Army Researchers Patent Self-destructing Bullet Designed To Save Lives (networkworld.com) 230
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center recently patented a new type of bullet capable of self-destructing after traveling over a predetermined distance. The idea behind the new and advanced projectile is that it might help limit the extent of collateral damage (read: innocents dying) during battle or in other operational settings and environments. As for how it all works, the U.S. Army explains that when one of these limited-range projectiles is fired, a pyrotechnical material is ignited at the same time and reacts with a special coating on the bullet. "The pyrotechnic material ignites the reactive material, and if the projectile reaches a maximum desired range prior to impact with a target," the Army writes, "the ignited reactive material transforms the projectile into an aerodynamically unstable object." The researchers add that the desired range of its limited-range projectile can be adjusted by switching up the reactive materials used. Put simply, the Army has come up with what effectively amounts to a self-destructing bullet that is rendered ineffective over certain distances.
LESS! (Score:2, Informative)
>self-destructing bullet that is rendered ineffective
self-destructing bullet that is rendered less ineffective
There, fixed that for you.
Re:LESS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or less effective even
Re:LESS! (Score:5, Funny)
Fewer effective.
Morons.
Re:LESS! (Score:5, Funny)
Fewer effective.
Morons.
Actually, as I understand it, the project started under George W. Bush, so the original research proposal stated that the desired bullet would be "morer ineffectivicated" after it went "kinda far."
Been done -- piston rather than direct gas (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for an M16/M4 rifle that doesn't jam often.
Its been done. HK416 type stuff with a piston rather than direct gas.
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I fired thousands of rounds from an M-16 with never a jam. The thing I hated about it was that if you fired one round, just one round, the damn thing got filthy as hell. It seemed like I was constantly cleaning it. I'd say if you don't religiously clean it you'll find yourself unjamming it.
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As an honorably discharged Specialist in the US Army I say, "Go fuck yourself... Sir!"
Re:LESS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody who was NOT there has to decide what "could be avoided" means, because merely being there must inevitably compromise your judgement.
Somebody who was NOT there has the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, and history shows they will crucify the poor son of a bitch who was in the bad situation at the time, ignoring that sometimes you do NOT have the luxury of deep thought. Things like Abu Ghraib can be judged by anyone--there was no element of "you need to do this immediately or you and your friends will die." When it comes to "why did you shoot at that house full of civilians?" the issue is a LOT more complicated.
Discounting someone's judgement "because they were there" is inexcusable. Doing so on the topic in question ("Your weapon doesn't work properly because you're a murdering bastard and this is a safety feature to keep you from murdering more people") does, indeed, merit the response "Go fuck yourself."
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That experience may relate to older experiences with M16s when they first came out in Vietnam. They did experience a lot of jams and issues unless you kept them quite clean. That didn't always work very well in the jungle.
They did make some adjustments to mostly correct that, but the M16, M4 and AR-15 type of rifle isn't quite as rugged at the AK-47 variants have been.
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Yeah, that was fixed in about six months as I recall. It had to do with the failure to realize that they had to be kept clean, more than anything else. Some say it was actually just a simple miscommunication, but I'm inclined to think it was just incompetence. It hasn't been a problem since the poster was probably born. It was a solved issue by 1975 - I can speak to this first-hand.
Army changed the powder (Score:3)
There *may* h
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When your opponent has a gun that will fire reliably while burried in mud, or filled with sand, a gun you "must keep clean" is a dismal failure and putting in place procedures to ensure it's kept clean is not "fixing" it.
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I'm sure that once just one of these rounds malfunctions and destroys itself while still in the barrel, your rifle will disintegrate quite effectively while firing subsequent rounds.
Read TFA.
The rounds don't destroy themselves, they just become aerodynamically unstable and tumble, which makes them lose energy VERY quickly and subsequently drop like a rock so that they don't travel very far. None of this is a problem inside the ammo case, the magazine, the breech, the barrel itself or the muzzle.
What happens when they hit their target? (Score:3)
I'm sure someone in the Army has read the Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III [yale.edu] which prohibits "the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body".
