> Tanks began to fire 120-millimeter canister rounds (in essence, shotgun-type rounds that, once fired, open into hundreds of tiny pieces) down streets from their main guns.
Are the resulting pieces effectively flechettes but lawful?
Are the resulting pieces effectively flechettes but lawful?
https://www.gd-ots.com/munitions/large-caliber-ammunition/12...
(There's even a sales brochure.)
He had a huge cannon that you could pay him $500 to drive out into the desert and shoot [0]
I was 17, it was early 90s and Nevada. He had just imported two shipping containers of new (mfr date 1968) Chinese made SKS rifles and was having a special on them, $99.
I bought one - and was talking to the guy and he pulled out a three ring binder and said "want to see what that can do?"
And he opened it up and he had effectively a catalog of pictures of the fatal wounds various weapon rounds would cause. (pictures of dead people)
I was deeply disturbed. I never went back in there...
(He also offered to sell me claymore mines which he had up on the top shelf all around the store... [THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY])
[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/61-K_Aut...
But pre-internet, actual printed out physical pictures which were developed in a 3-ring binder to a 17-year-old in 1992 was a disturbing dose of reality.
Both sides could stand a dose of empathy and common sense. Its true that not all gun owners are dangerous maniacs, but guns are dangerous and a lot of them are used in crimes by irresponsible people. It's also true that not all advocates for gun control are neo-communists who just want to confiscate all guns and put Christians into camps.
Gun policy should just be a public safety issue, but politics and the catch-22 nature of the 2nd Amendment have turned it into an intractable religious war.
Watch high-level military officials and politicians from despotic oil-world countries shopping for weapons like suburban husbands shopping for patio furniture at a home and garden show. Displays and sales pitches tuned to key in on bogey-men-du-jour. Worried by Iraninan-sponsored insurgency? We've got Just. The. Thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_3Qg-SADY
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wdjypy/sofex-the-business...
The other weird site that is how much money is spent on crap, that's clearly crap.
Even with my fairly limited military experience, it's easy to walk around a show and see so much expensive junk you know that a government will pay waaayy too much money for and some soldier will get stung with. Everything from cheaply made webbing that would fall apart in seconds, CBRN kit I wouldn't wear to a pub incase Guinness farts accidentally dissolved it, useless ballistic protection, overly elaborate radio systems that don't work, good awful weapons that jam even completely clean w/o rounds in them testing at a show...you name it. So much military crapware out there
Edit: op misquoted the page. They're tungsten which would be more in line with what I'd expect. Tungsten in both very heavy (ever heavier than lead) and very very hard.
Do modern tanks frequently face massed infantry charges?
(I know, I'm being way too literal, I was just amused by the image of a bunch of guys with Lee-Enfield rifles and pot helmets surging out of a trench to assault an Abrams.)
(I just googled for the ammo types available to the Abrams, and I learned that the latest-version multipurpose HEAT round has a fucking anti-aircraft mode, which enables a proximity fuse and a puff of black smoke on detonation, so you can track your shot WW2 flak-style. I know it's for helicopters, not planes, but still. Crazy.)
These days, infantry taking on a tank would just use an RPG or an ATGM.
Canister rounds, from my knowledge, result in ball projectiles (ballistic flight) while flechettes are finned (aerodynamic flight).
i.e., more like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_(weaponry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_shell#Buckshot
and less like this: