There's a bunch of killer problems faced by aerial antipersonnel weapons platforms. The target is usually: - Small. - Far away - Moving quickly in relation t

There's a bunch of killer problems faced by aerial antipersonnel weapons platforms. The target is usually: - Small. - Far away - Moving quickly in relation to the aircraft. Additionally, you have lots of vibration (from the engine, and air turbulence) and you have to count every gram of payload; which makes precision weapons unhappy, since they're both heavy and want to be held very still. You can solve the killer trio with very high rates of fire, or explosive projectiles.[1] These are both either very expensive or illegal for civilians; and you wouldn't want to be using them on a rice field anyway. There's a reason Predator UAVs use guided missiles, not small arms. --- [1]: The canonical ground-attack weapon, the GAU-8/A, uses both: 30mm explosive shells at 4,200 rounds per minute. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger