Thales Australia On New 5.56 mm Ammunition
BY Herschel Smith
10 years, 4 months ago
Thales Australia has disclosed it is developing a new family of high-lethality small arms ammunition, including a 5.56 mm round that the company says outperforms 7.62 mm ammunition at all ranges.
The so-called F9 technology is scalable in calibre, from 4.6 mm up to .50 calibre, and is being developed in collaboration with an undisclosed overseas partner, Graham Evenden, Thales Australia’s Director of Integrated Soldier Systems, told IHS Jane’s on 20 August.
The initial focus is on 5.56 mm ammunition. Trial batches use a projectile developed by the overseas company, low toxicity, optimised propellant from the Thales-operated Mulwala propellant and explosives plant in southern New South Wales, and cases produced at the Thales-owned Benalla munitions facility in northern Victoria.
The design of the 5.56 round involves yawing in flight (even for boat tail ammunition) such that impact tends to fragment the round leaving multiple ballistic tracks through tissue. UPDATE: This is a correct and functioning link to the paper entitled Small Caliber Lethality: 5.56 mm Performance In Close Quarter Battle. Warning, this is a PDF supporter by a very slow server.
Color me unpersuaded until I see test results. But I’m interested, if someone from Thales Australia wants to contact me and give me more detail.
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On August 25, 2014 at 10:19 am, Harold Ancell said:
You link doesn’t work (the site appears to be under reconstruction), but I did find a 2010 Army Research Lab study by Sidra I. Silton and Bradley E. Howell, which appears to me to be largely irrelevant for the purposes of lethality. Sure, bullets will yaw a few degrees in flight, and it might get excessive for M855 shot from an M16A2 or M4 (one with a 16 inch barrel!) beyond 400 yards.
But this is transitional and external ballistics; while they have an influence on terminal ballistics, only one thing counts for the 5.56mm FMJ ammo the US military normally fires, per Martin Fackler’s extensive research on M193, which in the paper I read he believed applied to SS109/M855 type ammo as well (don’t know if he followed up on that).
As I understand it, when any bullet makes the radical transition from air to flesh, it starts to tumble, it wants to travel tail first. What’s critical for our sort of 5.56mm FMJ ammo is if it hits with enough velocity that during this tumble it breaks at its cannelure, and then ideally the tail piece further breaks into pieces. Otherwise you’re poking a .22 width hole through the target, with a bit of additional damage as it does its half-flip.
Note that Fackler believes wounding and stopping power, absent of course hitting something particularly vital or what can happen with big bones, is dependent on “permanent crush cavity”. It’s his belief, no doubt initially formed from his surgeries in Vietnam, that temporary cavities aren’t all that harmful, flesh gets pushed aside and snaps back. Same for the postulated effects of “hydrostatic shock”*.
So as long as we’re limited to bullets that by intent cannot cause “extra” wounding (don’t know how the Open Tip Match (OTM) rounds used by snipers and ideally designated marksmen stacks up here, and of course our military couldn’t use this ammo (if that’s not an issue, don’t bother with this new stuff, use loads with Barnes TSX bullets or something else with proven effectiveness), for this type of bullet—yawing before entry could have an effect, don’t know what it might be—it all comes down to velocity. Per that Fackler paper as I recall, for every 1 inch in barrel you chop from 20 inches, you lose about 50 yards of effectiveness. Which of course explains why our Army has its men fighting a “500 yard war” in Afghanistan with M4s with 14.5 inch barrels, while the Marines have stuck to 20 inch M16s (or so I understand).
*Although I’ve recently started to wonder about the temporary effect of hydrostatic shock with battle rifle ammo like 7.62 NATO: most torso hits with that will have the shock effect extend to the spine, and temporary shock there combined with bleeding could make it a lot more effective even if it’s not transmitting much if any more energy than a 5.56 round that breaks up some.
On August 25, 2014 at 11:14 am, Herschel Smith said:
It just hacks me that this is a broken link. Let me see what I can do. The paper may have disappeared.
On August 25, 2014 at 3:12 pm, Bill Daigle said:
There’s always been a problem with over extended ammo…memory test…1973 Super Vel…it’s only a better mousetrap if it works better than the old mouse trap…watching
On August 25, 2014 at 3:27 pm, Herschel Smith said:
“…it’s only a better mousetrap if it works better than the old mouse trap.” Ha! Well said.
On August 26, 2014 at 9:00 am, Harold Ancell said:
Indeed. I remember my father buying a box of Super Vel .45 ACP back then, kinda pointless since it was for an unmodified Argentine Colt, so it didn’t feed well.
And when it comes to velocity, F = mv^2, so velocity is a leveraged way to increase the energy of a round, but for terminal ballistics that does nothing for you unless the design of the bullet et. al. allows that additional energy to do something useful. For handgun bullets, that’s pretty much irrelevant aside from ideally increasing bullet expansion, and will likely increase over-penetration: stopping power scales with diameter, lethality with number of holes poked in target. We of course are interested in the former.
For Fackler’s 5.56mm ammo analysis, velocity is clearly a proxy for energy on impact.
On August 26, 2014 at 10:29 am, Herschel Smith said:
I don’t disagree, except to add that there is hydrostatic shock in the mix considerations of tissue wound track, but that’s something that is assumed with any round that travels 3000 FPS regardless of other design features and characteristics.
On August 26, 2014 at 11:31 am, Harold Ancell said:
No one denies that hydrostatic shock exists at these velocities and energies (although somewhat less so if you’re using a 14.5 inch barrel, a bit less than 200 fps, and much less so with distance), the question is what psychological effects does it have?
Fackler’s contention about about temporary stretch cavity vs. permanent crush cavity would seem to subsume the effects of hydrostatic shock within the former, and he claims all its effects aren’t particularly grave, I might put it.
On August 26, 2014 at 12:19 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Oh, I think hydrostatic shock is worth a lot more than “psychological effects,” but it isn’t worth a long drawn out debate. Suffice it to say that the 5.56 has killed many enemy and will continue to do so well into the future. The subject (of the article) is what does Thales Australia bring to the table?
On August 26, 2014 at 12:29 pm, Harold Ancell said:
Damn, physiological, psychological not (pardon my inattentiveness when using the spelling checker).
Killing, well, yeah (see the ubiquitous .22LR in the US), I think it’s safe to say our troops are also very, if not more interested in whether it effectively stops.
On August 26, 2014 at 12:54 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Ha! That was funny. Talk about small typos affecting large ideas!
On September 6, 2014 at 12:45 am, U. N. Owen said:
Everything old is new again.
Are there any other old farts here who can remember all the squeals of glee in the firearms press and all the enthusiastic endorsements of the very mediocre 5.56mm SS109/M855 round thirty years ago, complete with big photographs of blocks of ballistic gelatin purporting to prove this or that? Which round was supposed to be vastly superior to NATO-spec 7.62x51mm M80 Ball in every way, at every distance?
This announcement has a similar smell about it.