Blended metal bullets, possible improvement for 5.56 caliber

www.airforcetimes.com...

video here if u have real video
www.armedforcesjournal.com...

Ben Thomas and three colleagues were driving north out of Baghdad in an SUV on a clear mid-September morning, headed down a dirt road into a rural village, when gunmen in several surrounding buildings opened fire on them.
In a brief but intense firefight, Thomas hit one of the attackers with a single shot from his M4 carbine at a distance he estimates was 100 to 110 yards.

He hit the man in the buttocks, a wound that typically is not fatal. But this round appeared to kill the assailant instantly.

“It entered his butt and completely destroyed everything in the lower left section of his stomach ... everything was torn apart,” Thomas said.

Thomas, a security consultant with a private company contracted by the government, recorded the first known enemy kill using a new — and controversial — bullet.

The bullet is so controversial that if Thomas, a former SEAL, had been on active duty, he would have been court-martialed for using it. The ammunition is “nonstandard” and hasn’t passed the military’s approval process.

“The way I explain what happened to people who weren’t there is … this stuff was like hitting somebody with a miniature explosive round,” he said, even though the ammo does not have an explosive tip. “Nobody believed that this guy died from a butt shot.”

The bullet Thomas fired was an armor-piercing, limited-penetration round manufactured by RBCD of San Antonio.
APLP ammo is manufactured using a so-called “blended-metal” process, said Stan Bulmer, president of sales and manufacturing for Le Mas Ltd. of Little Rock, Ark. Le Mas is the distributor of RBCD ammo.

Various bullet types made by RBCD are designed for different effects, Bulmer said.

The frangible APLP ammo will bore through steel and other hard targets but will not pass through a human torso, an eight-inch-thick block of artist’s clay or even several layers of drywall. Instead of passing through a body, it shatters, creating “untreatable wounds.”

Le Mas gave Thomas a small number of APLP rounds after he contacted the company.

After driving off their attackers, Thomas and his colleagues quickly searched the downed enemy fighter for items of intelligence value. They also took time to examine the wound.

“There’s absolutely no comparison, whatever, none,” to other wounds he has seen from 5.56mm ammo, Thomas said in a telephone interview while on home leave in Florida.

He said he feels qualified to assess a bullet’s effects, having trained as a special-operations medic and having shot people with various types of ammo, including the standard-issue green tip and the Black Hills Mk 262, favored by spec-ops troops.

Thomas was the only member of the four-man group who had RBCD ammo. He said that after the group returned to base, they and other members of his group snatched up the remaining rounds.

“They were fighting over it,” he said. “At the end of the day, each of us took five rounds. That’s all we had left.”

sounds like it has potential, but still people believe its illegal, and some call it mercenary rounds cause its used by non-military forces. in ani case ill take the bullets if in combat zone. pretty awesome some bullet can make your flesh explode.

These are "sintered" metal, meaning they start out as powdered metal, and under intense pressure are molded into bullet forms. Sintered metal has a quirky habit of maintaining its integrity, as the target gets more hard.

In other words, if it hits hardened steel (armor) it will try to bore it's way through much like a standard AP round. But the softer the material it impacts, the more its integrity fails. Against steel or brick, it punches through...against aluminum aircraft skin or human flesh it will burst apart, with the remains continuing to disrupt until energy is expended.

As long as these guys are private security, there are NO provisions to force them to use NATO ball ammo. Hollowpoints, exploding tip, spit wads or whatever they feel works best for them is OK.

The PSD guys we dealt with, had carte' blanche in choice of weaponry and ammo....made us jealous as hell

not to mention the equipment they have . no doubt many soldiers especially the Special Forces have both equipment that is not government issued but are better than the ones ya wear now. like Black Hawk gear etc.

This sounds, if I am correct, not unlike the Russian "Poison Bullets", I've heard about, in that they are specifically designed to expand/diffuse, increasing lethality.

Not new, but new to warfare. Ask any deer hunter. Tumbling is good, very very good.

i like the sound of it, a round that expands in flesh and bores through steel sounds to good to be true i saw the video and i liked what it did to the meat. but what if you need to shoot through a wall or if you are not trying to KILL your target, or in accadental fiendly fire you dont want to kill your buddy, I think it is too dangerous, even in wartime, to have some thing that deadlyflying around. for long range shooting it might be useful so give it only to snipers... or better yet, give it to special forces only, they have the fire dicipline to use somthing so deadly.

If they're going to equip troops with a calibre such as the 5.56 they should at least make the rounds they fire able to kill with one hit almost guaranteed. And if you don't want to kill your buddy, don't shoot him. I think these should be sent given to all troops as soon as possible.
As the round can be stopped by only a few layers of dry wall what would happen if the enemy started using drywall as body armor?

While the Major is all for anything that will make our troops more effective in the field, and the lives of those that oppose them shorter, I think this one falls in the "No Go" category. The United States is a signatory to The Hague Convention of 1899, which specifically prohibits projectiles that expand or fragment upon hitting flesh (expanding or fragmenting before is just fine and dandy).

www.yale.edu...

On the flip side, if a private contractor wants to be on the cutting edge, who am I to judge?

Another article with a lot of links and broader scope.

www.defensereview.com...

Carry on.

"blended metal" bullet have alot of hype around them as some sort of super bullet that can do everything thing in the world. this simply isnt true and i highly dought its amrour piercing capabilities if it "shatters" or "expands" or "break apart" or "deforms" on soft skin targets. people need to realise this is marketing propaganda a while back i heard some bull# about these bullets from a certain webiste that made these bullets that the metal in the bullets melted from the heat of the body when hitting human flesh causing them to break while if it hit a hard target it would stay together what a bunch of crap. these bullets are just over hyped and are comparable to full jacket hollow point in my opinion and nothing more untill there are reliable independant tests to prove there penatraing capabilites and wound cavities on simulated human flesh(gel?) or steel/bullet proof vests. until then they are nothing more then hype.

iqonx, they can penetrate metal plates and still expand 360 degrees once in contact with flesh or soft tissue. I have seen tests of metal plates being placed in front of a piece of meat, the bullet cleanly penetrated the steel and it still completely destroyed its flesh target.

Most bullets depending on their caliber will begin to tumble inside a body once they penetrate, this results in an expanding trail of destroyed flesh or tissue. However this bullet will instantly expand 360 degrees and it will leave a crater if you will of destroyed tissue. There is no hype here, these bullet are more destructive then standard ammunition.

Blended Metal Bullets
Blended Metal Bullets

Originally posted by Major Discrepancy
While the Major is all for anything that will make our troops more effective in the field, and the lives of those that oppose them shorter, I think this one falls in the "No Go" category. The United States is a signatory to The Hague Convention of 1899, which specifically prohibits projectiles that expand or fragment upon hitting flesh (expanding or fragmenting before is just fine and dandy).

Why should the us army risk there troops lives because some politicians who have never been any where near a war say that they cannot use a certain type of bullet. When you are fighting a war against people with no laws (iraqi insurgents, al queda etc) then you cannot let your self be restricted by laws or the enemy will either win or inflict heavy casulties on you.

Justin

Because people have thought of ever gruesome and cruel methods to slay each other, and the Hague conventions on war were a first step into "civilizing" wars, and the proper treatment of the enemy.

in the end its some sort of institutionalized respect and recognition that the enemy is in the same #hole as you and you can both do neither about it.

[edit on 16/2/2006 by Lonestar24]