I got cancer from Depleted Uranium from patrolling areas hit by A10 gun fire and other platforms using DU penetrators. Once those projectiles hit, they explode and that DU dust can cause a lot of health problems. Awesome video by the way
@@shaylethorne2387it's slightly radioactive, but the major problem is that when used as amo it pulverize in an extremely fine dust that can be inhaled and reach the lungs
@@shaylethorne2387 Depleted uranium - contains 99.7% Uranium-238 with a half-life of 4.4 billion years, and 0.3% Uranium-235 with a half-life of 700 million years. As we see, there are no stable isotopes in depleted uranium
@shaylethorne2387 there are a lot of studies on this and show conclusive long term negative health effects, including cancer when the DU dust is inhaled. My medic died from inoperable brain cancer less than 3 years after our deployment and numerous others in my task force have predeceased me. This year is 20 years since I've been out. I get a 100% P+T which is some consolation and dozens of VA doctor's appointments each year
Depleted Uranium is not entirely depleted. When it is entirely depleted of its radioactivity it becomes Lead. That's one reason why Lead is so good at shielding against radiation.
so read through the comments if you want to know why we use depleted uranium in tank guns everywhere. It has to do with the ballistics and materials. But other than that, great joke
My dad did mathematics on metal strength under varying circumstances. He would have loved your videos! As a physicist i also like and respect your videos. In this particular case it would have been nice to measure the temperatures of the armor as well as the cones before and afterwards.
Why use depleted uranium instead of tungsten? Depleted Uranium Penetrator Rounds | Museum of Radiation and ... Tungsten, which has a similar density to uranium, can also be used but DU has greater target penetration. Unlike tungsten, uranium is pyrophoric( becomes a plasma). It also has a lower melting point than tungsten. As a DU penetrator strikes a target, its surface temperature increases dramatically.
We had one of these as kids in the 70's. My dad worked on the 30mm autocannon system for the A-10. Fling it down the road and see all the long bright sparks, for a decade at least. LOL
I don't see how tossing a dangerous radioactive isotope down the street is really funny if the next generations of people inhale the radioactive dust particles for millions of years to come but maybe I am misunderstanding the implications of mishandling uranium...
@@joeblow1748 yeah, 30mm depleted uranium slug, it was a "toy" from at least 1975-1985. I actually got to press the button to test fire one of these guns, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1979. They were manufactured in South Burlington, VT, by General Electric and shipped via ferry across Lake Champlain to Plattsburgh AFB
...and now 20% of the neighborhood has cancer because of you spreading uranium dust around 😝 kidding, but I wonder didn't your dad know it's still potentially dangerous?
You have to remember that DU is very dense and heavy and it actually self sharpens as it penetrates armour and burns its way through armour and you need speed to do this. A press is not fast enough to ignite the uranium and you would not want to either because it’s toxic in the air.
That self sharpens is a MYTH. DU do shed its edge barbs as its tensile strength is low. SO It drops any edges of the mushrum edge that naturally form during terminal ballistic interactions. That is NOT self sharpening, The tip is not kept SHARP by any magical interaction. All it does is lose edge material that could form a secodn edge that would increase penetration resistance.
@@tiagodagostini Wrong. Like its slightly denser cousin, tungsten, uranium can penetrate most heavy armor. But whereas tungsten projectiles become rounded at the tip upon impact, uranium shells burn away at the edges. This "self-sharpening" helps them bore into armor. - source Scientific American. I’ve also seen ballistic projections of what happens during the uraniums self sharpening as its burns and bores its way through armour. Yes the sides burn away which leaves a sharpened tip. Who taught you this ?
@@Biketunerfy maybe you should read less scientific american and read more proper papers. The sheddign of the blunt edges is nearly irrelevant toward penetration. Because the so called"burning" expends energy, energy that comes from the projectile... and less available energy to break the armor therefore ( modern armor is Energy expenditure oriented, not resistance oriented) in an attempt to explain to layman the term SHARPENING is used, but sharpness is IRRELEVANT when you have a projectile trying to progress trough a cristaline solid at a speed higher than the speed of sound on given material.
; @@tiagodagostini I do and the facts haven’t changed, but anyway I digress, the new German higher pressure gun (smoothbore) in challenger 3 MBTs, the Brits ,reported back the new TC APFSDS was more effective at penetrating armour than their DU from challenger 2s main rifled gun. Obviously the tungsten carbide is routinely tweaked and improved to get the most performance out of kinetic energy darts.
