Armor Piercing .308

There are federal and state laws against .308/7.62 NATO Black tip AP. In the AP ban 30-06 AP, and M885/SS109 5.56 steel core ( but not black tip AP 5.56 ) are excluded from the ban and are ok to buy, sell, etc.

Some states have their own laws going even farther.

The guys in California had full auto AK's, and a converted, full auto HK 91, and had armor custom made and home modified for themselves going up to their necks. The first responders only had 9mm, and 12 ga so they were pretty much outranged, and out penetrated. No offense to LAPD but if those guys really wanted to kill cops they could have had a field day with it. They wanted to leave more than kill cops.( they were pumped up with tranquilizers for the job, it might have taken some aggression out of them.) They shot to keep the LAPD back, and suppress fire as apparently the 9mm bullets were hurting them enough to annoy them. Their reactions to impacts were well documented in the media footage.

Regular, non AP M80 7.62X51NATO/.308 does a pretty good job on cars as it is. Most common, non purpose barriers in fact. The SS109 5.56 does pretty well, but doesn't have nearly the oomph of .308 or 30-06.

For years 7.62X54R AP/API/ and .303 AP has been on the the gunshow circut and still shows up occasionally.All kinds of color codes. Either one will do as well as .308 or 30-06 AP.

Most non AP color coded stuff in7.62X54 R surplus is mild steel core, which does pretty well too.

Lots of legal choices if you want AP ammo for shooting stuff.
 
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while some vest's work pretty well against handgun ammo (or some handgun ammo) i dont know of hardly anything thats gonna stop 556 or 762X39, not with out a plate anyway, .50BMG is gonna blow thru any vest imho.

AP ammo is really more for use against thinly armored vehicles/planes than for anti personel use, my dad told me in WW2 they would load some AP in garands because it worked better against barricades and such than std ball.
 
SIFU1A said:
while some vest's work pretty well against handgun ammo (or some handgun ammo) i dont know of hardly anything thats gonna stop 556 or 762X39, not with out a plate anyway, .50BMG is gonna blow thru any vest imho.

AP ammo is really more for use against thinly armored vehicles/planes than for anti personel use, my dad told me in WW2 they would load some AP in garands because it worked better against barricades and such than std ball.
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enough layers will stop anything, but who wants to wear +/-5 inches of solid fabric?
 
my dad still has two military boxes full of 30-06 AP bullets. they are old but they still work well. we were punching holes in oak trees that were 2ft thick.. complete pass threws.. my uncles best friend that was in the army (a major at the time) got them for us. this was in the late 80's.
 
Just a note. In a number states any ammo with a core made from ANYTHING other than lead or a common "lead substitute" like solid copper or bronze is illegal so even plain old SS109 NATO ball ammo would be illegal in theory.
 
A point about 'blunt force trauma.' Remember any bullet that will knock a man down, crush his armor's trauma plate, etc., will do the same thing to the person firing the shot. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The movie and tv show scenes of a bullet knocking someone for a loop are BS. If the person being impacted was knocked yards back or flipped over, the same thing would happen to the shooter. Just plain physics. A bullet of any 'normal' caliber, because of its relatively small size and velocity, has more 'penetrating force' than 'blunt force.'

I caught a 'Mythbusters' episode a while back wherein they were testing bullet impact and debunking the Hollywood 'bullet flips the bad guy' scenes. They hung a 150 lb pig carcass on a horizontal pipe using a wire loop and right at the end of the pipe so the carcass was just barely hanging there. They shot 357s, 44 mags, 308, etc., and none of those rounds moved the pig the quarter inch or so that would cause it to fall from the pipe. What finally did cause the pig to fall was a 12 gauge slug fired from pretty close range. If memory serves, a 12 gauge slug is about .75 inch in diameter and weighs a full ounce or 437.5 grains, almost triple the weight of a 150 grain 308 bullet.
 
Old CW4 said:
A point about 'blunt force trauma.' Remember any bullet that will knock a man down, crush his armor's trauma plate, etc., will do the same thing to the person firing the shot. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction....(snip)
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You are confusing conservation of momentum with conservation of energy.

Momentum is mass x velocity, so the momentum of the bullet and the recoiling firearm will be the same, albeit a rifle bullet might leave the muzzle at 3,000fps whilst the rifle will be going the other way at only a few fps as it is so much more massive.

Energy however is proportional to the square of the velocity so the energy in the bullet is many thousands of times greater than in the recoiling rifle.

During the first world war grenade launchers were made to be fitted to the muzzles of ordinary infantry rifles. As a grenade is so much more massive than a bullet, a far greater proportion of the energy is transmitted to the rifle which had to be fired with the butt resting on the ground, somewhat after the fashion of a small mortar. The wooden stocks of the rifles not infrequently broke under the recoil and any soldier stupid enough to try and launch a grenade holding a rifle to his shoulder was very badly injured.
 
