Interesting test on Minnie ball vs ballistics gell

I came across this, and was surprised by how much ballistics gell a pure lead Minnie ball can go through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0AxKGRKY3g

ericth wrote:I came across this, and was surprised by how much ballistics gell a pure lead Minnie ball can go through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0AxKGRKY3g

A fun video, but I really didn't need it to know a Minie Ball was a terrible bullet.

At 500+ gr a Minie Ball is in pretty much the same class as large caliber bullets only used by modern snipers and the Browning .50 Machine gun (M2, aka (Ma Deuce") Just because it came out of a Black Powder muzzle-loading rifle doesn't mean it isn't as deadly -- or more so -- than modern sniper bullets.

Weird Harold wrote:
A fun video, but I really didn't need it to know a Minie Ball was a terrible bullet.

At 500+ gr a Minie Ball is in pretty much the same class as large caliber bullets only used by modern snipers and the Browning .50 Machine gun (M2, aka (Ma Deuce") Just because it came out of a Black Powder muzzle-loading rifle doesn't mean it isn't as deadly -- or more so -- than modern sniper bullets.

I guess I expected a purely lead bullet to mushroom rapidly and expend all its energy in a shallow penetration.

The softness of lead is also one reason I scratch my head at the textev of steel armor being penetrated, especially the layered breastplates in Merlin's pistol demo. I would expect a soft bullet, even one with a lot of KE, to expend itself on the the armor with little left for penetrating. If the armor sufficiently attenuates a bullet I'd expect the energy transfer to the wearer to be more like what a kevlar vest would provide, more blunt force and less penetrating.

ericth wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
A fun video, but I really didn't need it to know a Minie Ball was a terrible bullet.

At 500+ gr a Minie Ball is in pretty much the same class as large caliber bullets only used by modern snipers and the Browning .50 Machine gun (M2, aka (Ma Deuce") Just because it came out of a Black Powder muzzle-loading rifle doesn't mean it isn't as deadly -- or more so -- than modern sniper bullets.

I guess I expected a purely lead bullet to mushroom rapidly and expend all its energy in a shallow penetration.

The softness of lead is also one reason I scratch my head at the textev of steel armor being penetrated, especially the layered breastplates in Merlin's pistol demo. I would expect a soft bullet, even one with a lot of KE, to expend itself on the the armor with little left for penetrating. If the armor sufficiently attenuates a bullet I'd expect the energy transfer to the wearer to be more like what a kevlar vest would provide, more blunt force and less penetrating.

IIRC Merlin was firing rifle rounds not pistol rounds at IIRC 50yds out of his pistols. A .454 or .45 magnum will blow through most modern body armor and if it doesn't it will stun or knock a man down. Also the Cuirasses are designed to stop edged weapons and probably matchlock rounds at a distance. Don't forget Prince Hektor first assassination attempt 3 bolts from an arbalest punched through.

Not surprising, it has similar characteristics to a 45-70, or the 'modern' 458 winchester magnum. Neither the 45-70 or winchester 458 magnum is a spitzer round, which has interesting implications for range and penetration as a function of bullet velocity.

By the way firing the 458 is an interesting experience, about 70 lbs of recoil, which is a bit uncomfortable to say the least. But for 500 grain round , which has a muzzle velocity of 2150 ft/sec it seems worth it.

"Proofed" armour that was capable of stopping matchlock rifle and pistol rounds was already heavy enough in the late 1500's that body armour was rapidly abandoned for the majority of troops by 1600. This is with smoothbore musket type weapons. The rifled musket firing a Minne ball is hugely more effective.

So long as the main threat is/was edged weapons, metal body armour was a practical piece of equipment, but as more and more long range weapons were developed to penetrate armour (starting with the large scale introduction of crossbows), the race went to the offence. Only modern materials science has allowed personal body armour to make a comeback near the end of the 20th century, and eventually the tables will be turned and the offence will render our body armour obsolete (imagine hand held railguns or guided anti-personnel rockets).

