These are believed to be good for anti-material. Not so good for animals you plan to eat:
China is working to downsize its hypersonic weapons program to the small arms level, as seen in recent tests of prototype hypersonic bullets on live targets.
Researchers from an army medical center in Chongqing recently fired 5-millimeter steel projectiles at Mach 11 speeds against sedated live pigs to understand the effects of hypersonic bullets on human targets, the South China Morning Post reported this week.
Citing a paper from the Acta Armamentarii peer-reviewed journal of the China Ordnance Society, the South China Morning Post report noted that hypersonic bullet shots to the thigh did not instantly kill the pigs but caused severe injuries throughout their bodies.
The news report said that the pigs sustained extensive internal damage, mainly bone fractures and bleeding in the intestine, lung, bladder and brain.
It said that the bullets penetrated the thigh at speeds between 1,000 to 3,000 meters per second, but at 4,000 meters per second, the rounds instead left a large wound cavity at the point of impact.
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The report also said such hits resulted in crater-like wounds, liquefying both bullet and flesh.
4,000 m/s is 13,123 f/s. A typical 9mm handgun bullet is typically traveling about 1,100 f/s at the muzzle. A 5.56 NATO bullet fired from “weapon of war” which “explodes the heads of children”* is typically a little over 3,200 f/s at the muzzle.
I expect they will, or perhaps already have, done testing on human targets as well as pigs. The CCP is like that.
* Registered trademark of the Gifford’s Group.
I’d take anything published about Chinese research with a giant boulder of salt.
There’s only one reason to experiment with such bullets. To defeat US body armor.
The CCP is PLANNING on a shootin war with the US….right now it’s a cold war. Eventually it’s going to go hot.
I’d kinda like to see the load data on that….
The only way to get close to such speeds is with sabots. As we do with our tank buster rounds.
We basically shoot a 20mm rod out of a 120mm tank cannon. And it sheds its wrapper upon leaving the muzzle.
It’s works wonderfully on what it’s made to do. Burn a 3/4″ hole through hardened steel, then spit white hot droplets of metal all around the inside of its victim. Causing secondary explosions and shredding anything inside.
Works great.
Way to big a pain in the ass for ground pounders.
If one digs around you can find something similar in Remington “Accelerator” ammunition. In a standard 308 win. it would spit a 55gr. .22 cal. bullet out at close to 4,000FPS. Downside being it wouldn’t cycle the action on a semi-auto. Upside is little barrel wear because the plastic ‘shoe” is all that contacts the barrel.
This seems to me as the Chinese military industrial complex doing what they do best. Justifing their existence through pretty much useless research.
Every system is a tradeoff. Bigger, faster bullets do more damage. But weigh more. And lighter, smaller means more ammo, which generally wins the battles.
Right now the Chinese are very well equipped with what is basically our 6mm ARC round as their main battle cartridge. They screwed up by making their magazine to short. So it doesn’t shoot the longer, heavier bullets like our ARC. That being said most soldiers can’t take advantage of the rounds long range attributes anyway. One can just as easily lob a 7.62×39 out a thousand yards. As we did with buffalo guns in the 1800’s.
But hey, what would happen if you saboted a 45-70 with a 30 cal. bullet and some hot powder? Sounds like fun!
The Chinese are doing it without sabots. They are using a rail gun and steel bullets for the magnetic characteristics. The steel bullets also help with the melting problem.
That’s good. As they will probably never field a rifle for grunts with that tech. We’ll see.
I know you can buy small versions of this that shoot a flat discs.
And I always wondered what became of the US navy’s rail-guns? Didn’t they drop them in favor of lazers?
They might have had a problem running explosives in them?
IT would likely defeat body armor. May not do as much damage, but some is better than none. What would the affect be of having the exit path closed by the armor on the other end.
After I shot out my second .220 Swift barrel I started fantasizing about the ideal varmint round and came up with 40MM necked down to .264. With enough of the right powder velocity would not be measured in FPS but a percentage of the speed of light. Who needs sabots?
Ya! Look up the 17 Incinerator. It’s a 50BMG necked down to 17 cal. Delivering over 5600FPS.
And they also have an Ackley Improved for it! Over 6,000FPS!
One might need to own one’s own barrel factory, not to mention and small powder plant to keep in practice though.
I don’t doubt CCP has already experimented using real, live humans. or rather, to use the totalitarian term, “non-persons”. I expect Uighurs have contributed the test equipment referred to as “Pig thighs.”