new army ammo puts mean in 'green'

Well isn't this a mean trick, it has a lighter projectile but a much better KE what sort of technology could help them do that???

(it must have something to do with E=MC squared perhaps?)


New Army Ammo Puts Mean in 'Green'

May 05, 2011

Military.com



by Christian Lowe



ABERDEEN, Md. --- Tell a Soldier he's loading "environmentally friendly" ammo into his M4 mag and he might be skeptical about whether it's as effective as its lead counterpart.

But Army officials here say the new M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round -- with its steel core instead of a toxic lead slug -- is far more effective than the current round, doubling the effective range and for the first time giving M4-wielding Joes the ability to penetrate barriers once reserved for higher-caliber rounds.

"There's a stigma among Soldiers about something that's 'green,' " said Lt. Col. Jeff Woods, the Army's small caliber ammunition product manager. "This is a clear case where making something environmentally friendly works for us."

Leveraging the science of 120mm tank rounds, Army engineers at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. designed a 5.56mm rifle cartridge that incorporates a jacketed copper slug pushing a sharpened steel "penetrator." Testers showed during a May 4 demonstration here that the round can punch through quarter-inch steel armor out to 300 yards with ease.

"You normally wouldn't even think of a guy with a 5.56 going against a target with this kind of armor," said the Army Research Lab's Jim Newill, who lead the team that developed the M855A1 round. "Now we've more than doubled the ability to perforate [armored] targets."

Originally the effort to field a lead-free small caliber round stemmed from Clinton-era edicts to clean up military firing ranges seeping toxic lead residue into area ground and water. After frustrating attempts to develop alternatives with expensive materials such as tungsten and bismuth, the Army found steel and copper did a better job at a lower price.

In 2007, responding to reports from the field that current rounds weren't deadly enough, the Army jump-started efforts to make a more lethal round that was also environmentally friendly. In less than two years, the steel-tipped M855A1 design was shown to be more effective against a wider range of targets than the decades-old M855 round -- or even than the Army's 7.62 round, officials here said.

Citing security concerns, engineers were cagey about describing how the new round works when it hits a human body. But Woods said it has "more consistent" effects on soft targets than the current round, or even the 7.62mm bullet.

"I can't say that it's more lethal than the M855. That depends on how the round hits a target," Woods said, emphasizing that accuracy is paramount. "But what I can say is that you'll see the same effects every time with this round. And we can confirm that it is superior to the [M80] 7.62 on soft targets."

About 30 million of the new EPR rounds have been fielded to Soldiers in Afghanistan. The service plans to replace all their lead-cored bullets with the new M855A1 "black tip" rounds by the end of this year, though older "green tip" rounds will likely remain in the inventory for a while, officials said.

The Army also plans to field a 7.62 version of the "black tip" ammo for M240 machineguns and M110 rifles by the end of 2012.

"There's nothing out there right now that can perform like this [M855A1] round on this wide a range of targets," Woods said.

? Copyright 2011 Military.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



AND also this



http://kitup.military.com/2011/05/data-dum...k-tip-ammo.html


Data Dump: Army 'Black Tip' Ammo
by christian

May 5, 2011



This afternoon on Military.com I wrote a story about the Army's new M855A1 ammo. As the story says, the Army found the new steel penetrator round can punch through steel, concrete, glass and even some foreign steel and ceramic rifle armor plates at pretty substantial distances (in the 300-400 meter range for most, and 40-80 meters for concrete).

Here's some more data on the M855A1 round, including the attached briefing we received at the Aberdeen demo yesterday.

A couple thoughts?Officials say the EPR is optimized for the shorter-barrel M4 where the standard M855 was optimized for the M16. The powder burns faster and creates more pressure, and has the effect of reducing flash. I've also heard there were some pressure problems and other wear and tear issues with the rounds, but Army officials denied that and said the only problem they found was with the primer ? and they designed a new one to address that.(Where I have heard this before?)


Officials say the round yaws like the M855, but its yaw is more consistent and predictable, meaning its terminal effects "are not yaw dependant." There are Kit Up! readers who will understand that more than I do, and that's also why I included the attached slides.(Hmm could it be that the projectile is travelling in a straight line basically?)


One thing is for sure: this thing punches through hard targets a lot better than the M855. We saw it for our own eyes. We saw rounds fired out of a SAW punch through the engine compartment and into the engine block of an old truck at 500 yards. Woods and Newill actually regretted that they couldn't show us the EPR's performance on ballistic jelly, saying they had planned on it (it was even in our schedule for the event) but legal turned them down for fear of divulging SECRET info. I tend to think it was more out of a fear that journos would tie it to the bin Laden melon than anything else?but I'm s jaded skeptic.

One thing the Army folks wanted to drive home was that despite the prejudice against anything "environmental" (and I include myself in that group), the EPR is better than its lead-core predecessor and all Joes should make sure they're loading in the new "black tips" over the "green tip" option.