SkinnyJoe said:
Also, would a regular .50 BMG defeat Level IV plate?
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Every reference I have seen says "easily". The .50BMG has four or five times the muzzle energy of a .308 (12550 ft. lbs vs. 2648 ft. lbs). :eek:
 
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SkinnyJoe said:
Did they have any armor on their heads and necks? Is there such a thing?
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neck armour is basicaly a collar, mainly protecting the back of the neck, and also the sides. crye used to have some on their site, but it's not on there now.

head protection is certainly available, the basic form being the helmet. further protection can be added in the form of a visor, but there is a limit to what they can do.either you use steel or conventional plate matiriels, and have to have some kind of vision slot made of ballistic glass, which limits your view, or you use polycarbonate or simmilar, which has lower ballistic protection, but allows you to see better. plus, you can't make it too heavy, or your neck will have difficulties supporting it, so they are rarely up to the level of a vest.
I've also seen what where supposedly steel facemasks, with eye holes, intended to protect the face. looked like something out of a horror movie, and I'm not sure if they ever got produced.
 
SkinnyJoe said:
Neat stuff. How does ammo with a steel core compare with depleted uranium?
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Depleted uranium is most effective because it is considerably heavier than even lead, gold or tungsten, so what you get in say the latest "silver bullet' tank round is 10 kilograms of mass that is 20 mm in diater at is widest point moving at 5000 fps+ and concentrating all of that mass onto a point. DU alloy also sheds material in a very predictable fashion upon impact instead of blunting like steel or tungsten can do, so you end up with a "self sharpening" penetrator that gives off white hot little flecks of uranium. The US tank rounds are longer, heavier (10 kilos vs around 7-7.5 kilos) and slightly slower than comparable tungsten penetrator, but they don't need to be fired from the newer 55 caliber 120mm gun tubes and that extra mass supposedly allows them to resist the sideways explosive shearing effect of the newer Russian reactive armor that they are installing on the T-90's. If you look at a cutaway picture of the A3 version Us round, the penetrator is so long that they had to shorten the primer tube. It runs almost the entire length of the interior of the shell and still has a goodly amount sticking out the front. it also uses a carbon fiber sabot setup so you get a little more velocity even with the short barrel and heavier penetrator. As far as I know, most Western countries do not use DU for safety and environmental reasons. I think only us and the Brits use them on our side. And remember that the longest recorded tank main gun combat kill was a British Challenger 2 that took out an Iraqi tank at over 5000 meters during the Gulf War!!!!:eek:
 
I recall seeing .308/7.62 S.L.A.P. rounds for sale at around $10 per round at least a decade ago at a gunshow.

I know they still use 50 cal SLAP, but I heard they discontinued the .308 SLAP tungsten penetrators due to troubles, including incidents of them destroying barrells. Believe it or not you can and will find they made a DU .308 round back in the 80's. In the early 90's these were going for between $50 and $200 per round to collectors. Naturally both of these would be illegal according to the AP ammo bill enacted in the 80's.

Still pretty cool though.
 
Tungsten is heavier than uranium, it's like the 3rd heaviest element.
Large bore cannon fired darts (from tanks) aren't half the fun of DU, it's when you mix them in HE in a 20-30mm and spit out 1000 to 6000 rpm
Each round 30mm DU will punch through a foot and a half of armor and ignite anything near by
 
Tungsten is heavier than uranium, it's like the 3rd heaviest element.
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The new AP ammo bought from sweden for the US military ( black tip .223 and .308 ) is tungsten core, jacketed but not sabot ( like S.L.A.P.). Color code is the same black tip as the old steel core AP ammo. I've heard it is pretty nice stuff but I have never seen or tested any yet.

When I was in the army in the early 80's, I never saw round one of AP ammo, and that included in our companies basic loadout for war ( germany during the cold war. We had in my unit everything new, excellent condition, unlike statesides units I served in. It was a much higher level of readiness there.

I know the military ordered the stuff just for Iraq & afganistan.

For any soldiers in Iraq or afganistan. Did you ever encounter any small arms black tip AP? If so, was it rare. What kind of units was it issued too?
 
Neat stuff. How does ammo with a steel core compare with depleted uranium?
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As I understand it it only really begins to make a difference in .50 cal and higher, and in SABOT ammo that can achieve higher velocities. In .308, they did make a SABOT version of it (SLAP was typically tungsten darts, but a deleted Uranium supposedly existed) Going by what amounts to rumor there were examples of these DU SLAP rounds exiting the side of the barrell catastrophicly. Never heard that about .50 cal SLAP.

I have no way of verifying and only repeat it as an interesting rumor, with no evidence.
 
most small arms AP round are tungsten, the rest are lamo steel core 'penetrators'
When i was looking, m855 (standard issue 5.56) is $.26 a round, 5.56 AP is $1.44. Can't even find pictures of the stuff
 
I never saw AP ammo during my deployment. Then again, we weren't issued frag or 40mm either.
 
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