Brit machine gun goes full auto without a finger on trigger

Daily Mail:

A machine gun used by British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from a fault that can cause it to fire ten rounds a second without anyone pulling the trigger.

Internal Ministry of Defence documents - leaked to this newspaper - reveal that the Army’s 7.62mm chain guns, which are mounted on 800 Warrior armoured vehicles, have fired without warning at least 18 times since 1999.

Suspicions about the gun were first raised in 2003, when the weapon fired at Sergeant Albert Thompson of the 1st Battalion of the Black Watch in Iraq.

He was forced to have his leg amputated below the knee and was awarded more than £1million in compensation.

The MoD blamed the gunner, Captain Tam Henderson, and convicted him of negligence at a military hearing in Basra. He was later cleared on appeal.

An internal report - or Board of Inquiry - into the Thompson incident reveals that ‘undemanded firing’ of the chain gun occurred on at least six other occasions from 1999 to 2004. It concluded that the chain gun ‘is unpopular with many service users primarily due to a perception of reliability issues’.

Another report - a Munitions Incidents Summary, produced by the MoD’s Defence Logistics Organisation - reveals that the weapon fired without warning in 2004, killing an Iraqi civilian and severely injuring another Iraqi woman.

The MoD has admitted in an email to Mr Henderson that the weapon has fired at random 12 times this year alone.

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Weapons expert Warren Lister, who has extensive knowledge of the chain gun’s faults, said: ‘The cost of correcting the fault to the chain gun would be £18million, a relatively small amount compared to the total MoD budget.’

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It is remarkable they have not fixed this problem. It should be correctable and it is gross negligence not to take care of the problem. It is not like this is a computer that has gone rogue. If a military cannot control its weapons it is in real trouble.