The idea of multi-barrel rapid-fire weapons arose as early as the 15th century and was embodied in some examples of artillery pieces of the time. With obvious dignity, this type of guns did not take root and was, rather, an exotic illustration of the course of design thought than a real effective system for firing.
In the 19th century, inventor R. Gatling from Connecticut, who worked in agricultural machinery, and later became a doctor, received a patent for a “revolving battery gun”. He was a kind man and believed that, having received such a terrible weapon, humanity will come to its senses and, fearing numerous victims, will cease to fight at all.
The main innovation in Gatling's multi-barrel was the use of gravity to automatically feed cartridges and extract cartridges. The naive inventor could not have imagined that his brainchild would become the prototype of a super-rapid-fire machine gun of the middle and second half of the 20th century.
The development of technical thought after the Korean War led to the emergence of new weapons for aviation. The rapid speeds of the MiGs and Sabers left the pilots too little time to carefully aim, and the number of guns and machine guns could not be very large. Rate of fire was limited by the fact that the trunks were overheating. The six-barreled machine gun “Volcano” M61, which ripened just in time for a new slaughter, the Vietnam War, was the way out of this engineering deadlock.
With each decade, the duration of combat contact between opponents is reduced. The one who managed to release more charges and started shooting first has a better chance of surviving. Mechanical devices simply cannot cope in such an environment, therefore the Vulkan machine gun is equipped with an electric drive with a power of 26 kW, which rotates the barrels firing 20 mm shells in turn, as well as an electric ignition system for the capsules. This solution allows you to fire at a speed of up to 2000 rounds per minute, and in the turbo mode - 4200.
The Vulkan machine gun is quite massive and is intended primarily for aviation, although it can also be used in ground-based air defense systems. Initially, it was installed on Lockheed Starfighters, but in the future they began to equip A-10 attack aircraft. As an additional artillery container, it was also suspended under the Phantom F-4 fuselage, after it became clear that maneuvering aerial combat could not do with missiles alone. Weight of 190 kg is not a joke, and this is still without ammunition, which, at such a rate of fire, requires considerable, so children's toys, the Vulcan nerf machine gun shooting arrows, have little in common with the prototype.
In service, this weapon is relatively simple, the design is made as practical as possible. To load the machine gun "Volcano", you need to remove it, but it's easy to do. Problems arose in the 1950s when exploration work was carried out. A large number of shells create powerful returns, which resulted in difficulties with piloting.
In the USSR, the creation of multi-barrel aviation weapons began a dozen years later than in the United States. The answer to the Vulkan machine gun was the 6K30GSh, AK-630M-2 anti-aircraft automatic guns and other types of artillery mounts with a high fire density. Some improvements regarding the creation of initial and working torques provide certain technical and operational advantages, but the design is based on the same Gatling principle.