cartridge: 5.56x45mm NATO (.223 Remington)
Weight: 85 pounds (38.5 kg) with 1,000 rounds of ammunition, The XM214 itself weighed nearly 27 pounds, or 12 kg.