Certainly DU is usually on par with Tungsten as a penetrator, USA just uses DU in everything because it's WAY cheaper than Tungsten -both in material cost and manufacturing. This footage doesn't exactly suggest the kinetic effects of the materials, but certainly Tungsten Carbide is some remarkable stuff!
also, the DU is supposed to be "self sharpening" by some physical effect ... and is prone to catching fire (but so is titanium, etc). Granted, "self sharpening" is loose wording ... I know it's not exactly what it does but I did read it in a white paper.
Yes the tungsten carbide is harder but depleted uranium is specifically used because when it impacts something it actually gets sharper and pens further.
Also, force = mass*acceleration. I love the bit in Mass Effect about the 20 kilo slug at 1.3% of light speed... "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest SOB in space." 😄
I did some reading on depleted uranium and why the army uses it for some shells. It turns out part of the decision is economic -- depleted uranium isn't necessarily the best metal you could use, but it's a pretty good choice and there's so much of it left over after the enrichment process. When people say that uranium is self-sharpening, they mean that the metal will break into sharp fragments and dust when it hits something at really high speed. The dust is also not just toxic but also highly flammable, so a tank penetrated by uranium shells may end up with a fire inside. And uranium is one of the most dense metals (8th place, with Osmium and Iridium being the first and second most dense), making it good as a high-speed projectile.
You cant imagine for how long I wanted to see such a comparison ! Other things have to be taken under consideration when used as ammo but this was enlightening. Thank you very much :)
@@democracyforall I dont know Urainiam I know Uranium. Look at a perdiodic table. Uranium is an actinide and has very little to do with iron. Steel is not an element: it's an alloy of iron and carbon.
At 3:24 the piercing slug is entirely dark. At 4:02 the flat end is still dark. At 4:07 the pointed end is shiny which is totally understandable. At 4:28 the square end is still dark. Then at 4:38 about half of the square end is shiny. Extremely interesting demonstration, this channel is one of my favorites, my wife even watches.
Cybertruck uses stainless steel, similar to many old tanks. However, old Soviet t-34 1940 Armour is about 15 to 40 mm steel, Soviet t-34 1942 is up to 60 mm steel, and cybertruck is only about 2 mm steel.
The greater hardness of TC does not necessarily mean greater penetration, though it could indirectly through less deformity creating smaller surface area to penetrate and less deflected splash. Depleted uranium is waaaaay heavier or 'denser' per unit of volume ("density" is physics is mass per unit volume). Force = mass x acceleration. Translated into imprecise everyday language, the amount of penetration is a function of weight and speed. Increase either weight or speed of the projectile for a given caliber (contact area), increase penetration. You can shoot water through metal if you shoot it fast enough and fine enough.
@@deathsheadknight2137 Thanks, I never would have guessed that TC (15.6g/cm3) is denser than lead (11.3g/cm3) and getting up there with DU (19g/cm3). I had a TC wedding ring and it didn't seem that heavy, whereas lead seems heavy and I know DU is comparable to gold (19.3g/cm3), which is so heavy that a candy bar size is like 27 pounds. (I guess the TC wedding ring seemed light by comparison to a normal gold wedding ring!)
As noted in another comment for this video, DU's real party trick is that it self sharpens upon a high speed impact. It heats up and kind of "burns" through armour (not really burning, but that's what it looks like in ballistics simulations). The pressure from the hydraulic press is very high, but is dissipated over a comparatively very long period, so it fails to demonstrate this effect.
@@RaytheonTechnologies_Official You are repeating marketing nonsense, not physics. DU's penetrating capability is its weight, end of story. They put the heaviest thing they could into a tank round short of solid gold. That's all there is to it. Uncle Sam went to the ammo aisle at the sporting good store and said, "I want the heaviest ammunition I can get for this caliber. I'm shooting some big game." The fact that it gets glowing hot and deforms is just sound and fury, habitually employed by marketing and PR pros to obfuscate and awe the masses into a sense of their own ignorance so they accept what they are authoritatively told without attempting their own analysis or criticism, i.e. that such-and-such company has revolutionized the toothbrush or razor. You could talk the same nonsense about a normal rifle bullet piercing a metal plate, or even a metal knife going through butter. People are so uneducated today that they can't even tell the difference, and then they confidently repeat this nonsense like they are teaching the illiterate about science. How absurd you all sound! Stop absorbing science by osmosis over the internet and start reading books, old books, instead!!! They are a thousand times smarter. You all live in the dark ages and you don't even know it, you think you are the smartest, most knowledgeable people nature ever produced and yet you are rapidly sending humanity back to the baboon age!
