1-shot killer

[Nightcrawler]

I think it's understandable that we're all skeptical. I mean, claims about an apparent smart bullet, that penetrates armor, cover, and concealment, yet violently fragments/explodes in human tissue only are a little hard to swallow.

See, it's a tradeoff. A bullet that fragments will have a harder time punching through barriers, especially thick things like logs or layered walls.

At the same time, a hard armor piercing bullet isn't going to be designed to deform at all, thus not wounding anymore than a plain-jane FMJ rifle round (which, for most people, is bad enough).

Yet here comes RCBD, saying that they've got a wonderbullet that penetrates through everything except people, and yet they can't explain why it works.

You have to admit, it seems funny.

It would be interesting if it were all true, though.

 

[BluesBear]

Back in the 1950s and 1960s plywood was used to test penetration and clay was used to test expansion. Newsprint and phonebooks were used to test both. No one seemed to mind. It was a good way to compare performance.

Did it represent what happened when the bullet hit tissue? Nope. and no one said it did. it was just comparison.

Then came ballistic gelatin. All of a sudden everything else was obsolete?

Gelatin is a good way to SEE penetration and expansion. But it ain't meat. It ain't human. It ain't animal. But it is transparent enough that you can the action as it happens. If gelatin is such a perfect test medium why are they now making it wear blue jeans?

As for temporay stretch cavity damage...

Does anyone think that a 2" or 3" temporary cavity would be devastating?

Does anyone think that a 8"-10" tempory cavity would NOT do some major damage? Would not some blood vessels be broken? Would not some tissue be stretched past the point of tearing?

When we are finally attacked by 14" thick alien mutants made of Jell-O and wearing Levi's 501s then we will all be ready for them because we know exacty what damage we can do. But would they still die? Jell-O has no blood vessels or bones or nerves...

There is no such thing as a magic bullet.
There is no such thing as a magic gun.
There is no such thing as a magic test medium.

You can't build a house with a butcher knife and you can't cut a steak with a hammer.

That's why the military has both howitzers and handguns.
One size does NOT fit all.
Quit expecting it to.

 

[Harry Tuttle]

i wonder if you put a drop of Miltec on the round, if it works better

 

[RikWriter]

Does it bother anyone that we're hiring corporate surrogate mercenaries who are able to use illegal weapons? Just asking.

No, because for one thing the ammo isn't illegal and neither are the weapons.

 

[Double Maduro]

JeffOTMG,

You said:

"Double Maduro, don't worry, they can't get it. We won't sell it to them."

Gee where have I heard this before?

Maybe about every military and defense secret ever?

They don't have engineers that can figure this out?

They will never capture a round and examine it?

If it is an effective weapon it will be copied and improved upon.

Besides, it will never be approved for war if any and all wounds prove fatal. Especially if the wounds are as horrific as stated.

DM

 

[Sean Smith]

The military will never adopt it for general use, even if it somehow works as advertised. The U.S. military has traditionally followed a very strict interpretation of the Hague Conventions when it comes to the laws of land warfare, regardless of its status as a signatory of the original 1910 treaty.

You can find exceptions, sure. But the U.S. military has almost always taken the legal stance that Article 23 prohibits the use of all small-arms ammo designed to expand or fragment on impact with the human body to increase injury to the same. The usually noted exceptions are for counter-terrorism (since they aren't fighting regular soldiers, the restrictions don't apply) and snipers (who use a "hollow-point" 168gr BTHP that doesn't seem to wound any more than the FMJ equivalent).

"In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden... To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;"

Vague as all get-out, no doubt. But again, the traditional U.S. military legal take on it is that almost anything but full metal jacket small arms ammunition is a no-no for that reason.

Does it bother anyone that we're hiring corporate surrogate mercenaries who are able to use illegal weapons? Just asking.

Cite the law, please. The guys in quesiton would fall outside the purview of most interpretations of the Laws of Land Warfare, by the way, so the Hague limitations (and protections, for that matter) wouldn't apply to them.

 

[RikWriter]

Gee where have I heard this before?
Maybe about every military and defense secret ever?

They don't have engineers that can figure this out?

They will never capture a round and examine it?

If it is an effective weapon it will be copied and improved upon.

