Armor Piercing .308

Charlie Mike, That's what some other guys have said. Some units and missions get it, some don't. I"m not going to bring politics into it but I'd think that it had something to do with it.

most small arms AP round are tungsten, the rest are lamo steel core 'penetrators'
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Of the new generation, yes. Not so the old 30-06, and even .308 stuff. The US first went to tungsten core .308 AP black tip with a big buy in the late 90's, early 2000's? I'm not going to look it up but I remember the official release on the buy. They bought it from Sweden, IIRC. They might have geared up for regular production here after that, I don't know.

To be honest in .308 and below the difference between hard steel "penetrators" ( not mild steel like some, I'm talking about real AP/API) and tungsten core performance isn't great. More power and velocity are needed to really show what tungsten can do. Yes, it's better, but not that much. In .50 cal and above it's a much bigger difference.

The sub caliber SLAP rounds were designed to bring that velocity up just as in tank rounds. Those are tungsten.

Not sure about each individual NATO country in the 80's, for instance, but ours then was steel. It's still as rare as hens teeth in any event, and illegal to manufacturer and import, and to possess in some states.
 
mrmaigo said:
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
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Tank rounds made from tungsten alloy are NOT heavier than the ones made from DU alloy. You may be reading the periodic table wrong. The symbol for tungsten is W for wolfram. Its atomic number is 74 ,whereas gold is 79, lead is 82 and uranium is 92. So that says, even without accounting for odd number of neutrons, etc messing with the atomic weight, uranium is around 20% heaver than tungsten. The incendiary properties of DU rounds have nothing to do with chemical explosives . They are caused by the slug shedding small pieces of themselves and igniting them as the penetrate the armor, much like the zirconia nose cap in front of the warhead on some anti-shipping missiles like the Exocet enhance the heat effect of the blast and basically set darn near everything on fire, including aluminum.
 
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Atomic number and density of the solid are different properties. The density of tungsten is 19.3, uranium 19.5.
 
Cougar Allen said:
Atomic number and density of the solid are different properties. The density of tungsten is 19.3, uranium 19.5.
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almost exactly what i was gonna type, but I can't find uranium as higher than 19.25 or listed as denser than tungsten... splitting hairs, they're still close. DU has nicer properties but costs too much and kills puppies :p
 
P.S. The US government doesn't feel depleted uranium is expensive -- they feel it's a byproduct that has to be disposed of somehow, and they use it for everything they can think of.
 
SkinnyJoe said:
Also, would a regular .50 BMG defeat Level IV plate?
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The answer is yes, unless you were standing behind a tank.

Level IV is designed to stop a .30-06 AP round of about 168 gr. traveling at 2860 fps. which has a little over 3000 lbs/ft of muzzle energy. That's pretty
darn impressive. But . . .

A .50 cal BMG military load uses a 668 gr. (a wee bit lighter than the 900 gr. .600 Nitro Express) bullet zipping along at 2810 fps. (vs. a paltry 1650 fps for the .600 NE) for a whopping 12,600 lbs/ft of muzzle energy (over twice what the formidable "elephant gun" produces.

Probably need a Level XL plate and an oil drum of Ben-Gay to stop a fiddy.
 
mrmaigo said:
maybe we're using different googles?
and they have to pick up the DU slugs, something about not wanting to poison future generations of 'liberated' peoples :o
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The slugs are not the problem. What would be an issue is the uranium that gets turned into uranium oxide "dust" or gas by the impact and burning. In absolute terms, DU is better because it is easier to produce, machine and it is "self sharpening" because if its fine crystalline structure. Ames Lab is currently researching alloying tungsten with "metallic alloy glass nanostructure" in hopes of creating a substance that will shear in the predictable manner that DU does instead of mushrooming and not have the potential environmental issues. But until that comes along, DU is still the best material.
 
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DU is still mildly radioactive, but it's also a highly toxic heavy metal. If one of those many many 1000 round patches fired from an A-10 happens to have a field growing on top of it... that's not a good thing
 
mrmaigo said:
DU is still mildly radioactive, but it's also a highly toxic heavy metal. If one of those many many 1000 round patches fired from an A-10 happens to have a field growing on top of it... that's not a good thing
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Yes, but considering whose field it is likely to be.................:eek::D Apparently the toxicity doesn't become an issue until the metal "converts" into uranium oxide.
 
Mayber I missed it in the postings but DU is also pyrofloric, like a sparkler when it hits something solid. Could be a fire starter.
 
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