Unless these things have a built in kill switch which causes them not to explode upon entering a human body, I'd think these things would be illegal for normal warfare.
Re: What happens when they hit their target? (Score:4, Informative)
It sounds like the reacting coating causes the bullet to start tumbling in the air, and the increased drag is what stops the bullet. It could come apart, or just get a groove on one side; it doesn't have to flatten out anything like tgat.
Presumably one novel part of the research involves ensuring that the coating only reacts when the bullet has been fired and is moving at high speed.
Re: What happens when they hit their target? (Score:5, Informative)
These things can have unintended consequences, however. Anyone else remember the DIME [wikipedia.org] explosives Israel's been using? Small explosive radius! High lethality within that radius, but the fragments slow down rapidly outside it! Peppers the people around it with countless bits of inoperable, highly carcinogenic shrapnel! Wait, forget that last one.... Small but effective blast radius!
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War sucks. There's really no way around it.
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I'm not too fond of Obama, but I think he was stuck with this situation from Day One. The only argument I have with him is that he pulled out of Iraq way too early, but since that promise was necessary to get him elected, I almost don't blame him for it. The guy who got elected was going to be the one to do the pull out. I just wish he'd found a way to do it that didn't immediately play into the hands of groups that would become ISIS.
And no, he's not a brutal hawk. He's just a guy caught behind the wing
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Pretty sure Geneva Convention prohibits the use of unmanned craft (which the US does use) and cluster bombs (which the US does use).
At this point pretty much all that is out the window.
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The United States is a signatory to the Hague Convention of 1899 but not the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
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Scratch that... it seems the US opted not to ratify the specific part of the 1899 agreement relating to flattening bullets.
Re: What happens when they hit their target? (Score:3)
When somebody says "the Geneva Convention" without specifying which one they're talking about, it's a good sign they don't know what they're talking about.
In this case, the Geneva Conventions do not address the use of unmanned aircraft, and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (to which the US has not acceded) was worked out in Geneva but is not generally counted as a Geneva Convention.
Re: What happens when they hit their target? (Score:2)
Whoops, sorry, the Convention on Cluster Munitions was signed in Dublin, not Geneva.
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And the Dublin Convention was the one where they agreed not to crown a fooking coont with an empty bottle of bitter after a Greystones United game.
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As a ground to air type projectile it may be ideal, however just having them explode on a timed fuse would do the same job and that is a very old idea.
I am not surprised that they have no funding.
The only accept
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I'm sure someone in the Army has read the Hague Convention of 1899, Declaration III [yale.edu] which prohibits "the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body".
I'm USAF and I read it. However, I'll point out that the USA didn't sign that convention. Our non-use of expanding bullets is based on the Geneva 'no undue harm' standard, which bans weapons that cause unnecessary suffering, which is taken to be small explosive rounds(below .50 Cal), non-metallic(so it can't be seen via x-ray and metal detectors), and expanding bullets.
However, I once wrote a paper arguing that expanding rounds SHOULD be issued, showing that lethality and disability tends to be on a per-b
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Yup, which is why most PD shops and civilians use hollow point bullets.
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Citations for the AC:
NYPD switched to them in ~1998 [nytimes.com]. - ''It is the standard around the world in law enforcement to use hollow points,'' he said.
LAPD switched ~1990 [latimes.com] -" Nonetheless, the report found that in 1987, when only solid-nosed bullets were used, a slightly higher percentage of people died after being shot by police officers than in 1989, when hollow-point bullets were tested."
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Police use hollow points for one simple reason. It is so that if it comes out of the back of the person they shot it isn't going to kill someone behind them.
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That and they also have superior "stopping power" - causing the target to cease hostile actions(and often all actions) faster than with FMJ of the same caliber.
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The shock effect is larger with the flattening bullets. This is the main concern for the police. Soldiers need the maximum penetrative power and the full metal jackets provide just that.
No. The penetrator tip or steel core do that. That thin copper jacket adds little to penetration.
