On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 3:59 PM, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Given that a major portion of the gyrojet round's original mass is rocket propellant and the fact that it can't be much larger than a regular slugthrower round, it's going to be a mostly-empty shell after burn-out.

That doesn't seem to follow. .45 or .30 carbine rounds, for example, are straight sided, which would make them good candidates for Gyrojet ammo. Equivalent gyrojet rounds would be about the same size and there's no particular reason to not have the same bullet weight.

So it's basic impact damage probably isn't going to be markedly better than that of the .45 ACP round.

Ugly, fat, and slow. Should be fine. If you could make the 230 grain .45 ball round self-propelled and able to hit vmax 8' from the barrel, that would be pretty handy.

However, a gyrojet round will be much more likely than is a regular slugthrower round to tumble upon impact . . . since getting it to NOT tumble as it leaves the muzzle is the major engineering challenge of the weapon system.

I don't agree. The gyrojet ammo spin-stabilized itself and should be stable in flight; you could even give it little flip-out fins.

CPR rounds that tumble on impact generally do so because they are manufactured to do so.

So maybe these effects would cancel each other out, except that the relative ability to pierce armor would be much lower for the gyrojet (absent shaped charge rounds).

I expect gyrojets would be round-nosed, which would tend to reduce armor penetration.

OTOH, you could make them cylinders, and fire HESH rounds, and not have to worry so much about penetration.

OTOOH, some sort of spray-in spall liners in armor would be pretty common, too.

Dan

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine kook." -Alan Morgan