How The M61A2 Vulcan Can Shoot 6,600 Bullets In 60 Seconds

The M61A2 Vulcan is a legend for a very simple and easy to understand reason: it can put a lot of lead on a target very, very quickly: It isn’t possible with the human eye to see a bullet as it leaves the muzzle of a gun, but in the case of the General Dynamics M61A2 20mm rotary cannon, it isn’t just a single bullet that can’t be seen but literally hundreds each second! With a rate of fire that exceeds 6,600 rounds per minute that is more than 100 rounds leaving the barrels each and every second.

The key to this is the barrels – six of them – which are electrically driven, allowing for both the lightning-fast cyclic rate and in helping keep the barrels from overheating. This also increases multi-hit probabilities when compared to a single barrel.

While this might seem like cutting edge 21st-century technology, the original M61 was developed after World War II by General Electric and first introduced in 1956, but the concept to utilize multiple barrels dates back a century earlier.