• skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    M329 is advertised as MP, but it lacks forward shaped charge so it’s not, because it is not suited to destroy anything with more than ornamental armour, by design. instead, it’s just a lot of pre-formed fragmentation in a cylindrical box. by itself, standard feature of modern weapons, but overall it’s not a weapon designed to fight a peer adversary

    “The issue comes with how these small munitions are being employed,” said Ball. “Even a relatively small munition employed in a crowded space, especially a space with little to no protection against fragmentation, such as a refugee camp with tents, can lead to significant deaths and injuries.”

    this is the warcrimey part, i thought that it goes without saying

      • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        4 months ago

        RG-42 is a ww2 era design that relies on natural fragmentation. it has no PFF, it has rolled steel sheet fragmentation liner with no indentations or anything that would aid in separation of fragments. that thing has pre-cut steel cubes, Spike uses tungsten cubes, steel balls or cylinders (soviet designs) are often used too. natural fragmentation results in wide range of fragment sizes, with either too small (and braking on air, causing no significan injury) or too big (produced in small number and missing intended fragment). RG-42 and to lesser degree RGD-5 fragments are just pieces of steel sheet, so few tens of meters away it’s just angry glitter, because it brakes on air rapidly due to nonaerodynamic shape

          • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            4 months ago

            i thought that RG-42 was smooth inside, and i still think that RGD-5 is

            anyway, these are still not pre-formed fragments, because some of these grooves will not cause fragments to separate

            it’s not that different from any other weapon that throws around fragments, just that PFF covers highest area or whatever metric you choose per kilogram of weapon. this works only if you don’t care too hard about cost and can ignore some engineering constraints (such as acceleration survivable by weapon etc)

            e: you can see in that video at 5:50 how a few of these squared remained unseparated as a single fragment

            • CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              4 months ago

              My point is that new weapons are better than old ones but they’re still fulfilling the same intention. It’s not like the inventor of the old grenades wouldn’t jump at the chance to increase the lethality of their creations.

              The GMLRS used in Ukraine are also optimized for fragmentation and nobody is complaining because they’re fired at military targets.