Then I suppose we should just stop trying to develop new and better weapons, right? Because bad guys might get them?

 

[Double Maduro]

RikWriter,

I am in a bad mood today, your bad luck.

you said,

"Then I suppose we should just stop trying to develop new and better weapons, right? Because bad guys might get them?"

Where in the world did I say to stop research? How stupid. What I said was that if you think we can keep a small arms technology from the enemy you are mistaken.

I guess I wasn't in as bad a mood as I thought, lol

DM

 

[Nightcrawler]

I wouldn't worry so much about it. I'm still not convinced that the rounds perform as advertised. And why should I be? No one can explain how they work, and their description seems to fly in the face of common sense and the laws of physics. And from what I've read on this thread, even the makers of the ammunition say they don't know.

"We don't know how it works, we can't prove it works, but buy some from us."

I'm not trying to bash RCBD here, but that's what it seems like they're saying.

 

[sasnofear]

if hollow pts arn't aproved for military use, then i seriously dont see this stuff getting used

 

[Shawn Dodson]

BluesBear writes:

Gelatin is a good way to SEE penetration and expansion. But it ain't meat. It ain't human. It ain't animal.

I refer you to "The Wound Profile & The Human Body: Damage Pattern Correlation," by Martin L. Fackler, published in Wound Ballistics Review, Volume 1, Number 4, 1994, pp. 12-19. The article compares performance in gelatin to several shootings:

The test of the wound profiles' validity is how accurately they portray the projectile-tissue interaction observed in shots that penetrate the human body. Since most shots in the human body traverse various tissues, we could expect the wound profiles to vary somewhat, depending on the tissues traversed. However, the only radical departure has been found to occur when the projectile strikes bone: this predictably deforms the bullet more than soft tissue, reducing its overall penetration depth, and sometimes altering the angle of the projectile's course. Shots traversing only soft tissues in humans have shown damage pattern correlations of remarkably close approximatation to the wound profiles.

If gelatin is such a perfect test medium why are they now making it wear blue jeans?

If ya wanna understand how bullets perform in soft tissues after passing through heavy clothing you gotta have a heavy clothing standard, don't ya?

Jeff OTMG writes:

I don't know Gary Roberts, never met him. So I have never asked him what ammo he has shot people with and what the effect was. From what I have heard, he shoots bowls of jello.

IIRC, Roberts' was a member of a sheriff's tactical unit. He also works closely with many other LE tactical units.

The questions beg to be asked:

What is your experience in this field?

How many people have you and Bulmer shot?

From what I understand you guys shoot blocks of pottery clay and hunks of aged meat?

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

The guys in quesiton would fall outside the purview of most interpretations of the Laws of Land Warfare

That was my point. The US, or maybe it's corporate constituents, seem to be able to hire mercenaries who don't answer to the same laws as our military. To me, that sets a disturbing precedence. No, I can't cite the laws, I was just reacting to what several posters had said.

If this is OT, we could take it to another thread if anyone's interested.

 

[MrAcheson]

Sorry Shawn, but ballistic gelatin is far from perfect. I have seen you re-explain someone else's gelatin results enough times to have drawn the proper conclusion about that. A lot of your site's content is explaining the faulty work of other sites' ballistic testing after all. Gelatin has properties which are good enough that the terminal ballistics of hollowpoint and ball are similar to observed behaviors in people.

But gelatin is not meat. We both know that it isn't. Its a pretty good ballistic simulant and its the current standard in wound ballistics, but frankly its hardly perfect. Gelatin is a continuum, people aren't. Gelatin's elastic properties are different from actual soft tissue as well (hence all the temporary cavities that aren't in gelatin). Is it possible that RBCD's terminal behavior is different in gelatin than people/animals? Yes it is entirely possible.

Frankly all the word from people who have use it to kill has been good to amazing. Animals get hit and drop. People get hit and drop. In the lab the results aren't very good. Which either means the success is hype or the lab work is missing something. Right now I don't know which because there isn't enough real world evidence from hunting/self-defense yet. But there will be eventually and then one party is probably going to have some explaining to do.

