| From: | Gurth <gurth@******.NL> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: caseless ammo |
| Date: | Tue, 6 Jun 1995 11:58:29 +0200 |
>except that the very end (where the firing pin strikes the round and ignites
>the powder) continues to exist.
You mean the M256 120mm smoothbore gun? That's not, technically, a caseless
weapon. The cartridge casing is made of plastic or something or other, and
burns away, leaving the metal base plate with primer to be ejected from the gun.
In caseless ammo, the cartridge has no casing; instead, the outside of the
cartridge _is_ the propellant, whereas in the 120mm rounds there is
definitely a casing around the propellant before the round goes into the gun.
There was lots of trouble with the earliest models of such rounds, for
example in the 152mm gun/missile launcher mounted in the M551 Sheridan -- in
Vietnam, the casings of those rounds tended to crack, spilling propellant
into the turret.
OTOH, in the German 4.7mm caseless round, _nothing_ is ejected from the gun
apart from the bullet.
>This is (and my second point...) because the firing pin must hit a metal primer
>which in turn ignites the powder. There must be SOME metal involved in the
>process, thus there is no true caseless ammo.
The 4.7mm round has a primer in the back of the round, I don't really know
what this is made of, but it does not need an ejection mechanism to get rid
of it. My guess is that it burns up on firing... You could, for example,
make it of a metal that burns together with the propellant (what, you
thought all metals were as fire-resistant as steel? Try chucking a piece of
rubidium into your fish tank...)
Gurth@******.nl - Gurth@***.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
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