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A Taste of Armageddon (Score:2, Insightful)
The point of war is to cause so much damage to your opponent that they give up whatever they were fighting for or you wipe them out completely, having a safe war where only the fighting soldiers die in designated warzones is utterly pointless, you might as well sort things out with a game of football or something. If we really don't want civilian casualties we need to drop the pretense of concepts like "precision" bombing / strikes, safe-T-bullets and/or whatever other NERF-coated garbage makes war a desira
Re:A Taste of Armageddon (Score:5, Interesting)
The point of war is to cause so much damage to your opponent that they give up whatever they were fighting for
But that is NOT the point, necessarily, of every Special Forces operation. Or the circumstances in which SWAT operators have to do their thing. I can see wanting a high-powered rifle round that is absolutely devastating at close and intermediate distances but which quickly begins to tumble and rapidly bleed off velocity down range. That feature is not inconsistent with causing "so much damage" to bad guys, but it can help preserve the lives of non-combatants that are a kilometer away.
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Range Limiting Bullet (Score:2)
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Seems a mound of dirt and some general rules about keeping the muzzle pointed down range when firing would accomplish the same thing, and they are cheaper and largely already in place for training..
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Fire risk? (Score:3)
The chemicals they're using for this sound similar to the ones used in tracer ammo. Tracer ammo is notorious for causing unintentional fires, and if this stuff has to burn hot enough to melt the lead bullets I can only imagine how effective it must be at starting fires.
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A mini phosphorus "like" round at a given distance? The optics of a few treaty obligations when even considering such munitions is interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Why are such military systems been pushed again considering the reasons for their past international regulation?
So that ever more larger teams are needed recover and work on just one wounded individual and rush them to ever more expensive long term expert care?
No pr
How common is this? (Score:4, Interesting)
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They could be quite useful in a civilian context though, or when infantry are going block-to-block in an inhabited area. If I'm using a firearm defensively in my own home, I probably don't want to hit anything more than 50 feet away. Sure it still has to stop somewhere, but losing velocity and tumbling will hopefully remove some of the potential to harm someone who happened to be near the firing line but in the background. Even better if this means it gets stopped by the first wall it hits.
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I can see them being quite useful in a police context. SWAT teams need fairly high-power rifles to defeat body armor, but usually operate in dense urban areas.
It might also be useful in an explosives-disposal scenario. Standard procedure for a bomb is to evacuate the area, then shoot it with a .50-cal rifle to either set it off, or do enough damage to the mechanism that it won't work and can be more safely defused. An explosive bullet that can be set to detonate at a fixed distance, instead of on impact, co
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You might want to look into frangible rounds. They're pretty reliable these days
Sure, if by "reliable" you mean "make a wide, shallow, ugly-looking wound that doesn't cause sufficient bleeding to make the attacker stop". In general, I recommend sticking with what the police use. They have the resources and the need to do the relevant testing. They don't use frangible rounds, they use standard JHPs.
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Is there any data on how much of an issue this is? Even in a war zone? It seems like in an area of active engagement, stray bullets from a distance would be on the low end of things that cause collateral damage. I mean, we have bombs getting dropped from aircraft and missiles being shot from drones. I'd be willing to bet that even a tiny increase in the specificity of those types of weapons would save far more lives than limiting the lethal range of bullets.
My first thought is this has some interesting applications for things like CQB where not everyone in there is going to be the enemy. Like hostage rescue teams.
Send a few million rounds to my city, please (Score:2)
We have Very Special Fuckwits in my city, who every New Years and Independence Day, go outside and shoot their rifles into the air, in lieu of fireworks. (Because "gravity is just a theory.") If the bullets would fall apart at apogee, that'd be great, and if they explode all pretty-like, that's even better.
And please understand, even if it's ten dollars a bullet, that's ok. We'll pay any cost as an alternative to [contemptuous sneer]education.[/contemptuous sneer]
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I can improve on that (Score:2)
Just replace the metal part of the bullet with a paintball, and it will save even more lives.
