The M134 is a minigun of US origin. It was developed by General Electric in 1960 as armament for helicopters and to be used in aircraft gun pods. The name M134 is the US Army designation, the marketing name Minigun has become popular and is even used to refer to rotary barrel weapons in general. The M134 has been trailed as a tripod mounted weapon for infantry use, but contrary to popular belief it cannot be used as a man portable weapon.
The M134 is based on the Gatling principle and uses a six barrel rotary assembly. Ammunition is fed linkless or by belts that travel through a delinking device. The gun is externally powered and has a short spin up time. When operated manually the gun is mounted on a single arm that allows the weapon to swivel horizontally and vertically. The gun is fired using spade grips with a sight unit and tracer ammunition as means of targetting.
The M134 fires the standard 7.62x51mm NATO round at a rate of fire that ranges between 300 and 6.000 rpm. Two rates of fire can be selected, the most common are 2.000 and 4.000 rpm. Area targets can be engaged at ranges well over 1 km. The dispersion is about 6 mrad. Normal ammunition cannisters of 1.500, 3.000 or 4.500 rounds are used.
Role in Ghost Recon[]
The M134 heavy machine gun is the main armament for the UH-60 Black Hawks and the MH-60K Black Hawks.
The Hammer drone also has a minigun.
Santa Blanca's HMMWVs, UNIDAD armored vehicles are armed with miniguns. Yet It has an unusually (if not unrealistic) wide-spread availability, given that any faction from UNIDAD, sicarios, to even the Bolivian rebels use them as their mounted guns of choice, a particularly huge investment for all parties involved since 1 minigun costs over $20,000 per unit, not including ammunition and maintenance. They can also function without active power sources, as there are several instances of miniguns places simply on a tripod mount, and not much else.
Another inconsistency is that the miniguns mounted on helicopter hardpoints function as intended, with no spinup time, low recoil and rapid rate of fire (AKA Rof, albeit not as fast as the real one for balancing reasons). However, they were mounted on vehicles or guard towers suffer from an unusually slow RoF, wide spread, and still has a spinup time.
In Operation Greenstone, the Sentinel Heavies are armed with handheld miniguns. In real life the miniguns are not handheld, but Empty Shell llc's XM556 microguns can. Although these guys would run out of ammo very fast, these soldiers may be more unrealistic than the Wolves' weaponized drones.
Overheating[]
After about 15–20 seconds of continuous fire it will completely overheat and be unusable until it cools.
Appearances[]
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Island Thunder
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint