Shooting through plate and armored steel...among other things

[OS OK]

Ballistic Penetration Testing - Duration: 16:52. sootch00 900,176 views

Several common calibers and off the shelf ammo included...the results will prolly raise an eyebrow...

[tsubaki]

We have a 3' square piece of 1/2" steel we intended to use as a bullet stop at our 100 yard target.
.308, 30/06, 7mm Rem Mag just blow straight through it.

[runfiverun]

the one that surprised me was our swingers on light chain the 0-6 and such would just shake them and make them swing like they were supposed to.
the 220 swift would just drill holes straight through it without the target barely even moving..

[M-Tecs]

Velocity is everything in steel penetration.

[Artful]

Speed Kills.

[GhostHawk]

I tried shooting pop cans with some nice hot .243 handloads, 60 grain hornady boat tail hollow points. Shot, nothing, shot again, still nothing. Shot third time, saw the can wobble.

Walked up, 3 perfecly round holes through both sides of the can. 1" triangle at 100 yards. So I filled the next can with ditch water.

Ohhhhh yeah, that's what I wanted. Could not find a piece of the can bigger than my little fingernail.

Speed can do funny stuff.

[farmerjim]

I was sighting in my 22-250 at 25 yards and used a piece of rebar to hold up the target. The first shot hit the rebar. The hole looked like it had been drilled with a 1/4 inch bit.

[kawasakifreak77]

After he called M855 AP like three times I couldn't take it seriously anymore. He's either deliberately lying, or ignorant enough to believe the perpetuated internet myth.

To note, this guy has some good videos on plate & AP type stuff:

https://m.youtube.com/user/BuffmanLT1

In the near future, he will be testing some very illusive ammunition..... Call it a hunch..

[bouncer50]

Funny about steel plate how bullet will drill hole in it. The only object we found that will stop high power rounds believe it or not is a bowling ball.

[Texas by God]

I imagine a 40 gr Barnes at 4000+ fps will cut more steel than a .308 for sure.

[Teddy (punchie)]

Not sure about the armor steel. Would like to see what happens with a 30-06.


We were at range one day before deer season and the benches were full. I was shooting okay that day. So I took a 200 yd shot at a swing target with 150 grain at 3200-3300 fps., with the crowd I was not going to walk out to the target back stop and place a target. Well steel or what ?? but it was broke after that. Looked to be 6" by 9" in now was 3" left. Couple other guys were hitting hit with slower heavy ammo. This is my main hunting gun, made not to pass out other side if it hit good bone, made to use all the bullet energy to kill and damage, she holds together fair. Bullet doesn't blow but sure does work. There were now 10 people waiting to use the benches. There are 10 benches at the range. Any way I expressed that I was sorry and to tell range guys that it was me, if I broke something. Club is funny about breaking things, I never did hear anything and only use the club's range if weather is bad.

Speed to a point is everything. TOOO fast is not good, need a balance between weight , speed , diameter , and hardness . any gun can make holes.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Mounting that plate at an angle would make quite a difference, but not enough to use it as a range backstop. That would take hardened plate, and even then it should be considerably thicker to withstand repeated impacts. A sloping embankment of sand or turf can be given some attention any time it needs it.

The higher the velocity the less bullet hardness matters. The logical extension is the hollow charge projectile, which converts its concave cup into a jet of liquid aluminium, and projects it through thick hardened steel.

[ddixie884]

kewl........................

[DonMountain]

The term "hardened steel" doesn't really have much meaning. More informative terms like A36, A572, A588 or A500 might be more meaningful to those of us that design bullet resistant structures. Like overhead baffles at shooting ranges. And then you select the thickness desired for the firearms allowed at a shooting range. Look up the different allowable stresses for the above steels to get a grasp of the bullet resistance capacity of them.

[MarkP]

I have seen the higher velocity rounds 17 cal & 22 cal wildcats, 6-284 & 257 Wby punch holes in the Q&T plate. It fractures similar to a punch small percentage of shear the rest brittle fracture. Similar to getting the cross head velocity up on a blanking press. The 308 rounds in the video exhibit a ductile failure.

[Norske]

A soldier who visited our range told me the military spec for armor piercing is penetrating 3" of hardened steel. No 5.56 round has enough bullet weight to do that. 7.62 steel jacketed bullets do it. I used to work with an engineer who had a few WW2 armor piercing rounds for 30-06. They went through an industrial 4 cylinder Ford engine block like a drill. 30 cal hole in, 30 cal hole out. There used to be high speed videos of bullets penetrating steel, and all burned their way through. The energy became heat and of course the smaller the bullet's cross sectional area, the less heat required to melt its way through the steel.

[BAGTIC]

The penetrating jet in HEAT rounds is copper, not aluminum.

Don't believe everything itinerant soldiers tell you.

The measure of armor piercing is not 3 inches.
Engine blocks are usually cast iron which is brittle and relatively easy to penetrate which is why navies gave up cast iron armor more than a century ago.
The bullets do not "burn their way" through steel. The high pressures produced by impact cause to target to become plastic and it behaves like a piece of metal being extruded through a die.

[kawasakifreak77]

A soldier who visited our range told me the military spec for armor piercing is penetrating 3" of hardened steel. No 5.56 round has enough bullet weight to do that. 7.62 steel jacketed bullets do it.

Wait wait wait... Lemme get my popcorn lol. This I gotta see!

[M-Tecs]

[M-Tecs]

They got 1" of penetration. Out of 30/06 3/4" is the best I got on hardened wear plate with Black Tip AP.