To "help limit the extent of collateral damage"... (Score:2)
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In your gut! (Score:3)
Completely impractical (Score:2)
Would they not leave a trail? (Score:2)
If you were firing these would they not leave a material trail in the air pointing straight at your location? I can't imagine that that is a particularly desirable outcome...
This explains StarCraft bullets (Score:2)
glad it's patented! (Score:2)
Thank you, US Army, for ensuring the overall lethality of enemy bullets! Bravo!
Doesn't go far enough (Score:2)
Self-destructing bullets are well and good, but if you really want safety then you want to get away from bullets entirely.
What you want is to release the swarm of 10,000 mosquito-sized drones, each carrying a hypodermic needle full of concentrated THC. These will be guaranteed not to kill anyone, while at the same time making it easy for the police to arrest anyone they need to arrest.
prior art? (Score:3)
The Radically Invasive Projectile: exploding inside a breech near you! http://g2rammo.com/ [g2rammo.com]
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But it sure is a neat way of getting rid of the evidence...
And the witnesses.
Re:Who Would Want it? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you lug around 40 pounds of ammo with a range set at the maximum effective range of your weapon. Then if you miss your shot doesn't go on to create a friendly fire casualty when it goes on to hit a guy you couldn't even see from the position you fired it.
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So you can lug around 40 pounds of short range ammo, and if you want to do a distance shot you're screwed, or you can lug around normal ammo and take any shot you like? Hmm, which would I choose... ?
It looks to me like its more a way to make quasi-legal incendiary ammo!
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he 5.56 or .223 boat tail round that the M16 or AR uses tumbles once it penetrates the skin.
This is totally a myth - deliberately spread to soldiers in Vietnam who were very disappointed by the early M16s (and for some good reasons). The army distributed little brochures and everything, but it was a lie.
"Dum dum", or more generally, safety rounds were banned by the Geneva convention for the same reason most weapons are on the banned list: they aren't good weapons for war. Nothing was banned just out of compassion or anything - a bunch of stuff was banned because it sucked for the target and is
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he 5.56 or .223 boat tail round that the M16 or AR uses tumbles once it penetrates the skin.
This is totally a myth - deliberately spread to soldiers in Vietnam who were very disappointed by the early M16s (and for some good reasons).
Not penetrates the skin but when traveling through the body. Special Forces troops evaluating the Armalite AR-15 in Vietnam noticed the affect and it overcame their skepticism. Armalite AR-15s, and their cleaner burning ammo, were highly prized by SF troops long after the introduction of the troublesome M16.
The army distributed little brochures and everything, but it was a lie.
The brochures I've seen were about cleaning the M-16. They issued rifles before they had cleaning kits and before troops were properly instructed in maintenance.
"Dum dum", or more generally, safety rounds were banned by the Geneva convention for the same reason most weapons are on the banned list: they aren't good weapons for war.
Such rounds are far more lethal than tradi
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Not penetrates the skin but when traveling through the body. Special Forces troops evaluating the Armalite AR-15 in Vietnam noticed the affect and it overcame their skepticism.
Is that documented, or rumor? I'm not a gun nut myself, but a good friend did some serious research into this, and found plenty of evidence of this "tumbling" being deliberate deception. Many who fought in Vietnam believed it strongly, but that doesn't mean it's true.
Such rounds are far more lethal than traditional military ammunition.
Again, lethality is not a feature in modern warfare. A dead soldier takes one enemy out of the fight, while a non-lethal casualty takes more than one. Safety rounds are more "mall ninja gear" than something effective for winning wars (and
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Imagine accidentally grabbing some 50 meter stuff and then trying to shoot someone 100 meters away...
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I'd bet they'd be set up for 1km or so for small arms - somewhere beyond the point where anyone is hitting on purpose.
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Still enough to cripple or kill, as we sadly have plenty of evidence for. Spent rifle rounds will still penetrate skin and do damage, at which point you're in real trouble if you lack access to modern medical care.
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For an M16, the max effective range against a point target (single person) is 550 meters. For an area target (vehicle or troop formation) it is 800 meters.
