9
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
9 points (56.2% liked)
Today I Learned (TIL)
6549 readers
1 users here now
You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?
/c/til is a community for any true knowledge that you would like to share, regardless of topic or of source.
Share your knowledge and experience!
Rules
- Information must be true
- Follow site rules
- No, you don't have to have literally learned the fact today
- Posts must be about something you learned
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Without knowing anything about weaponry, it seems sketchy to claim that a 1atm pressure difference would do that.
It wasn't 1atm of pressure. The round passing through the (enclosed) compartment of the target at high velocity created a vacuum that sucked any soft material out after it. There was also the explosion that happened on the armor, and some sort of plasma that went in after the round that all probably contributed to the effect.
I don't know the technical details, and as I said, they were pretty proprietary with exactly how the thing worked; I was just a grunt assigned to carry out around and fire it. We had some Swedish military guys training us and consulting on the trials, and that's what they told us the effects were. I assume they'd tested the thing with pigs or something; I don't know if it was designed that way or just a happy side-effect.
What I remember most is that it was like playing a video game, and that it really fucked up tanks. We got to look at the results, and while our targets didn't have any animals in them, it did seem to incinerate anything that wasn't bolted down and spray it on the ground under the target.
The wiki article is equally tight-lipped about the exact mechanism of action. I just know it was different from a TOW in that the damage wasn't from a warhead exploding against armor; it was firing a projectile via a shaped charge as it passed over the target. There was much more debris left of the missile than we found from TOWs, although it was still a pretty destructive process for the missile.
Crazy. I believe it. Maybe it's some combination of overpressure and sudden vacuum. Love your description, thanks for the effort.