@@zacharyroyce "Tungsten has a much higher melting point (3410 °C) than uranium (1132 °C) and lacks pyrophoricity. Therefore, a tungsten projectile becomes blunt on impact and is less effective in piercing armor (Peterson, 1999). .... The surface of a DU penetrator ignites on impact (especially with steel), due to the high temperature generated by the impact and the relatively low melting point of uranium (1132 °C). In addition, the projectile sharpens as it melts and pierces heavy armor (Rostker, 1998). " - Properties, use and health effects of depleted uranium (DU): a general overview, A. Bleise, P.R. Danesi, W. Burkart, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity 64 (2003) 93-112 . I brought receipts.
Only if someone dials the number and you let it ring 3 times, unless Keanu Reeves can get between Sandra Bullock legs to diffuse in time, mind you she better not slow down either.
well, maybe, but it takes 10 hours to charge a DynaTAC 9000, so by that logic, the Nokia is virtually Transparent Aluminium. just don't get it wet after midnight though because if u cross the streams, it will become self aware at 2:14 a.m. on August 29th 1997 and I would definitely buy that for a dollar, but only in a rerun. welcome to the party, pal...
Negative. It’s more complicated than that. Also DU doesn’t undergo prompt criticality fission. It will decay, but extremely slowly. Smacking it between 2 Nokias will just make a big puff of toxic dust.
Depleted uranium AP shells depend on their outer casing to impart heat into the target before the uranium core penetrates. Tungsten just penetrates... but depleted uranium carries a TON of heat with it, basically scorching anything on the other side. If the shot gets full penetration on a tank (in/through/out), the interior gets a huge shockwave of pressure, searing heat, followed by a negative pressure wave (vacuum). You do NOT want to be hit with them in a sealed compartment of any kind.
Not really that it carries a ton of heat with it rather DU is self sharpening, when it strikes a solid surface it fractures in a way that keeps the tip sharp as it penetrates the object, and that the heat generated from impact ignites the DU round and the DU dust created from its self sharpening
Depleted rounds are very heavy which is why they are used. They have more penetration capabilities when shot than tungsten. Plus a key feature for the depleted round is that it sharpens itself as it penetrates.
The improvement in armor quality over time is really impressive. Or maybe that WW2 Russian steel was really bad, would be curious how it compares to armor from a panzer or sherman etc. It was really interesting that some sort of spalling effect seemed to occur, almost like the squashing cone acted a bit like a Hesh round. Demonstrates why spall linings are pretty damn important.
I worked for a local defence contractor that made DU rounds I was a assembler in the DU room dust masks & coveralls & a badge to chk levels & eventually I think it made me sick so I went back to inspection of 20mm rounds,great job great pay but the DU stuff ain't no joke !
I like to think the cameraman is just standing there like: "don't try this at home... ever!" Or: "they don't pay me enough to record in hostile environments"
Uranium will get its power from its mass times velocity squared. Since the materials wasn't moving it was kind of a flop. But it was nice to see the hardness of the materials tested.
@@pauljackson1744the DU round is significantly heavier because of density. With the slow speeds of the press, hardness is more important, but at the speeds of the GAU-8 shot velocity, the density wins easily.
@@joekellyou WC isn't that far behind in density (15.6 vs 19). The projectile speeds make DU rounds _as_ effective but WC is more reliable. Why you can still see both in service in russia.
sorry.. they have similar densities..DU uranium become plasma and burns thru the armor and explodes inside.. tungsten just passes thru both sides with little damage inside 1
Uranium is used for armour piercing due to its ablation pattern which shears layers off in a particular manner that keeps the round sharpened. It also reacts in such a manner that it "ignites" and thus also weakens or destroys the materials it comes into contact with.
they have similar densities..DU uranium become plasma and burns thru the armor and explodes inside.. tungsten just passes thru both sides with little damage inside
The DU is used in it's application for how hot it burns not for it's hardness. 9mm bullet with a TC projectile will go right through lvl 4 body armor like nothing. Which is why it's "sale" was made illegal in 1984 I believe. Gotta use the right tool for the job! 😉
woww ..first correct answer.... they have similar densities..DU uranium become plasma and burns thru the armor and explodes inside.. tungsten just passes thru both sides with little damage inside 1
DU is not used because it is dense or for whatever other mechanical reason. It is use because it creates an euthectic, on the contact point with steel at high speed, that lower the smelting point of the mix of Uranium and steel. Therefore, making the perforation of steel much easy and creating a deadly blast of liquid metal (inside a tank for instance).
