In a firefight, the side that first sends the most bullets to the target usually wins, so to possess a weapon that fires 50 rounds per second is a gigantic advantage.

I recently got to see that advantage firsthand as I sped along the Arizona desert and fired Dillon Aero's M134D Minigun from the door of a vintage Huey.

Mike Dillon, founder of Dillon Precision - the well-known reloading-equipment builder - has long had an interest in firearms, so in the mid-1980s, he added a Minigun to his collection of automatic weapons. As Dillon got acquainted with it, he found reliability problems (especially with the delinker), so he set out to see if he could make the gun work better - not for profit, but to relieve the frequent frustration of stoppages.