Engineers at Picatinny Arsenal, the military research and manufacturing facility, have been experimenting with machine gun barrels made from cobalt alloys.

Cobalt alloy barrels produced using the flow forming technique.

Army.mil reports …

During testing, the first rifled, cobalt-alloy machine gun barrel ever produced using the “flow forming” process consistently reached high temperatures without degraded performance.

The proof-of-concept barrel was made of an alloy that contains more than 50 percent of the metal cobalt. Cobalt alloys are erosion- and corrosion-resistant metals that are designed to retain high strength during long-term exposure to high temperatures.

Cobalt alloys are frequently used in the aerospace industry, such as the hot-gas section of turbine engines, explained Leto. Cobalt alloys are also used as short liners for machine gun barrels.

“If you look at steel in a machine gun environment, it gets very hot at a high rate of fire,” said Leto. “The benefit of the cobalt alloy is that it is designed to operate in high-temperature, high-stress environments. It has the added benefits of corrosion and erosion resistance.”

[ Many thanks to Lance for emailing me the link. ]