That's an old fashioned canister round. It used something like 1,000 tungsten balls, not sure what caliber. From what I've read, even though it was very effective, it is being replaced by a "multipurpose" round. That just means some thing far more expensive than the canister and other rounds it is replacing.
@@Thane36425 canister rounds were cool, the little balls would bounce off hard objects like roads, like skipping stones off a lake... You'd see dust kick up from the impacts, a space of 100 meters, more impacts space of 50 meters more impacts. Yeah, don't wanna be downrange of that.
Rubymass090 it was during Project Salvo and the SPIW project where companies developed rifles that fired special high velocity flechette cartridges. They had burst fire capabilities with like a 3 round burst at over 2,000 RPM to maximize hit probability at range
@@sandervanduren2779 project salvo was the nuclear bomb powered ICBM wasn't it as well as the 9ne looking at duplex bullets and hit probability that led to the one ar15 variant I actually want the colt Mars with the shortened 5.56 that had a crazy rof wasnt it? SPIW was the flechette one with THE gorgeous but weird AAI thing that looked like a scifi prop.
The only way I can see there working is by completely redesigning these. Maybe a tungsten tip, aluminum shaft and tail, and launched (via mass accelerator, of course) at speeds slower than 1125 fps or whichever speed to get the maximum velocity without creating any sort of turbulence or air pressure wave. The most important criteria being the piercing end being heavier than the tail and shaft combined.
The Lazy Dog bomb used in the Vietnam War were the nearest thing to a working flechette type system. It was very effective, apparently. I know it's not a discarding sabot, but it's the only viable system I could think of.
5 thousand of these coming out of a 105mm howitzer does a job on "troops in the open". We called the round Beehive and referred to the flechettes as nails.
So I have heard. Were they placed inside the canister round point forward, in rows, or just poured in? I imagine they'd be hard on the rifling if loose, potentially penetrating the sabot or cannisters.
@@lifeisa.smalllesson4607 Have you ever seen what a more "conventional" artillery round will do to unprotected personnel in the open? It isn't what you would consider "humane" either by any stretch of the word. Come to think of it, the types of wounds that high-velocity FMJ rifle bullets can inflict are definitely not "humane" either--especially since most shots taken in combat are not aimed with the same precision and care that a hunter uses when sighting in on a game animal. (This isn't because soldiers are inherently sloppy marksmen, but rather because most hunters typically don't go after game that is actively trying to kill them first.) In short, my point is that a lot of wounds from small arms on the battlefield are likely not going to be in places that will cause instant death or incapacitation, but where the bullets can inflict terrible tissue damage. War is hell.
Right. Throwing darts fly straight because all their weight is up front. Add in supersonic speeds and these things are not going to work for sure. These rounds are just total crap design.
Just need to cut off the stabilizer fins. At high velocity in a group, the fins are messing it all up. The parallels of the flechettes cylinders need to remain flush against eachother packed tightly
@Kneon Knight I have a friend who has a 10 gauge blunderbuss that he's fired all kinds of crazy stuff out of, including a load of watch batteries and cat "stuff". He described that load as his "might not kill you right away, but you're going to die and it won't be pleasant" load.
I remember seeing fletchetts for sale in bulk when I was a kid, and I thought they'd be awesome in a shotgun, but thanks to you guys, I now know better! Keep up the good work!!
That is what I thought when I first saw these as a teenager at a gun show. Somebody was selling them by weight though he let me have a few along with another item I purchased. They certainly did look like they could have used a tip of some kind.
my thought as well. arent most arrow/dart type weapons light in the tail heavier in the tip, so the weightier tip leads the flight? or is it the lighter tail keeps the tail in the back? I cant recall witch is which? is weight more important, or drag?
@@wills5159 Basically the centre of mass needs to be in front of the centre of drag. So you need more weight at the front or more drag at the rear. Or both.
I remember the flechette round being very effective out of the 90mm. Our weapons platoon would fire them occasionally, would have been very effective against enemy personnel. I remember the flechettes being shorter than the ones you’re using. A lot of us old Rangers would have one stuck behind the Ranger tab on our patrol caps.
