Submachine gun yesterday, today, tomorrow. In the future, cartridges for submachine guns may specialize even more and turn into something completely fantastic today. Why? Yes, everything just goes to that. Protection is improving - and the means of overcoming it are improving. No wonder the 12, 7-mm ammunition and the ShA-12 assault rifle appeared. This tool will at once solve all the problems of combat at a distance of up to 100 meters. But is it the only way to go in this direction?
Let's start with the bow and arrowheads
Any bullet can be compared to … an arrowhead! Their task is the same - to hit the target and disable it. Therefore, the tip must have good aerodynamic quality and penetration. Interestingly, in the era of the Ancient World, the tips were mostly small, bronze, cast and bullet-shaped, that is, they were very similar to modern bullets. Although on their surface they had edges with backward tips, which modern bullets do not have. The bows from which arrows with such tips were fired were small in size. It is not difficult to verify this; it is enough to look at the images of the Scythians on ancient vessels. That is, comparing these weapons with modernity, we can easily attribute them to pistols and submachine guns.
In the Middle Ages, petiole tips made of iron, made using forging, became widespread. And here's what is strange and surprising: the previous bullet-shaped tips were practically abandoned. That is, their share among the finds is very small. But broad-bladed tips the size of a palm appeared, tips in the form of a crescent with horns forward, or even completely in the form of a disk with sharply sharpened edges, and even three-four-bladed. There were also flat tips with blades shifted to the sides relative to the axis. It turned out that such arrows rotated in flight, which provided them with better stabilization when firing at long distances. The tips have become larger, which means the bows too. That is, it was already a "rifle" designed for long-range shooting at … unarmored targets.
That is, here it is in front of us, the global trend in the development of long-range throwing weapons, and the direction of its development is to shoot further and disable the enemy from a distance, and for this the easiest way is to shoot at a large target, that is, at horses. Wide wound - the horse quickly loses blood, and with it strength and falls. Only close up were armor-piercing arrows needed to shoot at armored horsemen, which is why there are few such arrowheads. But there are many tips in the form of a chisel or chisel, which pierced armor well and successfully inflicted deep wounds on the enemy without armor.
Historians and physicists have already done this
There are two interesting monographs: “Ballistics from arrows to missiles. Yu. A. Vedernikov, Yu. S. Khudyakov, A. I. Omelaev. Novosibirsk: Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, Novosib. state tech. un-t, 1995 "and more modern" Ballistics of arrows according to archeology: an introduction to the problem area. A. V. Korobeinikov, N. V. Mityukov. Izhevsk: Publishing house NOU KIT, 2007 ", the authors of which consider ancient arrowheads using mathematical formulas, determine their aerodynamic quality and penetrating ability. Moreover, the authors of the first monograph, in addition to everything else, did a colossal work on the typology of the arrowheads found in Siberia, and in particular, in the Minusinsk Basin. And they, on the basis of their study, created their own tip already for small arms of our days, which they called "poly-wedge-shaped" and combining high penetrating power and excellent aerodynamics. It is difficult to say whether it will remain just a theoretical development on the pages of a little-known scientific monograph, or will find its application later, something else is important, namely that today, in principle, it is possible to invent a bullet of higher efficiency than the existing ones.
In the image and likeness of the development of Mayevsky
On "VO" it was already talked about a possible ammunition with a disk-shaped bullet, and today, in the light of more and more specific requirements for cartridges for submachine guns, why not think about the benefits that would bring its creation? Let's start with the fact that back in 1868, the Russian general of artillery N. V. Mayevsky, professor of ballistics at the Mikhailovskaya Artillery Academy, proposed a project for a breech-loaded curved cannon that fired disc-shaped projectiles. When fired, the projectile-disk, placed on the edge, was pressed by centrifugal force to the lower part of the barrel and received the desired rotation. The gun was made and tested. It turned out that its projectile flew 2500 m, while the core of the same weight was only 500, but the accuracy was unsatisfactory, moreover, there was nowhere to put the powder charge into the disk. But it turned out to be unsatisfactory at a great distance, this must be emphasized.
Flying saucer bullet
Well, now let's look at "our" cartridge and the bullet for it. Naturally, purely hypothetical, because the creation of a new patron requires a lot of work and painstaking research. Here it is important to determine the shape of the bullet, which is optimal from the point of view of ballistics and armor penetration, and the shape of the sleeve, and the powder charge. That is, this is a job for a whole research institute. But let us suppose, again hypothetically, that “we succeeded,” and what then could we have in the end?
