M230 chain gun

The Hughes M230 Chain Gun is a 30 mm, single-barrel automatic cannon developed by Hughes and now manufactured by Alliant Techsystems. It is an electrically operated chain gun, a weapon that uses external electrical power (as opposed to recoil or expanding gas generated by the firing cartridge) to cycle the weapon between shots.

Development

In 1972 Hughes Helicopters began a company-funded research effort to design a single machine gun to fire the U.S. Army's M50 20 mm round. By April 1973, the program had fired test rounds in more powerful 30 mm WECOM linked ammunition, from a prototype (A model). In January 1975 a model "C" was added, a linkless version for the proposed Advanced Attack Helicopter YAH-64; the helicopter was eventually adopted as the AH-64 Apache, with the model C as standard armament. The linked ammunition version was intended for the AH-1S Cobra, but was later dropped.

Design

Apache and DAP mounts

The M230 Chain Gun is the Area Weapon System on the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and is also used on the MH-60L Direct Action Penetrator (DAP). The M230 is mounted on the chin turret. It uses a 2 hp electric motor to fire 30 mm linkless ammunition at a rate of 625 (±25) rounds per minute. The gun requires a spool-up time of 0.2 seconds to achieve this rate of fire. The practical rate of fire is about 300 rounds per minute with a 10-minute cooling period as the gun is air cooled. The gun has a positive cook-off safety for open bolt clearing, and double ram prevention. Spent casings are ejected overboard through the bottom of the gun.

30 mm caliber

The 30 mm caliber is a specific size of autocannon ammunition. Such ammunition includes NATO standard 30×173mm and 30×113mmB rounds and Soviet 30×165mm rounds which are widely used around the world.

Usage

30 mm ammunition is typically not used against personnel, but rather as an anti-materiel or armor-piercing round. Rounds of this size can be effective against armored vehicles as well as fortified bunkers.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation use their 30 mm weapons in a variety of vehicles, including the Su-25 attack aircraft, Mi-24 helicopter, Mi-28 attack helicopter, Ka-50 attack helicopter, and the BMP-2, BMP-3, and BTR-90 infantry fighting vehicles. The most modern anti-aircraft gun systems in use by Russia are 30 mm caliber. The U.S. military uses 30 mm weapons in their A-10 Thunderbolt II and AH-64 Apache helicopter. It was going to be used in the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle until the project was cancelled.

Types of 30 mm ammunition

30 mm ammunition generally comes in three varieties: armor-piercing (AP), high-explosive (HE), and training rounds. Armor-piercing and high-explosive cartridges usually also possess incendiary characteristics.

AMD Radeon Rx 200 series

The Rx 200 series is a family of GPUs developed by AMD. A "preview" was seen on September 25, 2013. These GPUs are manufactured on a 28 nm Gate-Last process through TSMC or Common Platform Alliance.

Release

The Rx 200 series was announced on September 25, 2013, at the AMD GPU14 Tech Day event.Non-disclosure agreements were lifted on October 15, except for the R9 290X, and pre-orders opened on October 3.

Architecture

This article is about all products under the AMD Radeon Rx 200 Series brand.

Radeon

Radeon /ˈreɪdiːɒn/ is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of Advanced Micro Devices. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006.

Radeon Graphics

Radeon Graphics is the successor to the Rage line. Three different families of microarchitectures can be roughly distinguished, the fixed-pipeline family and the unified shader model-families of TeraScale and Graphics Core Next. ATI/AMD have developed different technologies, such as TruForm, HyperMemory, HyperZ, XGP, Eyefinity for multi-monitor setups, PowerPlay for power-saving, CrossFire (for multi-GPU) or Hybrid Graphics. A range of SIP blocks is also to be found on certain models in the Radeon products line: Unified Video Decoder, Video Coding Engine and TrueAudio.

The brand was previously only known as "ATI Radeon" until August 2010, when it was renamed to increase AMD's brand awareness on a global scale. Products up to and including the HD 5000 series are branded as ATI Radeon, while the HD 6000 series and beyond use the new AMD Radeon branding.