4:13 right side of frame, the aluminum disc hits a glob of water dead on, looks cool. 9:28 Look at that, none of the buck shot key holed, good results ;)
If I remember correctly, these were packed in 2.75 rocket warheads, backwards. They were banned for "nailing" people to trees. But that is all hear say.
In Vietnam I’ve read the 2.75 inch flachette was very effective fired from Cobras. Was more like a shotgun Shell really. The Rockets would fly a set distance before they would explode sending the flachette down Range to sweep the exposed enemy off a position.
There's a reason why militaries abandoned flechette rounds. The precision required in machining, construction and gunpowder load was not worth the effort. Every single military flechette round had some weird gunpowder/sabot system to make them work. And even those had failures. Duplex and triplex rounds were always more effective anyway. >__>
Flechettes were used as an improvement over traditional shrapnel in direct fire anti-personnel artillery and rocket rounds. Artillery eventually replace them with standard high explosive using a time fuse set at a mini,mum time because it was found that the enemy could infiltrate underneath the lethal pattern produced by an APERS/flechette round, but air-bursting high explosives produced a 360:degree pattern of fragments crawling alone did not mitigate
@@douglasmorgan9873 That is something i've see a lot of people say about them but i have never found a basis for it. The best i was able to find was that they are considered controversial but nothing about them being banned from use in war, nothing with any sources to back up the war crime claims at least.
My two cents: the round they're testing needs to be refined as the darts are instable in flight, likely a center of mass issue. Shift the weight foward, they'll fly more straight.
@@demoncet1998 that would just add spin to the shot as a whole, not to the individual pieces, so when it leaves the barrel they all spread out because of the centrifugal force. Same reason birdshot/buckshot is fired from a smoothbore.
This is not how they were designed to function. They are a 'anti personnel' weapon where several hundred to a few thousand flechettes were layered around an explosive charge, usually in a 2.75, M255 warhead of the rocket propelled munition where they would fly in all directions. Not in a shotgun shell.
Happy Independence Day Brothers in arms. Love the video , those were much deadlier coming out of the rockets on the attack choppers. Those are also used in artillery rounds called bee hives. Great job and as always GOD BLESS AMERICA
I can't even imagine being underneath one of the beehive barrage. You probably wouldn't even know it, instantly a pink cloud of what used to be a grunt. Love ya brother, Danny is in my thoughts, he is missed.
When my dad worked at Whirlpool they were making those in the 70's during the Vietnam War. They where shot out of canisters from helicopters by the thousands. He actually made a tie clip out of one of them.
In WW1 the equivalent of "flechettes", a handful of steel darts, was tested as a way to weaponize airplanes. It worked kind of but was inefficient. I've heard plenty of veterans adamantly testify to the power of flechette rounds ... out of helicoptes and naval cannons. It's taking what kind of worked in WW1 and increasing its efficiency.
I noticed the tips of the flechettes looked like they went through the same cheap sharpening method nails do. Half the leading edges look chowdered up, and the tail fins look like they were pressed out into shape, much like nail heads. Very economical to make, but the quality is garbage. I'm willing to bet the machine that pumps these out has a more than passing resemblance to the machinery that makes nails.
@@nottelling6598 You'd be correct. All the flechettes in this vid [& any other commercially-loaded "specialty round" I've ever heard of] are from de-milled Beehive artillery rounds; they're not intended for this use at all. I'm just glad that Tao filmed this at his top secret AZ firing range, since flechette rounds are "Nyet! Off to the gulag archipelago with you!" behind the Granola Curtain...
In military science fiction a common weapon is a flechette rifle. Seeing this, I think like the gyro-jet it will remain more popular in science fiction.
Those are saboted rounds from a rifle. In theory they could work and have been tried. They tend to have higher velocity but are light so they have less energy especially at range. They are also less accurate. Gyrojets are interesting but won't really come into their own until they get guidance systems. Even then they'll be very expensive and probably specialty weapons. Larger rockets with a guidance system would make more sense.
Most of the time, that is a single, heavy flechette in a sabot. The Steyr ACR prototype made it work, but the cost was ruinous and while it could penetrate, it was like stabbing the test media with a knitting needle.