We will have this: a bicaliber bullet, which has a diamond-shaped cross-section, with two vertical guides. The bullet diameter is 20 mm, and the height along the rails is 11 mm. That is, she has two calibers at once! The sleeve has a height of 23 mm, with transverse dimensions of 21 by 12 mm, and the total height of the cartridge is 35 mm. The shape of the sleeve is a flat parallelepiped with rounded edges. Bullets of two types: regular and armor-piercing. The usual one is a hollow disc made of a tombac alloy filled with lead, and with a guide rod passed through it along the axis of rotation, also made of tombak or copper. The part that is inside the disc has a square section, the protruding parts are round. Disc thickness - 5 mm, protruding guides - 3 mm. The armor-piercing bullet is made of steel. The weight of a pure lead bullet (which is shown here in the photo) is exactly 10 g, which means that a real bullet should be even lighter. That is, the ammunition data is somewhere on the level of the American cartridge 11, 43x23 /.45 ACP, which also has a 23 mm long sleeve and a total length of 32.4 mm, with a bullet that weighs about the same as the Parabellum bullet. Accordingly, the muzzle velocity should be high enough - higher than that of the aforementioned ammunition, as well as its energy should be higher. It remains only the most important thing - to ensure at a distance of 100 meters its accuracy similar to that of a bullet from the ShA-12 assault rifle and … it will be possible to consider that the idea was a success!
And roll and slide …
Well, and the barrel of a weapon for such ammunition, of course, in its profile corresponds to the bullet. It is made of two halves by stamping or rolling, and then screwed, which makes it easier to manufacture. One of the sides of the guide channels is smooth, but the opposite has a fine vertical toothed groove. When fired, the bullet is pressed into the grooves by its guides and rolled over them, and it slides along smooth ones. Thus, it simultaneously receives both translational and rotational motion like a gyroscope. The lead filling presses on the tombac shell and presses it against the walls of the bore, and thus provides obturation. An armor-piercing bullet does not have such an effect, but with the high quality of the manufacture of modern ammunition, gas breakthrough can be avoided. Due to the fact that the edge of the disc is very sharp, such a bullet will have a very strong damaging effect. The fact is that when braking or hitting an obstacle, such a bullet has a "spinning top effect" - that is, it starts to move chaotically and at the same time continues to rotate, that is, it makes a long and deep cut that can cause severe blood loss. However, at the same time, it quickly slows down and cannot pierce two targets at once, which is very important just for weapons used in the crowd in anti-terrorist operations. In addition, it is necessary to bear in mind the strong psychological impact of such "super-lethal weapons", information about which will, of course, be widely circulated by the modern media.
Everything is strictly according to the canons of international law
The Hague Declaration of 1899 and the Hague Convention of 1907 prohibit bullets that easily unfold or flatten in the human body, the hard shell of which does not cover the entire core or is notched. This bullet has an axis of rotation that coincides with the center of gravity, it does not flatten or unfold, therefore, it does not fall under the influence of these documents. At the same time, the sharp edge cuts well multi-layer Kevlar fabric, and the armor-piercing bullet, again due to it, has a good penetrating effect. In fact, we have a disc from a saw-grinder before us, so that with a high rate of fire of a weapon that shoots such bullets, it will be possible to … "cut down trees" with its help. True, not very thick!
There would be a cartridge, but a submachine gun is not difficult to make
Another benefit of this ammunition is that almost any modern submachine gun can be easily remade for it. You just need to replace the barrel, the bolt and put a new receiver for the store, since the store for such cartridges turns out to be wider than usual. The cartridges in it also go in one row, therefore, it cannot be made for more than 25 cartridges, since otherwise its length will be too large.
Challenge for the future of NTTM
In a word, there is little to do - to develop such a cartridge, to achieve satisfactory characteristics from it, and then it will be possible to remake some PP for it. Well, the psychological impact of such a weapon on any person will exceed all expectations. Seeing that the barrel of a submachine gun is pointed at him, the turn of which, as he knows from the media, cuts a person in half, he … is unlikely to want to experience whether this is so on himself!
P. S. It is clear that all this is considered only hypothetically, as a kind of "mind game" and nothing more. But the fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it! And who knows what may await us in the near and distant future. Truth is always out there somewhere …
