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Army Researchers Patent Self-destructing Bullet Designed To Save Lives (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center recently patented a new type of bullet capable of self-destructing after traveling over a predetermined distance. The idea behind the new and advanced projectile is that it might help limit the extent of collateral damage (read: innocents dying) during battle or in other operational settings and environments. As for how it all works, the U.S. Army explains that when one of these limited-range projectiles is fired, a pyrotechnical material is ignited at the same time and reacts with a special coating on the bullet. "The pyrotechnic material ignites the reactive material, and if the projectile reaches a maximum desired range prior to impact with a target," the Army writes, "the ignited reactive material transforms the projectile into an aerodynamically unstable object." The researchers add that the desired range of its limited-range projectile can be adjusted by switching up the reactive materials used. Put simply, the Army has come up with what effectively amounts to a self-destructing bullet that is rendered ineffective over certain distances.
Or less effective even
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I'm sure someone in the Army has read the Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III which prohibits "the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body".
Unless these things have a built in kill switch which causes them not to explode upon entering a human body, I'd think these things would be illegal for normal warfare.
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The point of war is to cause so much damage to your opponent that they give up whatever they were fighting for or you wipe them out completely, having a safe war where only the fighting soldiers die in designated warzones is utterly pointless, you might as well sort things out with a game of football or something. If we really don't want civilian casualties we need to drop the pretense of concepts like "precision" bombing / strikes, safe-T-bullets and/or whatever other NERF-coated garbage makes war a desirable THING to keep doing forever.
War is Hell and we shouldn't want to fight it. Period.
Certainly not destructive, just range limited. Actually, makes a lot of sense, especially during training where you'd like to keep bullets inside a well defined area.
The chemicals they're using for this sound similar to the ones used in tracer ammo. Tracer ammo is notorious for causing unintentional fires, and if this stuff has to burn hot enough to melt the lead bullets I can only imagine how effective it must be at starting fires.
No, you lug around 40 pounds of ammo with a range set at the maximum effective range of your weapon. Then if you miss your shot doesn't go on to create a friendly fire casualty when it goes on to hit a guy you couldn't even see from the position you fired it.
Is there any data on how much of an issue this is? Even in a war zone? It seems like in an area of active engagement, stray bullets from a distance would be on the low end of things that cause collateral damage. I mean, we have bombs getting dropped from aircraft and missiles being shot from drones. I'd be willing to bet that even a tiny increase in the specificity of those types of weapons would save far more lives than limiting the lethal range of bullets.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Fewer effective.
Morons.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Fewer effective.
Morons.
Actually, as I understand it, the project started under George W. Bush, so the original research proposal stated that the desired bullet would be "morer ineffectivicated" after it went "kinda far."
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and if it does hit someone I guess it explodes inside them instead
<sarcasm> No that that would a violation of the rules of war this is a safety feature. really honest. The military would never try to get around those.</sarcasm>
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...except war isn't quite that organized.
Actually it is. Inherent in the M16/M4 design is that a soldier does not really need to pick off another soldier at 700 yards. That they are better served with a smaller more intermediate cartridge that is more limited in range but allows the soldier to carry two to three times the ammo for the same weight. And what justified this logic, the Army's own data from debriefing combat troops at the end of WW2. Despite the M1 Garand's respectable long range accuracy the Army, to their great surprise, discovered that soldiers with Garands almost never fired at a target beyond 100 yards.
The GP did no such thing, its the US Army that defines the effective range of the M4 to be 500m.
As an honorably discharged Specialist in the US Army I say, "Go fuck yourself... Sir!"
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Yes, but the point was that you still want flexibility. You might find yourself in a situation where you might be prone and want to and be able to take a slow shot at someone at extreme range.
Of course, that is why they have "designated marksman" weapons, which are stock weapons that have been fine tuned and upgraded which can achieve much more accuracy without being completely new weapons with different ammo. But you don't always have a DM or their weapon.
Not sure how I feel about it, but it would probably be okay to have your round self destruct at actual maximum effective range. Just don't give the DM that ammo.
Yeah, that was fixed in about six months as I recall. It had to do with the failure to realize that they had to be kept clean, more than anything else. Some say it was actually just a simple miscommunication, but I'm inclined to think it was just incompetence. It hasn't been a problem since the poster was probably born. It was a solved issue by 1975 - I can speak to this first-hand.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
And within the range you get a reacting bullet in your gut.
I'd bet they'd be set up for 1km or so for small arms - somewhere beyond the point where anyone is hitting on purpose.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm sure that once just one of these rounds malfunctions and destroys itself while still in the barrel, your rifle will disintegrate quite effectively while firing subsequent rounds.
Read TFA.
The rounds don't destroy themselves, they just become aerodynamically unstable and tumble, which makes them lose energy VERY quickly and subsequently drop like a rock so that they don't travel very far. None of this is a problem inside the ammo case, the magazine, the breech, the barrel itself or the muzzle.
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It was not simply a failure to keep it clean. Armalite designed their AR-15 (militarized by the Army into the M16) to use a very clean burning powder. This appropriate powder may have also been used during evaluation, not 100% sure. However for mass production the Army went with the old ball powder it had been (since late WW2 ?). The powder left far more residue behind. For a direct gas operating mechanism this was a bad idea and greatly increased the amount of fouling and cleaning required.
There *may* have been another problem. I haven't read about it in any official history (like the powder issue above) but I once worked for a man who had been once of the very first Marines sent to the DaNang area and had to trade their M14s in for M16s. Besides the powder residue problem he claimed there was some mechanical component that would break if there was too much full auto fire (heat). There was no corrective action, you had to see the armorer when you got back to base. He said they carried a lot of extra grenades as a result of all this.
What's a realistic range for an aimed shot in 5.56 NATO? 300 meters? But the bullet can go more than a mile if you put it in the right trajectory. I wouldn't mind having a round that destroys itself after 300 meters. More than that and you're probably hitting something you didn't aim at.
Even normal tracer rounds can be aerodynamically unstable as the tracer element is exhausted. When I was a Marine, we were taught to never fire 7.62mm tracers overhead of friendly troops beyond a range of 700m, and no more than 400m for 5.56mm tracers. This is the range where they stop glowing. This announcement seems odd to me, since unstable trajectories should make the bullets more dangerous, and they would also be incendiary (they set stuff on fire).
A better approach to limiting the range of bullets may be to train soldiers to avoid excessively elevating their muzzles. Poorly trained troops have a tendency to shoot high, especially at night.
The Radically Invasive Projectile: exploding inside a breech near you! http://g2rammo.com/
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When your opponent has a gun that will fire reliably while burried in mud, or filled with sand, a gun you "must keep clean" is a dismal failure and putting in place procedures to ensure it's kept clean is not "fixing" it.
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Somebody who was NOT there has to decide what "could be avoided" means, because merely being there must inevitably compromise your judgement.
Somebody who was NOT there has the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, and history shows they will crucify the poor son of a bitch who was in the bad situation at the time, ignoring that sometimes you do NOT have the luxury of deep thought. Things like Abu Ghraib can be judged by anyone--there was no element of "you need to do this immediately or you and your friends will die." When it comes to "why did you shoot at that house full of civilians?" the issue is a LOT more complicated.
Discounting someone's judgement "because they were there" is inexcusable. Doing so on the topic in question ("Your weapon doesn't work properly because you're a murdering bastard and this is a safety feature to keep you from murdering more people") does, indeed, merit the response "Go fuck yourself."
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
For an M16, the max effective range against a point target (single person) is 550 meters. For an area target (vehicle or troop formation) it is 800 meters.
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