Nasty NEW bullet

Read this, shocking. No doubt raygun knows/ would like this.

Side note how do i rename the link?

<url=http://wherever.com>This Is The Link</url>

Just like that, replacing the <>s with []s.

Bloody hell.

As to fixing the link, I'd suggest hitting the edit button and naming the link: Nasty New Bullet. Ouch.

-Siege

Holy... Ouch! That's one reason why I'll never join the Armed Forces. Fragging new bullet technology...

Jeezus look at what it does to that slab of meat!

This is really just a link to one of the pages linked from that page but I missed it the first time so I think others might have...

Jesus Christ! Mother of God!

I suppose the question is: How good is it at penetrating kevlar? AFAIK normal bullets can be stopped by a kavlar vest, why would the fact that these bullets are made out of blended metals make them fare any better?

Hamburger, anyone?

Kevlar is better than, say, nothing when dealing with most small-caliber bullets. I don't know enough about this "blended metal" to know if it could penetrate...I mean, I don't think the wounds are caused by hydrostatic pressure bursting the flesh, and certainyl the penetration at normal speeds wouldn't do it. There's no explosive tip. It does have a smaller diameter tip, but that shouldn't make this much of a difference.

This round was discussed here some time ago. Lemme dig up the link for ya...

Here.

It's not as good as it's made to sound. It's just hype, sounds an awful lot like the "teflon coated copkiller bullet" syndrome. It doesn't penetrate armor any better than existing dedicated armor piercing rounds. Currently there doesn't seem to be any objective research into how the bullet really work, so be critical when reading that stuff.

Lilt, NATO standard 5.56x45mm FMJ rounds are not stopped by kevlar vests at short ranges. I'd be very surprised if this round was -- that would mean it penetrated soft body armor far worse than FMJ rounds.

The large wound cavities are supposedly created because the bullet fragments as soon as it hits something soft. At best, if it works exactly like the makers claim it does, it might work like an armor piercing penetrator when hitting something hard (like armor) and then fragment when hitting flesh.

Obviously, the technology has several downsides, as discussed in the thread I linked. If it didn't, everyone would be using it...

If this really is as great as it sounds, then just add the equivalent of a few layers of drywall to body armor. Boom, it no longer penetrates. I'm not particularly familiar with drywall, but I'm pretty sure that'd be lighter than plates to stop conventional rounds.

~J

I don't think so. Hard armor plates such as in the US military flak gear are generally made of titanium, as far as I recall. Drywall's an assload heavier than titanium. I don't remember exactly what it's made of, but it looks and feels like compressed chalk dust - i.e. it's dense as hell.

Plus, an average sheet of drywall is 3/4s of an inch to an inch thick. That's some pretty thick 'additive' plating to an already heavy vest.

I'm not impugning the idea... just impugning the use of drywall specifically.

And drywall cracks really easily. I think it's a variant of concrete.

They use it to make walls...It's pretty sturdy, but you can punch through it. I can.

Or hit it too hard with your knee. Or lean back too hard.

Actually, if you need to stop that kind of bullet, put 2+ inches of ballistic gelatin outside your armored vest. The bullet will fragment in the gelatin, and then hit the vest in pieces. Result: Zero penetration. And ballistic gelatin is pretty darn light compared to any body armor material.

This ammunition brings a new meaning to fragged, looks like what a hollow-point shotgun slug would do. I figure this ammunition where it to be put into SR terms would probably have the following effects: Increase damage level by one, 1/2 ballistic rating.

The whole of the end part of the article describes how the president of sales and manufacturing of the firm that makes these rounds is trying to say that "Dude, our rounds are totally sweet", while objective testing says "Well, they have some potential, but they aren't very special".

And frankly, I'm more willing to believe the objective testers than the PR guy. Automatically believing what this guy Bulmer says about the rounds is like automatically believing what Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said about the war in Iraq.

So, for the time being, I wouldn't say this ammunition brings a new meaning to fragged. Not considering how completely you can already mess up a person with the kinds of bullets around.

If you really think this round rocks and you want it for SR (assuming of course then that these rounds aren't the standard even though they rock so much), +2 Power with -25% Ranges or +1 DL/½ armor with -50% Ranges sounds rather good, with Misc Weird Shit Effects, like not being able to shoot through anything non-solid.