@@Thane36425 One thing I never see in scifi, is meta stable metallic hydrogen. If you were to fill a bullet with it, and detonate it on impact, it would be destructive.
@@josephburchanowski4636 You don't see steam much in science fiction either. If you fill a bucket with steam at about 500 PSI and detonate it on impact, it is pretty messy too.
@@josephburchanowski4636 There are easier and more stable ways of making explosive bullets. They are currently banned for use against people though. However, when they were used they could be brutal. Modern armor might make render them moot though.
I'd say they can but it's more like they need so high quality control standards that it's not practical or economically viable to do so. I'd say scaling down ETC guns to rifle size would be a more practical option than saboted rounds in a small arm.
they were originally put in boxes of thousands and dropped in a strafe along german trenches. they were longer and heavier and apparently were scarily effective. went through the helmets and anyone caught in the beginning of the strafe looked like a run over hedgehog. there were fat ones called lazy dogs that basically were big bullets with fins on the back put in a shrapnel bomb or artillery shell.
Sure they work. They are contained in a rifle grenade kind of device. Easy to attach and easy to remove but I must admit that they have really never seen much use although they should have because in my experiences they are pretty devastating in close quarters. Forest, bush, urban environment. And they are use to quickly suppress enemy ambush for just some seconds until you get cover. Of course, I dont know the latest news but we used them a lot ~20 years ago.
@@2Potates ETC = electrothermal chemical, i.e. the newer higher-velocity systems being considered for tank armament? To be honest, I can't see any applications for ETC munitions in rifle calibers. Consider that cartridges like .45 ACP are still being used in modern combat despite their extremely sluggish velocities--you don't need that much muzzle velocity to incapacitate, much less kill a human being. Second, ETC munitions themselves are quite likely a _very_ bad idea for rifle-sized weapons. The small arms we have today offer safe, reliable, durable, and largely weather-proof weapon systems. I don't think you would get all that with something that relies on electrical energy to prime and fire cartridges. Still, I am curious about ridiculously overbore and hypervelocity cartridges, though... I can't help but wonder about the terminal effectiveness of a 5 grain projectile going at 10,000 fps or something crazy like that.
@@richmeisterradio yeah I'm not making an argument one way or the other. I just know those flechette rockets cleared out the jungle better than agent orange lol
Thinking back on an old video of yours, I bet the “sonic deflection” happening at speeds over the sound barrier are causing the flechettes to knock each other around after exiting the barrel. Perhaps the objects being shaped as shafts to try to stabilize is countered by their flight path being potentially more easily altered by the individual shockwaves slapping each of them around at slightly different rates and angles.
Anyone else remember the Bruce Dern movie where he tries to launch a bunch of these at the super bowl crowd via the goodyear blimp? Swear its a real movie!
There is nothing magic about the "magic bullet". The head should be fairly still or even pushed towards the shooter by the spray of brain matter + bullet out of the exit hole. It is not a solid target like a brick of lead, where most of the kinetic energy is dumped to heat and the bullet and lead brick simply continue forward at a much slower speed. The motion of the head is too rapid on the zapruder film and looks like it is accelerating; that just looks like a muscle jerk.
IN 1968 WE HAD GOVERNMENT ISSUE 12 GAGE fLECHETTE AMMO. iT WAS LOADED WITH ABOUT FIFTY 8 GRAIN DARTS PER SHELL. hALf were loaded tail down and the rest point down there was a steel washer at the bottom of the plastic wad. At ranges of fifty to 100 yards, it seemed to work very well. They did not run far after being shot and they spread out to about 7-8' circle at 100 yards or so. It did not matter if they were concealed in the jungle. The little darts went right through the leaves.
About 12 years ago I had gotten ahold of 2 pounds of Vietnam era fletchets and me and a couple of friends over the period of a month Tried Every way we could think to get it to work out of a 12 guage and we Never got it to be any more effective than a ringer or a slug while Everything else was completely useless.
I think i thought of a design for a round that would interest you. How hard/how much of a hassle is it to send you something from Austria? Would really love seeing one of you guys try it out some day. :)
I used these a couple of times in Vietnam. They where packed in brass shells. I shoot them out of a model 97 as I recall. They worked quite well going though body armor (front and back) it was close 10 or 15 yards.
