The present invention pertains to a device for testing a gun to be mounted on a vehicle, and more particularly, to a device for operating the gun through one or more complete test cycles without using live ammunition.
Guns which are used on vehicles such as tanks and helicopters may be operated in a semi-automatic mode or in an automatic mode by using a source of gun control signals to cause the guns to operate through a portion of a first cycle of operation and using a gun recoil signal to finish the first cycle and initiate the start of each subsequent cycle. If a gun misfires, operation terminates at the recoil portion of the cycle, so live ammunition should be used when testing a gun to insure that it performs propertly through several cycles of automatic operation. Since it is not always practical to do this at manufacturing facilities, or when troubleshooting a gun system, a modified gun which can go through automatic cycling without using live ammunition and without stopping, can be installed on the vehicle and used to test the control circuitry and ammunition feed system for automatic and semi-automatic operation. When the gun system test is completed with the modified gun, the modified gun is removed and a dedicated gun, which is to remain with the vehicle, is installed for further tests. These further tests include depressing the trigger switch causing the gun to begin a cycle of operation which continues until the gun stops in the misfire mode because a lack of ammunition prevents gun recoil. At this time a misfire switch on the weapon control panel can be depressed allowing the gun to complete its cycle. One difficulty is, that the above procedure tests the electronic control system but does not insure that the dedicated gun can move through the entire cycle using live ammunition, without stopping in the misfire mode. Also using a modified gun for part of the test and a dedicated gun for the remainder of the tests, requires quite a bit of time for mounting and dismounting the guns which makes testing slow and expensive.