Also, I find it hilarious that the pro-RBCD guys are saying that shooting the rounds into gelatin won't work because ballistic gelatin is not enough like flesh, but somehow artists' clay works...

i suppose it's possible that the round has better fragmentation qualities against a 98-degree target than a 36-degree one--but on the other hand, what happens if you use the round in cold weather? are they going to start issuing seperate temperate and cold-weather ammo, the way they do with BDUs? (that's rhetorical.)

i do want to see the test results that claim the round will punch through steel, but shatter into flesh.

I'm still snickering at the lethal ass shot...

I'm more interested in those intelligent rounds that've been coming out of Mexico lately. Apparently, they're capable of piercing most body armors by making "decisions" at impact on how to deform.

My advice on this matter would be not to believe everything you read. Exploding meat does not necessarily equal penetrated armor and then exploded meat. Entertaining videos of exploding meat and other fun stuff can be found here.

Did I miss something, or are they sellign what amounts to a "glaser" round for rifles? I'm not sure what gives it the improve penetration on hard materials, but body armors aren't generally hard materials anyhow, so I don;t see it being any more useful in SR terms than a normal glaser. Maybe it would work better when you want to penetrate certain barrier types (/action twirl finger).

Anyhow, with SR's (thankfully optional) "SOTA" rules, these bullets would be incable of harming a fly if you were to buy them now and save them until 2063.

SOTA: Running to Stand Still. Coming to gaming tables worldwide.

~J

Mongoose, they're definitely not Glaser rounds. The actual metal supposedly fragments when it hits flesh, it doesn't have any separate material inside the jacket for that effect. And it's supposed to stay intact against anything solid, which if true would give it decent armor penetration properties.

They're saying it stays intact against anything solid, which soft body armor is. But I wonder if it's even been tested against body armor anywhere. At least I haven't seen any reference in any of the articles, even the ones where LeMas is going on about how überkewl these rounds are.

What I got from that video is that it's Armor Piercing Fragmentation rounds. Interesting...

body armour shouldn't matter, how many people armour theirbuttocks, after all?

I know I do.

From what they did to that potroast I'd say they were more like HEAP ammo. High explosive armor piercing. OK so they don't actually have a chemical explosive but it strikes me that the bullet fragments with a fair amount of force.

You don't need any kind of additional force for the fragmentation effect for it to look like that. The immense amount of kinetic energy a bullet has achieves that effect.

Check these movies, especially the watermelon bits. And those are likely to be SP or HP rounds, not fragmenting.

This reminds of me a South African company which about 5-6 years back announced that they had developed a pistol calibre bullet that could fire through a 3-inch concrete wall and kill a target standing on the other side. The customers envisioned for this bullet were spec forces, especially counter-terrorist units in hostage rescue scenarios. The SAS was said to be testing the bullet but I heard nothing more about it after a while.

Has someone else (Raygun?) heard about this bullet or heard more about it 'cos I couldn't remember what the company developing the bullet was called and I've been trying to find it on the net ever since I read this thread?

I don't recall that specifically. There have been more than a few marketing wonders in the sphere of small arms munitions in the past. Do you remember anything specific about it?

Nothing specific off the top of my head. The article had a lot of photos attached of the demonstration and all I remember is being rather incredulous / suspicious. The pistol used in the demonstration was some South African make that looked very close to a Firestar (pretty generic boxy pistol); I vaguely recall the bullet being bigger than a 9mm but it looked slimmer than a .45 so I'm guessing it was 10mm or .40S&W or some funny calibre close to those dimensions.

I forget the velocity claimed for the bullet but remember that it didn't set off any alarm bells. Can't remember what kind of tip it had, either, but it definitely was not a saboted round.

Hmm. Point taken.

@Raygun: If blended metal bullets worked as well as the advertising claims they to do: what stats would you give to different calibers of the bullets? (assuming they made bullets that achieve the advertising claims by 2060 and make heavy pistol rounds/shotgun slug variants ETC)

I'm not going to endorse the idea by hazarding a guess, Lilt. Sorry. I'm sure you're perfectly capable of coming up with rules that make you happy all on your own.

Cool. just an idea.