 

[griz]

I'm still on the skeptical side. Note the article says the round will not penetrate drywall, which is not meat and no warmer than room temperature. Also they compare the effects in tissue to military FMJ rounds. I suspect a plain vanilla soft point, even though it makes no claims to great penetration, might have similar devestaing effets in tissue.

 

[RikWriter]

RikWriter,

I am in a bad mood today, your bad luck

Oh darn.

you said,

"Then I suppose we should just stop trying to develop new and better weapons, right? Because bad guys might get them?"

Where in the world did I say to stop research? How stupid. What I said was that if you think we can keep a small arms technology from the enemy you are mistaken.

Not forever, but when there are only a few rounds available in the whole world and your enemy is using weapons and ammo cached for decades, yeah, I think you can keep it from them in the short term.

 

[Jeff OTMG]

I think that you will find many of the private security personel are there to protect the individuals from contract companies who are there to help rebuild the infrastructure. They are not acting under direction of the U.S. Military, but do coordinate with them.

Double Maduro, you state 'They don't have engineers that can figure this out?'
Actually they probably don't. The machinery to make the bullets was never intended for that purpose and then it was modified. When they moved the machinery a year or so ago to a secure facility they wrapped them up in tarps before they were jacked up and lifted onto the transporters. At the new facility they were set in place and everyone had to leave before they could be unwrapped and set back up.

You also state, 'it will never be approved for war if any and all wounds prove fatal.' I believe that you are absolutely correct here and Sean Smith agrees as well. RBCD should not meet the criteria agreed to by that Hague Accord, BUT the conflicts that we are currently in do not meet the criteria for holding to the Geneva Convention nor the Hague Accord. This is also why we have prisoners locked up in Cuba with no contact with the outside world. When we were fighting the Iraqi Army that was one thing, this is different.

Shawn asks:
What is your experience in this field?
Ans: Just been around guns for 40 years, use to train LE in firearms back in the 1970's with my dad, that was when we shot the PPC course to qualify. The target didn't even give any points for a head shot. I think it was called a B27. Everyone had revolvers back then, there was a DA course of fire from 25 yards in and a SA course from 50 and 60 yards. Got my FFL in the 1980's and started working as a consultant as well. No money in the gun industry and most of the pay there has been in the form of freebies. Ballistics? I use to shoot wet phone books, newspaper, watermelons, and jugs of water. Does that count?

How many people have you and Bulmer shot?
Ans: Well I already answered that in my post.
"1. For most people, myself included, making statements about a rounds effectiveness is opinion and nothing more. The next time someone tells you which bullet is best, ask them how many people they have killed with it. Me? Zero."

From what I understand you guys shoot blocks of pottery clay and hunks of aged meat?
I have never personally shot a block of clay or a piece of meat. Don't know if it was pottery clay or not, my understanding was that it was NIJ ballistic clay, they use it to measure the backface deformation when testing ballistic armor.

Can't speak for Bulmer, I have never met the man, nor have I ever spoken with him on the phone. If you asked him who I was I doubt that he could even tell you that I was an RBCD distributor. The only reason I know who he is is because all the government contracts go through Lemas.

So Roberts was a SWAT guy, still don't know how many people he shot or with what bullet.

As good as gelatin has been there one thing that it is missing and that is blood pressure. I don't think it has veins, arteries, or capillaries either. Up until now only rifles have been able to achieve the velocities of RBCD. I don't know why, but I have not seen any tests of rifle ammo on gelatin blocks. I think that an open mind might be in order here. There are new developments.

It all comes down to this for me. You can shoot all the bowls of Jello, blocks of clay, jugs of water, or budles of newspaper, but when I hear:
'a former SEAL, with first hand experience said, "he feels qualified to assess a bullet's effects, having trained as a special-operations medic and having shot people with various types of ammo, including the standard-issue green tip and the Black Hills Mk 262, favored by spec-ops troops. There's absolutely no comparison, whatever, none," to other wounds he has seen from 5.56mm ammo.

That says it all.

griz, I assure you that RBCD penetrates dry wall. The article says SEVERAL LAYERS. If you put four walls up, 8 layers of sheet rock, that might stop RBCD, but it will blow through one wall, 2 layers.

