site banner

Revenge of the previous "gun guy" AMA

Deleted
21
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

APDS would probably fit the bill nicely

APDS in small arms has been tried before. The major problem with it is that a long, skinny dart doesn't have very good killing power- it isn't carrying very much kinetic energy and due to its nature of being a long, skinny dart has a very hard time actually dumping that energy into the target. Other problems include requiring much more precision in manufacture to fly straight and the sabots have a tendency upon separation to bounce off the ground at Mach 4 and injure squadmates (a problem noted in the SPIW trials).

If I recall correctly, exploding ammunition for small arms has some laws of war constraining its use. It's quite trivial to make an explosive 30-caliber projectile (InRange has a few videos about this, with both German and Russian examples used in WW2), but your accuracy suffers a bit unless you make the projectile correctly and the cost per round from both a pure BOM and manufacturing cost perspective increases significantly.

Which means, unless the guy is hit once or twice straight into a plate, he's just somewhat less likely to die.

He's significantly less likely to die. He's also much more likely to remain combat effective after taking a hit, which means that even if you end up causing eventual fatal injury to someone wearing this he's still probably going to be able to shoot back.

And while I agree that artillery is going to shred you no matter what armor you're wearing, that's not as effective when your enemy is either dug in (which a peer army could and would do) or irregular (in the case of civil war).

that's not as effective when your enemy is either dug in (

... I don't mean artillery of the kind the Taliban are using - a few rusty 120 mm mortars with a few shells, but the kind actual armies use.

You've heard the stories out of the Ukraine, or seen the pictures, right ? With accurate artillery fire, unless you have a deep shelter several meters under the ground, you're pretty much dead.