Tao, if you’re up for trying new ideas, try making your own flexhettes, these ones are build like arrows should be, balanced all around, but what if you made the points the heaviest part and made them slightly bigger? Maybe actual frills for fins?
Flechettes do work in artillery shells, like the Beehive round in Vietnam. Many use more blade like projectiles than darts which might be more effective
I read a book once mentioning about an American army encounter with either Vietnamese or Koreans...the camp was getting over run till they opened op with a howitzer or similar loaded with those things...they just decimated the enemy and kept the Americans alive
They were designed to throw metal through dense vegetation in Vietnam they used to load rockets with roofing nails one chopper had enough nails to build a three bedroom ranch house with garage
It depends. The ones thrown from planes in ww1 were alot bigger. Atleast 4 times as long and 20 times as heavy. In ww2 they got the Lazy dogs, smaller but there were more per bomb. Around Vietnam these were developed, the smallest. These were developed for artillery and tank cannon rounds. But some crazy army man loaded them into shotgun shells. Which worked well enough.
@@SuperFunkmachine The first Lazy dog bombs were from ww2. As early as 1941. First used in combat in 44. The ones shown in the video where used in early rockets and APERS artillery shells as small as 105 to 203 MM variants. But were also used in 90mm tank cannons, 105mm tank cannons and the 106mm recoilless rifle. Aswell as the Carl Gustav later. The early 2.75 inch rockets had around 1300 of these smaller flechettes in the war head while the modern Hydra 70 can be equipped with a APERS war head containing some 1,179 larger flecchetes.
One single flechette would probably work better, as nineteen of them are going to start clipping each other as they try to stabilise themselves and tumble away out of the barrel. Also, if they were constructed in a manner of an arrow, which are front heavy, that gives the fins on the back more leverage to correct it's flight. So you'd need a thin shaft, say aluminium perhaps with guide fins cast into it, with a heavy hardened steel tip. It would also need to be balanced and maybe with a sharp aerodynamic cap on the nose, possibly even made out of lead so that it deforms on impact and guides the hardened tip into the target instead of the tip shearing away at an angle and bouncing it off. At this point, you're looking at a miniaturised tank shell though, along with some expense for the amount of machining per flechette. planescaped in the comments below is bang on the money, it's a lot of time in experimentation, work in machining and cost for everything that your average off-the-shelf slug could probably do just as well at those ranges.
I don't know the design or manufacturer but the USMC had flechette shotgun rounds in 65 or 66 and there were "confirmed" hits out to 100 yards according to my father.
Thank you - I got suckered into buying a couple boxes of these. I wonder if it would make any difference if they were hot glued to the disc. I'm gonna try but I'm thinking it'll just tumble.
"Terrifying" 7:45 I absolutely agree. A small package of random damage and death. Up close, or at distance, with a deflection spread of up to 60 degrees.
Try using feathers or plastic for fletching instead of using the same material up front. I think the fletch is heavier than the point that is why it tumbles during flight.
Jeff, have some 3d printed sabots made that will house one flechette dart. I'm thinking 3/4 oz overall weight when leaving the mass accelerators muzzle. Looking forward to this vid. I BET you the dart will pass through a 2 inch lead plate and several kevlar vests with the right powder load and whatnot at 15 yards. Love your vids and science. Remember make this vid happen!!! The results might suprise you!!!
My father a Vietnam vet 68-69 told me the cannoneers used to load " Beehives" or flechettes in the 8 inch cannons if overrun by enemy troops. He proclaimed they were very destructive to say the least. He said as a grunt those " Beehive rounds " earned every bit of respect .
I'd say if the fletchette had bigger wing and more weight at the tip, they'd be able to stabilise sooner and they'd be more accurate. It also seems like not all of the fletchettes are pointed straight forward in the sabot, might it be why they tumble so much?
These things are about as accurate as my century polish tantal which they put 5.56 barrels on 5.45 guns. Keyholes almost every time and somehow isn’t covered under their recall lol.