I did find out today that this won't be the last we will hear of RBCD in Iraq or Afghanistan. The news will come out in either Jan or Feb of next year. There is RBCD all over the place and the news is good. Keep an eye on Army Times and Armed Forces Journal International.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

But gelatin is not meat. We both know that it isn't. Its a pretty good ballistic simulant and its the current standard in wound ballistics, but frankly its hardly perfect. Gelatin is a continuum, people aren't. Gelatin's elastic properties are different from actual soft tissue as well (hence all the temporary cavities that aren't in gelatin). Is it possible that RBCD's terminal behavior is different in gelatin than people/animals? Yes it is entirely possible.

The problem with this is that wound ballistics research with gelatin was developed by shooting live animals and then shooting gelatin until gelatin was tuned to the point it was a reliable ballistic simulant. That is what science is all about - to be able to accurately predict results and set up a process where others can reproduce your work to verify it.

Now we have somebody claiming that they have a round that works on live animals; but doesn't work on gelatin. It sounds pretty strange to me; but let's assume it is true for the purposes of this argument.

If it is true, all LeMas has to do to prove doubters wrong is use the exact same live-animal testing protocol that was used to develop ballistic gelatin research. This is a protocol that is well established and that even the critics of this ammo agree is valid. Since the target is a live animal, whether gelatin is a good ballistic simulant for this particular type of ammo is irrelevant.

To my knowledge, LeMas has not done this type of laboratory testing of their ammo. Since JeffOTMG has some knowledge of this, perhaps he could shed some light on whether such testing has been done?

 

[MrAcheson]

The problem with this is that wound ballistics research with gelatin was developed by shooting live animals and then shooting gelatin until gelatin was tuned to the point it was a reliable ballistic simulant.

Yeah but this sort of methodology only works if you are testing the something fundamentally similar. It is a completely empirically derived simulant. Thats not bad, its definitely better than nothing, and it works well for what it tests. However thats the kicker, you can only guarantee it works well for what it was formulated to test. Anything else is risky because you are extrapolating instead of interpolating. Might work, might not.

Now, RBCD's terminal behavior and mechanics are definitely different from FMJ or JHP. It doesn't mushroom or deform like more conventional bullets, it seems to fracture and cause damage that way . This is a completely different damage propogation mechanism. Similarly it has been demonstrated that it only behaves this way under a given set of conditions which appear to work in warm tissue, but may or may not work in gelatin.

So will gelatin testing work? Sorry but just because it has worked before is not good enough. Since in vivo results seem to be conflicting with gelatin, the gelatin folks really do need to show the specific validity of their methodology as well. "This is how we have always done it" has caused too many screw ups for it to be a valid justification of a methodology.

Note the "as well" because I'm getting to that.

If it is true, all LeMas has to do to prove doubters wrong is use the exact same live-animal testing protocol that was used to develop ballistic gelatin research. This is a protocol that is well established and that even the critics of this ammo agree is valid. Since the target is a live animal, whether gelatin is a good ballistic simulant for this particular type of ammo is irrelevant.

Exactly. If RBCD and its distributors want to prove that their ammo works they need to do live testing. This will prove/disprove both the capability of their ammo and the validity/invalidity of gelatin testing for it. The problem here is that live testing is very expensive. It may take a while (and some outside financial backing) to do this.

 

[Shawn Dodson]

The bottom line is...

RBCD/LeMas is not going anywhere in the U.S. military until its terminal performance characteristics are fully understood at the engineering level.

It may indeed perform as described, and if it does, I'm all for it. But for now, in the absence of valid data all we're doing is speculating.

It doesn't surprise me the least that a high-velocity, light-weight rifle bullet, such as the APLP, is capable of producing a temporary cavity large enough to cause substantial tissue damage. For example, extremity wounds produced by an intact, 7.62 M80 FMJ bullet as it yaws, can be pretty gruesome in appearance.

The primary wounding mechanism of APLP is temporary cavitation.

MrAcheson writes:

Now, RBCD's terminal behavior and mechanics are definitely different from FMJ or JHP. It doesn't mushroom or deform like more conventional bullets, it seems to fracture and cause damage that way . This is a completely different damage propogation mechanism.

It doesn’t appear to be any different than M193 or M855 in terminal performance, which yaw and fragment, depending on velocity.

