Is the XM18 real?

Factual Questions
1

I’m not sure if is a GQ (it should have a definite answer) or Cafe Society (inspired by a movie) question.

I just watched The Dogs of War in which Christopher Walken’s character spends some time putting things asunder with a bad-ass weapon called an XM18E1R, also called XM18 for short. It’s a sort of hand-portable artillery battalion, with a gatling gun arrangement for the cylinders.

Does that weapon exist in real-life? Google turned up a page in Japanese (which I do not speak) that had a screen shot from the movie, and that’s it.

2

Ah ha, apparently the magic Google words are “XM18 weapon”.

http://www.soft.net.uk/entrinet/us_helos_weapons.htm

Apparently it’s something you can shoot out of helicopters in Vietnam.

I’ll let you take it from here, 'cause I have, shall we say, a limited interest in guns. Big guns. Big badasssssss guns… :smiley:

that you can shoot out of helicopters
and anyway the GQ ballistics mavens will be along in a minute i don’t doubt

i loved the dogs of war btw
“everybody goes home”

3

Thanks DDG, I should have mentioned that I’d found that already and it’s not the item in question. We also had an early stage of development defensive missile designated XM-18; that’s not it either.

Here’s a picture from that Japanese site.

4

The picture on the Japanese site looks like photos of a Soviet made, automatic shotgun that I saw one time in a magazine. IIRC the US military does have a grenade launcher that looks similar to that as well.