Fletchette rounds

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klutchless

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Have any of you guys tried these things.Basically they are a bunch of steel arrows loaded in a shotshell.I have seen them in abundance at the local gunshows and they are for use in a self defense situation and are ment to penetrate without over penetration and according to the seller tumble as they travel in the body.But he is a salesman and i'm not so hot to change my proven load.
 
There have been a number of threads on here about them. You might want to search for more minutes.

However, in the spirit of saving you time, don't bother with them. As with everything, there are a few die-hard fans who will say that it's the only way to go, but the consensus is they aren't terribly useful.
 
Basically it's just steel shot with fins. They were developed for the military for use in artillery shells. There is a lot of difference between 30 pounds of these at 3000 feet per second and and ounce at 1300 feet per second. Buckshot is hard to beat out of a shotgun. If you need armor piercing, get an M1A and some full metal jacketed ammo.
 
The only real use that flechettes ever had was in howitzer rounds for point blank (they're coming over the wire) situations if you could lower your 105's enough. I was never anywhere near that kind of situation (thank heavens)... One serious guy I worked with said they were very, very effective in that situation. The call on the line was "Beehive" just before firing to give folks a chance to get down ....

Flechettes in shotgun rounds are a joke.
 
Studies done by the military determined that at shotgun velocities, the lethality of flechettes was directly proportional to the width of the find. Arrow type flechettes are not particularly lethal. In addition, the flechette rounds sold at gunshows are made from artillery flechettes. True shotgun flechette ammo like the SP-12F-20, XM258 and L-L1 used a different flechette.
 
They seemed to be pretty effective in 2.75in folding fin aerial rockets from Cobra gunships. Our ground guys seemed to like the fact that once we were through with a couple of passes with "nails" nobody fired at them, and everybody and everything in the target area had little Xs all over them! There's probably a big difference between a 12 guage shell and an eighteen pound warhead, though.
 
As said earlier the flechettes sold at gun shows are from artillery rounds. There are true flechette rounds for shotguns but these are best left to the military.
 
I have to agree the 2.75 was advertised to put a "nail" in every square foot of a football field if fired from 1500" feet if I remember correctly. The 105 or 155 for firebase defense during close and personnel was extremely effective against wave type attacks especially at night when "they were there" but to many to pin point. General direction and location "BOOM" problems solved.

Shotgun and 00 or slug why would anyone want something more?
 
They do not tumble in the body. If you think about it even briefly you can figure that one out.
Otherwise, they spread rapidly (close range only), they're typically packed with half facing forward & half facing backward, they lose velocity rapidly.
If your target is fairly close (feet) many of the flechettes will still be turning around to orient themselves nose-first, and many will strike sideways.
At about 10 feet one of the loads I tried bounced one back off a plywood board & hit my leg, others dropped to the ground.

A bad choice for defensive uses.
Denis
 
Bought them, tried them, photographed the results.

After Action Report -
Worthless in a shotgun.
1) At self-defense ranges, the 19-20 flechettes had a spread of about 8 feet at a distance of 15-yards. An 8-foot circle has 51-square feet to be covered by those 20 flechettes.

2) In order to maximize packaging, half the flechettes are loaded backwards. Upon exit from the muzzle those flechettes tend to spread out .... see above.

3) In the instance observed (I wouldn't go so far as to call it a 'test' as it wasn't at all a controlled environment), at 15-yards NONE of the flechettes were seen to penetrate into the target; a ballistic vest supported by a 5-gallon bucket and a plywood backer, with a butcher paper background to measure spread. Many key-hole punctures were seen in the butcher paper.

4) When the target was shot again at 7-yards, s few stuck into the plywood, only 1 of which would have any strength at all to remove. A SINGULAR flechette stuck into the LIII vest to the fins but no further. No holes were seen from flechettes in the vest.

5) Penetration depends on velocity and mass; the report and recoil of the flechette rounds were noticeably lacking, not even enough to cycle the action of a Mossberg 930. The mass of the individual flechettes is in the neighborhood of 25% of an individual 00 Buckshot pellet.

We concluded that flechettes (as marketed for shotguns at gun shows) were useless.
IF they did happen by some miracle to strike an individual, the penetration would be reduced by their light weight and further reduced by not the fins. Although an ice pick can be deadly, having one stick .75 inches into the body is unlikely to stop even a rather unmotivated attacker.


Link to Entertaining post on GeorgiaPacking.Org regarding flechettes.
 
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No telling what kind of lawsuits they would bring if you actually used one in defense. I can only imagine the kinds of suits that lawyers of hoodlums family when you shoot him with a bunch of "nails"
 
ccsniper said:
No telling what kind of lawsuits they would bring if you actually used one in defense. I can only imagine the kinds of suits that lawyers of hoodlums family when you shoot him with a bunch of "nails"

Ummm..."Thank you for using Less Lethal ammunition instead of buckshot" if there were any justice in the world.

See how well that would have worked if only you'd posted "No telling what the family would say if... " :p
 
The big problem is the flechettes that are sold give flechettes a bad name.

They are still subject to the same weight and velocity formula to give energy and momentum.

The typical flechettes sold are per projectile weight closer to the weight of birdshot. You don't use birdshot for defensive loads.
Typical artillery flechettes sold are about 8 grains per projectile.
The flechettes penetrate slightly better than shot of similar weight, but birdshot weight flechettes still are unacceptable.
As for using the birdshot weight flechettes for birds, don't do it, they are not safe like falling birdshot and would still be dangerous coming down point first. So don't fire them up in the air.


