I'd start the animation with the largest "flare", dropping the inbetween smaller ones you have before that. Weapon muzzle flashes are quite brief, and having an animation with a smaller amount of frames would convey that impression. Other thing you could do is variate the animations, have one showing the largest flare, and another with just small flares (look at a machinegun firing in a movie in slow-motion to get the idea - i suggest Predator
). The brain will fill the spaces between those frames.
I'd show you an edit, but my Ggale can't open your gifs (Color table missing - some watermarking?).
Oh, and the ship looks a bit too smooth, it's hard to tell the individual parts from the others (they all look too mixed into the others - looks a bit like a big triangle with a gradient inside). I'd use less inbetween shades to cut that smoother look.