The United States Army is always willing to push the envelope when it comes to tech — or to look for it in unusual places.
According to a new report, the U.S. Army is testing a prototype four-barrel rifle that’s capable of firing all four rounds simultaneously. With all four barrels housed in one metal sleeve, the next-gen rifle looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Where did it find such a beast of a firearm? The sleek, futuristic-looking “ribbon gun” was designed in a garage in Colorado Springs by inventor Martin Grier, owner of Forward Defence Munitions, who spent an estimated $500,000 making his dream a reality.

While a vertically stacked, four-barrel gun capable of firing all rounds at the same time sounds all kinds of deadly, an additional hair-raising detail is that the gun can alternatively fire at a theoretical rate of 250 rounds every second. It can house four-round blocks of ammunition, which are fed into the gun horizontally. Each ammo block is able to hold four rounds of 6mm bullets, a calibre that allows for increased range and penetration. The innovative firing system is based on an electric actuator that’s similar to electrically fired weapons such as the M61 Vulcan 20mm Gatling gun and M134 Gatling gun.

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