Now if you actually used buckshot weight flechettes you would have a decent projectile. However in steel this would likely require a 3.5 inch shotshell and chamber to pack in a decent typical 2.75 inch payload.


#4 buckshot, the minimum shot size used for defense weighs in at almost 21 grains per projectile, and with the greater sectional density of the flechettes you could get better penetration with them.
But you would need to start with 20+ grain flechettes.


Some 20-50 grain per projectile flechettes loaded in a 3.5 inch magnum shell (so you can use longer flechettes) and given a typical 2.75 inch shell payload and powder charge should do pretty good.
 
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A friend's dad used them in his shotgun in Vietnam. He told my friend about the ammo and the intended damage it would do to a person. My friend said it didn't seem very efficient, or that it'd work very well. He laughed and said "oh, it worked just fine."
 
I've played with a few. Not worth using as home defense ammo but fun to toy around with. The look on people's face when the plywood backer has a bunch of nails stuck to it is pretty fun.
 
Here is a guy selling the typically sold flechettes that give flechettes a bad name:

http://www.ammo-one.com/Flechette.html

The 1" long flechettes listed as weighing 4.8 grains per projectile.
The 1.5" flechettes listed as weighing 8.4 grains per projectile.

4.8 grains is close to #2 birdshot. 8.4 grains is not buckshot.


These are the projectile weights of the Vietnam war flechettes.
They may be effective at artillery velocities, and from gunship rockets, but at typical shotgun velocities they do not have enough velocity. You need larger flechettes for shotgun velocities. They will still penetrate better than birdshot of similar weight, but they are still birdshot equivalents.


Buck Kramer said:
FPS Russia does a bit on all kinds of different 12 gauge rounds...they dont do as well as I predicted...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4FjODPDFA

The load FPSRussian appears to use is the 1" 4.8 grain darts. The report is also pretty weak, so they might not even be at a decent velocity. 4.8 grains at velocities low for even a shotgun is pretty pathetic.
 
Buck Kramer said:
FPS Russia does a bit on all kinds of different 12 gauge rounds...they dont do as well as I predicted
Zoogster said:
The load FPSRussian appears to use is the 1" 4.8 grain darts. The report is also pretty weak, so they might not even be at a decent velocity. 4.8 grains at velocities low for even a shotgun is pretty pathetic.
Contrast 0:55 to 1:00 against 1:30 to 1:40 -
That will tell you just about everything you need to know about how ""powerful"" flechette rounds are.:scrutiny:
 
4thPointOfContact said:
Contrast 0:55 to 1:00 against 1:30 to 1:40 -

Contrasting 4.8 grain projectiles with a 437.5 grain projectile and multiple 53.8 grain projectiles.
It is not a comparison of similar projectile weights to accurately compare spherical shot with flechettes, so there is no real comparison.
If you compared tiny spherical birdshot to giant arrow like flechettes the birdshot would look pathetic too. You have to compare similar projectile weights.

The muzzle report is also not that affected by payload, and in fact the lighter flechettes load if loaded decent would be even louder with additional velocity loaded at the same PSI. Yet the buck and ball load is clearly louder with a deeper report, which lets you know the factory loaded flechettes are severely underloaded with a minimal powder charge.
So its like comparing a light field load of birdshot to a slug and buckshot. The birdshot would look bad too.
A steel airgun BB is about 5 grains, heavier than some of these flechettes. I just weighed out an 8 grain nail, that is tiny!

To really make a judgement you need at least some decent size nails.
If you had a 3.5 inch shell you could give about 1" to powder and wadding, leaving 2.5" for nails.
A 2.5" wire nail is a J size nail. One source says there is about 106 to a pound. Dividing by grains that gives us a projectile weight of about 66 grains each.
There you go.
Also you could move onto concrete nails which have a larger diameter, and can reach the desired weight in a shorter length, and also contain carbon (you could even heat treat them for extra hard tips and better penetration.) However you may need to remove some of the head on a concrete nail to allow more to fit in a shell, or trim the head into fins.
I see some 2" concrete nails said to be about 99 per pound, giving over 70 grains per projectile. With trimmed heads still likely over 60 grains, and you could fit those in a more common 3" shotshell.


Those would be buckshot weight nails you could compare the performance of.
I would load some up and go make a range report but unfortunately California does not like flechettes. Perhaps I can reload some next time I am in a neighboring state.
I would recommend a long shot cup at least the length of the nails to protect the bore from the hard sharp steep points. Cylinder bore would also be advised, a constriction might force the steel into contact with the bore.
Being an arrow like projectile they should pattern similar even without a constriction once they stabilize in the air.
 
That's kinda my point.

We have one video and one photographic post about the flechettes available on the market today. Those are the ones being compared.

If we increased the weight of the flechettes, or increased the powder charge behind them then we wouldn't be able to make any sort of valid judgement in regards to what is available on the market.

What we could do, and what we should do.... aren't what has been done, and what's been done is the only thing that can be judged.

If one wanted effective flechettes then what should be done is exactly as you describe. When/if those are on the market then a judgement can be made on their effectiveness. Until then, we can only judge what's out there now.... and what's out there now ain't very effective.

If one wants to look at a flechette design that May be effective, I'd have to point them towards the experimental SCMITR rounds developed by AAI. Eight flechettes of 1 gram apiece, but it was determined to be too expensive to manufacture to be marketable.
shotgun_scmitr.gif

Still too darn light, though.
 
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