I've tried to quantify the specs, I guess I don't understand it well enough to put it into terms a tribologist would understand. What would you say?
Following the Tribological system, we would need to quantify several things, mainly type of motion, speed, temperatures, load and the operating environment. Some specific things we'd need to determine would be linear speed (simple), load (figure both peak chamber pressure and the shear pressure of the side of the lands on the boolit engrave through the peak acceleration period, this would have to be a range due to different numbers of lands, land depth, twist rate, pressure/speed curve, and bore diameter) contaminants such as powder residue, and the full range of temperature the lube itself experiences, the oxidation requirements, evaporation requirements, and so on.
I stopped at step two, when I did a simple calculation on the surface speed of a boolit at 2K fps and compared it to the fastest speed-rating of any grease I could find, one that had a base viscosity of 50 cSt at 22C. IIRC the boolit exceeded the speed rating by over 20 times. Even straight oil at 5 weight on plain bearings with a 2" diameter journal at 10,000 RPM doesn't come close to the surface speed of a boolit near the muzzle of a high-powered rifle. Obviously we shoot lubes not technically rated for the speeds or surfaces involved, and it works sometimes, so there must be a lot more to it than I can understand.
Gear