So will gelatin testing work? Sorry but just because it has worked before is not good enough. Since in vivo results seem to be conflicting with gelatin, the gelatin folks really do need to show the specific validity of their methodology as well. "This is how we have always done it" has caused too many screw ups for it to be a valid justification of a methodology.

I’m unconvinced APLP performs differently in gelatin than it does in flesh. It's not unusual for soft tissue disruption to appear more graphic than the same disruption observed in ordnance gelatin.

The two forces responsible for bullet deformation are shear forces and inertial forces, which properly prepared 10% ordnance gelatin accurately reproduces as a realistic soft tissue simulant. The shear forces exerted on a penetrating bullet by various soft tissue densities are trivial compared to inertial forces. Shear forces become a factor at velocities below 600 fps. At velocities above 600 fps, inertial forces are the primary cause of bullet upset.

If RBCD and its distributors want to prove that their ammo works they need to do live testing.

Concur.

 

[444]

"If it is true, all LeMas has to do to prove doubters wrong is use the exact same live-animal testing protocol that was used to develop ballistic gelatin research. This is a protocol that is well established and that even the critics of this ammo agree is valid. Since the target is a live animal, whether gelatin is a good ballistic simulant for this particular type of ammo is irrelevant."

It appears that they skipped the theoretical stage and are testing on a different medium in Iraq.

 

[Balog]

It appears that they skipped the theoretical stage and are testing on a different medium in Iraq.

Based on one unsubstantiated report made by a guy trying to sell the product. Good "test data."

 

[444]

I just read on the API list that Jim Crillo is touting these RBCD bullets. If true, the plot thickens.

"Based on one unsubstantiated report made by a guy trying to sell the product. Good "test data."

No, it sounded in one of Jeff's previous posts that there is a lot more going on than this one guy. And that one guy wasn't selling anything but his own services - not ammo.

 

[MN_Strelok]

I just read on the API list that Jim Crillo is touting these RBCD bullets. If true, the plot thickens.

This is true. I had one of his classes a few months back, and he was definitely keen on them. But, if I'm not mistaken he has an interest in the company. (He talked about a couple ammo producers though, and I can't remember for sure which one he was involved with.)

Anyway, back to lurking for me.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

It appears that they skipped the theoretical stage and are testing on a different medium in Iraq.

I've seen a few deer killed with a .22 and yet everyone keeps telling me that it isn't a good idea to hunt with one based on my firsthand experience. I've also heard of people being shot where the bullet freakishly travels under the helmet along the skull and exits the other side of the helmet without ever penetrating the skull and despite the real-deal experience of the people who have seen and reported that, nobody will let me shoot them in the head. If there has been no scientific testing of live animals then there has been a stage skipped here but it isn't the "theoretical" one, it is the "scientifically reproducable results" stage.

In this article, those who favor the LeMas round are arguing that they have a round that is very effective that they want to get into the hands of those who are fighting.

They say that this has not happened because their round does not perform well in the gelatin tests used to predict real world performance. They claim that their round performs differently in gelatin then it does in live tissue and that further, the people pushing the gelatin standard have a bias against them because they favor a different solution.

But there is a catch here that favors LeMas - these same people who have opposed their ammo have already endorsed a certain protocol for live-animal testing as scientifically valid. They have laid out the exact procedures that need to be followed. If APLP ammo does indeed perform differently in live tissue, then here is a live-animal test their opponents have already endorsed and that is accepted as scientifically valid by the whole community.

If LeMas has done that test then they can show the results to support their claims and the data from those tests would be a lot more useful in convincing skeptics than the anecdotal evidence mentioned in this story (no matter how experienced the source of that anecdotal evidence). If LeMas has not done that test, then I have to question why they can afford a lobbyist to push their ammo on Capitol Hill but can't afford to test it in a way where others can reproduce the results and verify that APLP ammo works as advertised.

 

[Blain]

manhattan23, the ammo that Lemas Ltd sells is not for sale to the public due to its' armor penetrating capability.

Rifle ammo is armor penetrating by design. Besides, AP rifle ammo is NOT Illegal. AP pistol ammo is!! What's the deal?


How is the recoil on these hyper velocity rounds?