. they have similar densities..DU uranium become plasma and burns thru the armor and explodes inside.. tungsten just passes thru both sides with little damage inside
I thought it was very interesting to see the tungsten carbide puncture through the 12mm steel plate. I noticed how as the tungsten carbide pushed through the steel plate, the steel had a very interesting shiny color at the edge region of the tungsten carbide. I was wondering if it was in fact melting the steel as it was pushing through it due to heat caused by the pressure, but not exactly sure. I think a repeat of the tungsten carbide with a super close up and possibly even super slow motion would be amazing to see as it pushes through the steel plate. Thanks.
I work as a machinist and for what it's worth, tungsten carbide doesn't really get to the point of melting steel because of steel's thermal conduction. Stainless steel can melt though since it doesn't conduct heat nearly as well and the tool doesn't absorb much heat neither.
I noticed the same thing. I don't think it's melting, which would require high temperatures and we don't see smoke. Interesting is that he doesn't indicate that these metal targets must get hot with all that energy pushed into them. But I do know that metals flow because of high pressures. This is not melting, and it's how shape charges work. The high pressure from the explosion forms the metal cone of the shaped charge into a jet of flowing metal. Other than that, I have no other guess, unless it's an optical effect because of a change in crystal structure because of the high pressure.
I used to have a 5# plate of DU I used for a paper weight. That slug must be plated with some non-corroding metal, because U238 will begin immediately to acquire a plum-colored patina from atmospheric oxidation, and after not too long will turn black. I once pried open a 30mm slug from an A10 Warthog firing test, and by morning it had turned from shiny silver to that purplish color. And the one shown here wasn't even hermetically sealed in a steel/magnesium shell, like the A10 slug.
About first test (bullet): The shape also is a huge difference, if you compare them, then also have the form the same. (one very pointy... for quick piercing of "lesser" armor, the 2nd a little more orbish - This is more stable for huge forces and hard shell, and that's the case here)
This might confuse someone not familiar with how the round is actually working. It's not the hardness you want or need, it's the density and the way the material behaves under extreme thermal shock. Copper is used in shaped penetrators because it can be formed into a molten jet and this is analogous though not the same. Tungsten is also used in anti armor rounds and works well too, just a bit differently and it seems that each are better at defeating different things.
sorry.. they have similar densities..DU uranium become plasma and burns thru the armor and explodes inside.. tungsten just passes thru both sides with little damage inside
Bob in Michigan I used to have a machine shop and we made fittings from C12L14 steel -- which is "soft" and can be machined pretty fast. So this was pretty interesting to me. The new "armor" was pretty amazing to me -- so much different than the old WWII armor. Where can I buy a pound of depleted Uranium ??? LOL
What I find most interesting here... How no one else is not mentioning that you actually have a DU penetrator in the first place!! I'm an element collector and I've been trying to track down ANY DU projectile (let alone a 30mm tank buster) for close to 20 years with no luck. Most I've come up with is 1 gram of natural U powder. (I've seen some small DU samples for sale in plate form, but they were extremely overpriced. Nothing even close to this.) Did you get the complete round...sabot and casing as well? You have there the Holy Grail/Unicorn of element collecting! Do you know how much money those are worth?? Brother, we need to talk!! 😏
In Germany, a well known journalist once brought one single used projectile into the country through a befriended diplomat’s luggage. He then tried to have it analysed at several university labs, was sent away at the first one due to the extreme danger emanating from this one single projectile. At the second lab, they told him to come again the next day, when he was welcomed by the police and taken into custody for public endangerment. So I’m not so sure about what’s going on here - especially filing off some material without any apparent protection seems a bit strange to me
@@Eyeofdajjal Exactly. Something fishy going on indeed. The DU penetrators I've seen are longer than this...they run almost the whole length of the projectile. This must be a cut-off piece (if in fact it is real). I've not a clue how international transportation/ shipping/handling works across borders, especially in Europe, but yeah that sounds about like what would happen. Prolly why there's so few in existence to civilians. Uranium isn't illegal to own - one can own up to 15 lbs. of it without consequences from the Dept. of Energy (so long as it's owned for a purpose i.e. collecting, experimenting, etc.) Otherwise ine would need a license from the DOE. And DU isn't very dangerous in it's solid form; the radioactivity is almost all of the Alpha variety which cannot penetrate the skin. It emits Beta and Gamma also, but very little. In small quantities, DU is fairly safe...as long as it's in SOLID FORM. I agree this is very disconcerting watching this fella casually filing DU making dust that is VERY dangerous if ingested. This is a strange video. Some insight would be very appreciated OP. Very concerned for your health!