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
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...except war isn't quite that organized. You never know what the task at hand will actually require.
Meanwhile, you have an entire division of men (and women) quite capable of accurately hitting targets at ranges you're so eager to dismiss out of hand.
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Yes, but the point was that you still want flexibility. You might find yourself in a situation where you might be prone and want to and be able to take a slow shot at someone at extreme range.
Of course, that is why they have "designated marksman" weapons, which are stock weapons that have been fine tuned and upgraded which can achieve much more accuracy without being completely new weapons with different ammo. But you don't always have a DM or their weapon.
Not sure how I feel about it, but it would probab
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...except war isn't quite that organized.
Actually it is. Inherent in the M16/M4 design is that a soldier does not really need to pick off another soldier at 700 yards. That they are better served with a smaller more intermediate cartridge that is more limited in range but allows the soldier to carry two to three times the ammo for the same weight. And what justified this logic, the Army's own data from debriefing combat troops at the end of WW2. Despite the M1 Garand's respectable long range accuracy the Army, to their great surprise, discovered t
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Yes, it was determined with the assault rifle concept that you would be fine sacrificing some range for higher rate of fire and a more compact weapon. Certainly it was not worth carrying around even the carbine versions of the heavy long rifles like the K98k when you were more often up close and personal.
And of course, for close quarters, range could be very short, and rate of fire for suppression and a smaller form for easier maneuvering in buildings and urban scenarios was even more important. That's wh
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But at that range and beyond the lethality of the bullet is already significantly diminished by loss of energy anyway.
The 30'06 of the M1903 Springfield (WW1) and the M1 Garand (WW2) still remained lethal. During WW1 the German commander who was the first to take on US Marines was quite distressed when these green unproven troops fresh off the boat from America were taking out any of him men who dared show themselves at 700 yards. This fire was not coming from snipers but ordinary infantrymen.
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Does this mean I can start firing my M16 in the air like those crazy arabs do?
On new years eve and the 4th of July?
No....
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also to make it harder for them to maneuver by weighting their shields.
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Note the only reason you patent an invention is to *prevent* it being used (without your consent).
Nope. Another good reason to patent an invention is that others can license it, thus providing a return on your R&D investment.
Re:Explosive bullets (Score:4, Insightful)
and if it does hit someone I guess it explodes inside them instead
<sarcasm> No that that would a violation of the rules of war this is a safety feature. really honest. The military would never try to get around those.</sarcasm>
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and if it does hit someone I guess it explodes inside them instead
<sarcasm> No that that would a violation of the rules of war this is a safety feature. really honest. The military would never try to get around those.</sarcasm>
FWIW, I think the Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868 to which you seem to be referring does not actually include the US (apparently US wasn't invited to sign as it wasn't considered a major international war power at that time due to the fact it was recovering from the civil war). It only restricted the use of exploding ammo in hand held rifles (not from autocanons or artillery).
I think the Hague convention which succeeded it only restricts expanding bullets (e.g., hollow-point or "dum-dums" that cause m
Re:Explosive bullets (Score:5, Insightful)
Even normal tracer rounds can be aerodynamically unstable as the tracer element is exhausted. When I was a Marine, we were taught to never fire 7.62mm tracers overhead of friendly troops beyond a range of 700m, and no more than 400m for 5.56mm tracers. This is the range where they stop glowing. This announcement seems odd to me, since unstable trajectories should make the bullets more dangerous, and they would also be incendiary (they set stuff on fire).
A better approach to limiting the range of bullets may be to train soldiers to avoid excessively elevating their muzzles. Poorly trained troops have a tendency to shoot high, especially at night.
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It's not an exploding bullet. Exploding bullets are nothing new - they've been around for at least 100 years. In small arms calibers they're less effective than lead if your goal is to make someone dead, or everybody would be using them already. Until Reagan was shot with exploding bullets (which should give you some idea of how effective they are - he survived being shot near the heart) you used to be able to buy them mail order from ads in gun magazines. They're basically gimmick rounds, particularly
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As long as you don't put on that robe and wizard hat mr blood ninja.
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