I imagine at a certain velocity the shaft starts tumble along its other axis instead of rotating along it so if you want a fire dart out rounds you'll need a longer shaft. FPS Russia got a single arrow to fire straight out of a shotgun so... I imagine if you reduce the length incrementally until it begins to tumble end over end you'll have the smallest dart shot gun round possible at its hugest velocity.
I remember this game, (tribes areal assault) and it mention Mico flechettes rounds in the mini gun ammo lol and I never heard the word again... until now!
I feel like if they were designed better they would be able to work, like if they had bigger fins and better weight distribution so that they did actually fly straight, but with the fins at least that would probably make them too big to be able to pack enough of them into a shell to make it worth it to use them rather than a slug.
when i see this flechette shell it drags me straight to hunt: showdown, the game devs just released custom ammo for that game and one of the shells are the flechette and looks a little bit like this shell, hell of a shell in that game . And even if they seem to not go to straight in this video they will still cause lots of damage on the body, since not everyone have body armor at home who will protect you lol
Hmm... I vaguely recall an idea for these, where they were meant to be cast in something like a wax slug and for them to break up on impact. The rest, I'll leave to your imagination... is that worth a try? Also, in a sideways thought, you could try a bundle of metal wire pins, (coat hangar wire) held in a wax slug as a comparison
Paul Harrel has something to say about that 9th buckshot at the very bottom of the cardboard. Now, I'm not exactly sure what it is that he'd say. And I'm not about to spend 43mins trying to hear him say it. I'm just letting you know.. That is all. Thank you for reading this. I can't stop typing. I probably shouldn't drink so much, this is getting awkward. Ok. Bye. Also I love this channel. It's awesome. And maybe I'm a bit drunk. Ok I'm pretty wasted. Goodnight. Fort real this time.
We used flechette rounds through a 106mm Reckless Rifle (SF Weapons Committee), of course those rounds had 9000 flechettes each, and they would tear some stuff up, but they were designed to repel an attack by massed troops.....but I would still stick to the buckshot rounds for my shotgunning....
In Vietnam the US started using tubes that looked like rocket launcher tubes mounted to helicopters that would be muzzle loaded with these steel flechettes. These things were deadly to the enemy with stories of ground troops finding VC and NVA troops solidly nailed to trees with flechettes. They also had a 40mm grenade round and 12 gauge round loaded with flechettes.
Bulk pack them in a shot shell, i think still works better. More of 'em But where they really shine is as shrapnel in explosive devices. I was in the military as a munitions specialist when they decided to "outlaw" them and most of the guys in the bomb dump still "decorated" their hats with them. I still have some from back then. If you get enough of them moving with some force, I guarantee that you do not want to be down range of them. They're pretty nasty when they're on target. And, yes, they'll go right through you.
big layman here but these flechettes look horribly imbalanced, it's hard to imagine those tiny winglets on solid metal arrows will do any work at all and overall there are too many and arent even arranged in a way that guarantees them to start flying straight. on a more gut based level i think there are too many of them aswell. just like you showed they are horribly inaccurate, but if you reduced their number, increased the winglet area for each arrow and changed the weight distribution in the arrows, maybe you could get something going. 7 or even just 3 of them, maybe add some stabilizer plastic on the inside for the flight. if you go all the way you could essentially just miniaturize apfsds tank shells... honestly these just look like someone stuck some junk to nails and called it a day
OK------------ It does not look like the sabo is splitting (flowering) to release the darts. if the sabot stays as a tube the darts will tumble as the sabot tumbles as they separate.
... you guys just don't get it.... you see these were designed to be fired vertically over blackhooded crowds...upon reaching apogee , they stabilize and accelerate as they decend towards your friends on the ground...
Looking at the picture of the Flechette's in the sabot they are not inline. Being pushed from the rear any angle will be a deflection of the Flechette's tail. either line them up or forget the idea.
Not surprising that they tumble. For an arrow to be accurate the point of balance must be front of center. As I recall 10-15% is the magic point. Those flechettes are clearly rear heavy making them want to swap ends as they travel through the air. The end that has the most momentum wants to lead. Not sure you could shoot them far enough to ever get them all to stabilize.