Only modern materials science has allowed personal body armour to make a comeback near the end of the 20th century, and eventually the tables will be turned and the offence will render our body armour obsolete (imagine hand held railguns or guided anti-personnel rockets).

One problem you run into when trying to build faster and bigger weapons is the recoil, and weight of the gun. Advancing technology such as new alloys and lighter materials may help with the weight, but this will actually aggravate the recoil situation (a heavier weapon has less recoil for the operator, as Merlin notes). This also applies to rail guns (which have further issues in power storage or generation).

Currently Class IV body armor will stop .308 AP rounds, and .50 BMG will go right through. But not every soldier will carry a .50 cal in the field (rifle and ammo is to heavy), and the recoil is significant.

Now take into account that new alloys to reduced the weight of weapons, may reduce the weight of a given level of protection. Soldiers will be able to carry more and thicker armor, while recoil for shooters gets worse.

Then we have militaries worker on early version of power armor (little more than a weight bearing exoskeleton at this time), and we may end up with soldiers that will be largely impervious to our current small arms. The one big problem with power armor is the lack of suitable power systems, but if you get one that works for a portable rail gun, you can use it for power armor.

Astelon wrote:

Only modern materials science has allowed personal body armour to make a comeback near the end of the 20th century, and eventually the tables will be turned and the offence will render our body armour obsolete (imagine hand held railguns or guided anti-personnel rockets).

One problem you run into when trying to build faster and bigger weapons is the recoil, and weight of the gun. Advancing technology such as new alloys and lighter materials may help with the weight, but this will actually aggravate the recoil situation (a heavier weapon has less recoil for the operator, as Merlin notes). This also applies to rail guns (which have further issues in power storage or generation).

Currently Class IV body armor will stop .308 AP rounds, and .50 BMG will go right through. But not every soldier will carry a .50 cal in the field (rifle and ammo is to heavy), and the recoil is significant.

Now take into account that new alloys to reduced the weight of weapons, may reduce the weight of a given level of protection. Soldiers will be able to carry more and thicker armor, while recoil for shooters gets worse.

Then we have militaries worker on early version of power armor (little more than a weight bearing exoskeleton at this time), and we may end up with soldiers that will be largely impervious to our current small arms. The one big problem with power armor is the lack of suitable power systems, but if you get one that works for a portable rail gun, you can use it for power armor.

Until the opposition fields HEAT (high explosive anti tank) or fin guided rounds in their 50 cal (or 20mm?) rifles...(and people shed the armor because it slows them down too much to dodge the fire).

AirTech wrote:Until the opposition fields HEAT (high explosive anti tank) or fin guided rounds in their 50 cal (or 20mm?) rifles...(and people shed the armor because it slows them down too much to dodge the fire).

Nobody dodges gunfire in real life (not successfully anyway). What we really do is jump behind cover and let the COVER stop the bullets and depend on user error to keep from getting sniped when we poke around that cover to shoot back.

I imagine this won't change even with power armor. After all, the more energy the bullet expends punching through cover is less energy it's going to have to punch through armor.

Edit: IRL, "dodging" gunfire has more to do with the shooter's bad aim making the bullet off target than the target actually moving out of the way of an already fired bullet.

The idea of a hand held railgun was a bit off the cuff, but there was a fairly common meme in gaming circles back in the 1980's/90's of the electromagnetic "gauss gun", which I imagine was some form of rail or coil gun packaged in rifle and machine-gun format.

The Spike Anti personnel missile actually exists (being targeted and struck by a miniature version of an ATGM would really suck!)

The XM-25 has been replicated by the ROK (they actually have developed a home grown version of the OCIW combined rifle/grenade launcher concept) called the K-11, and it won't be long before more armies begin fielding some version of smart anti personnel grenades. Given the large installed base of 40mm underslung grenade launchers, the sort of circuitry needed for a smart grenade might be profitably introduced in 40mm low velocity grenades.

Of course, we could be barking up the wrong tree; the next anti personnel weapon might be a targeted virus or something equally improbable (Ralph Peter's book "The War in 2020" suggested a form of EMP weapon that scrambled the human brain). The imagination boggles.