@@IvanIvanov-wh8td I know, but why would ANYONE want to handle this shit 😂 Lest destroy it with a hydraulic press. Well, I guess having a RU-vid channel justifies anything. Let’s hope the creator doesn’t crush himself for views 😅
You can tell a morality of a country by just looking at the material they use for their Armor piercing penetrator : US and Nato - Depleted Uranium, China : Tungsten Carbide.
@@OldNavyAirdale It's an alpha emitter and highly toxic. If fine particles get in the air or the environment, they can be inhaled or ingested. Very nasty stuff to machine. Very nasty munitions.
Uranium is a very dense metal, and depleted uranium can be put on the tips of tank shells, bullets, and mortar rounds to increase their ability to penetrate targets. Depleted uranium shells sharpen on impact at high velocities, which further increases their ability to bore through armor, and they also ignite after contact. Density and properties on impact are what make it so effective, not the hardness.
I hate the term depleted uranium as it sounds like it's safe but all they done is isolated out the u235 and left u238 which is still radioactive. Talk about selling a toxic radioactive health Hazzard as somewhat safe for tank ammo.
@@Spacedog79 Ask the families of the contingent of the Italian Army who were in peacekeeping missions as part of KFOR, they all died of cancer. Go to Serbia and where A-10 was active, the incidence of cancer has increased by 700% since 1999. If it's not toxic, go to Serbia and find an armored vehicle that was hit by that ammunition and take some kind of souvenir. What the Americans say is safe is not true. Do you know that American tank soldiers who used that ammunition in Desert Storm also died of cancer. Italy proved the harmfulness of that ammunition and all the families received compensation.
@@ntal5859 you are right that the ammunition is not safe. In my country, many people got cancer because of that ammunition, and unfortunately that is not the end. Many are yet to receive it
The DU round is a kinetic energy penetrating round, I.e. mass and speed give the kinetic energy, which then hydrodynamic penetrates the armour. It’s DU as it’s a very dense material to maximise the mass.
Эксперимент некорректен! Ни с ураном, ни с броней. Есть такое понятие как "время релаксации и время воздействия", так вот, в этом эксперименте время релаксации меньше времени воздействия и происходят пластичные деформации. При выстреле будет наоборот. И не факт что "слабая" броня Т-34 покажет себя хуже "твердой современной". Современная может расколоться. Тоже и с ураном и карбидом.
Very simplistic comparison. You need to think about Energy as a function of velocity and mass. Also, density plays a role when it comes to penetration because, at high energy, high density keeps the projectile momentum even as it penetrates the armor.
sorry.. they have similar densities..DU uranium become plasma and burns thru the armor and explodes inside.. tungsten just passes thru both sides with little damage inside
The A-10 has to be the sexiest military aircraft ever made. From the look and the sound of the brrrrrrrp from the cannon, it has everything in my eyes. I suppose people like fast sleek planes and some vintage, but the A-10 is something I would love to see in real life.
Got to see a maneuvering demonstration at Edwards AFB back in 1990. That footage at 0:50 seconds in is a great angle. I guess you wouldn’t want to see that angle if you were on the opposing team 😂 Amazingly agile. Not fast, but when you carry that kind of fire power, I guess you don’t need speed.
@@AmonAmarthFan609 It would ONLY work as a sabot round. If it were a rifled barrel of any material the tungston carbide round would not deform to engage the rifling and would likely jam the bore destroying the barrel in the process. I'de be interested in your working theory. As Always, May God Bless you and yours! 😇
This is why it's called a penetrator ! It's inside the round. Sometimes even in two separate pieces. The projectiles themselves are usually a nickel-steel alloy are are employed in SABOT rounds.
Depleted uranium is still a uranium. Its still a bit radioactive, so could be better not to handle it too many time. Also uranium is highly toxic chemically, and if it inhaled or consumed, you will be poisoned, additional to radiation exposure. Metallic uranium can easily oxidize (corrode) on air, and products of this you definitely want to avoid and don't let it go into drinking water. So be extremely careful with uranium, if you want your health to be in safe of course
The chemical toxicity of heavy radioactive elements is mostly shuck and jive. Sure, you don't want to handle it because once it gets into your body it tends to stay there and eventually cause cancer. But it isn't poison like arsenic.
sorry.. they have similar densities..DU uranium become plasma and burns thru the armor and explodes inside.. tungsten just passes thru both sides with little damage inside 1
