Morganni Wrote:Perhaps, but I'm also under the impression that in such cases the bad part is usually fairly recognizable and one can put in a replacement without it being a major hassle. Whereas with electronic equipment, even figuring out where the problem is can be an adventure.I can attest to this. Having a weapon system that offers no moving parts to absorb the recoil generally don't do to well in the long run - wear from metal fatigue beats out wear from friction big time. And this is to say nothing of how that tends to throw off your aim.
As for electrical gremlins... Yep, been there, done that. We once had a casualty in our gun's firing circuit - had the gun down for two weeks before we got it all sorted out. Was it the firing control circuit card in the EP2 panel? Looked like it - damn thing was a crispy critter and that's a helluvan achievement considering how over-built these things are. But nope, not it. Switches? You'd think so, but no. Firing pin? We were hoping so, but nada. We got desperate and had the Fire Control techs run a full diagnostic on their stuff, but it was clean, too. By this time we knew there was a short in the system somewhere, but we couldn't figure out where.
Eventually, we began to systematically tear apart the electrical boxes the firing circuits went through, and eventually found it: a terminal board inside and electrical box located on the top of the gun. Saltwater had seeped through the seals on the gunhouse and into the electrical box. Had us righteously cheezed off that it wasn't sealed up tight - we knew that it at least wasn't any of us responsible for it since none of us had ever been into the damn thing.