Originally Posted by
glad rag
https://youtu.be/awc7Rp-f6HA
However it was disappointing, in this time of austerity, that they were throwing the excess from the mini gun over the side.
That's for safety. A gatling gun can have a misfire/hangfire without a stoppage. A misfired/hangfired cartridge is a dangerous thing and best dumped overboard. That means immediately dumping overboard all the spent brass from the minigun.
As for the monetary value of the spent brass, it's usually not cost effective to reload military brass, which means its monetary value is the scrap value of the brass. And that means it's probably more expensive to recover it, store it, and recycle it than to just dump it overboard.