US military testing water-penetrating bullets

kevin9

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The US military is testing water-penetrating bullets, reportedly so Navy SEALs can shoot from underwater
They work by creating a gas bubble around the tip of the bullet, reducing drag when a bullet is shot through water. Typical bullets can travel just a few feet through the water before they're slowed to a stop.
CAV-X bullets can reportedly travel 60 meters underwater, and can go through 2 centimeters of steel fired from 17 meters away, indicating that it could even be used to penetrate submarines.
Sounds cool. Inquiring techie minds want to know more.
 
While ordinary bullets can travel about half a mile per minute, that speed quickly slows to a complete stop when the bullet travels through denser materials like water.

Half a mile per minute, eh? Business Insider typical world-class reporting.

How the bullets actually create the gas bubble is unclear, Popular Mechanics reports, but they could somehow harness the gasses created from the gunpowder when the bullet is fired.

I'm going to hazard a guess that the magic is right in the name: Cavitation. I figure that it's more in the shape of the bullet and the introduction of nucleation sites, places for those gas bubbles to form out of the surrounding water as the bullet passes through. Maybe some magic surface treatment or ridges or something. Neato, at any rate.

As a former submariner the thought of .50 cal bullets entering the people tank while submerged is a bit sobering.
 
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New News?
 
sounds like BS. How do they keep a bubble traveling horizontally in water for any significant distance?
 
I'd rather see an "Ice" bullet that melts quickly in the abdomen or cranium...

Oh, and it would be a good match-up with the Glock Maritime spring cups...

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sounds like BS. How do they keep a bubble traveling horizontally in water for any significant distance?

The same way it works with ship propellers that cavitate: it creates the bubbles as it goes along. If you get a volume of water into a relative low pressure situation (such as behind a propeller's edge) it can rupture and form a vapor-filled void (bubble). It's sorta how boiling water creates bubbles, but from the other direction... dropping pressure instead of raising temperature.

Supercavitation happens when the flowing water turns a corner fast (due to the shape of the object) and is accelerated, forming that are of low pressure with the bubble behind it. If you design it right you can get essentially a continually-forming bubble that follows the object along, like that Russian torpedo.
 
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The same way it works with ship propellers that cavitate: it creates the bubbles as it goes along. If you get a volume of water into a relative low pressure situation (such as behind a propeller's edge) it can rupture and form a vapor-filled void (bubble). It's sorta how boiling water creates bubbles, but from the other direction... dropping pressure instead of raising temperature.

Supercavitation happens when the flowing water turns a corner fast (due to the shape of the object) and is accelerated, forming that are of low pressure with the bubble behind it. If you design it right you can get essentially a continually-forming bubble that follows the object along, like that Russian torpedo.
while I understand how cavitation works trailing the edge of a propeller, they indicate that the bubble is in front of the projectile.
 
Looks like the laws of nature that were not repealed by sh@th*ad Obama need to be reviewed for other not so natural applications.


Similar thoughts on other "unusual" speeds


Kind of like staying away from that black hole bubble that surrounds the wife! You know what's going to happen if you get to close :rolleyes:
 
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while I understand how cavitation works trailing the edge of a propeller, they indicate that the bubble is in front of the projectile.

It's all speculation on my part, of course, but I'm guessing they don't have it exactly right. Unless those nucleation sites are right at the tip (and you'd still lose a lot of energy pushing through the water, creating those low pressure zones), I just don't see how any bubble could be formed ahead of the bullet.

Maybe some weird gas-generating bullet material? Can you make a bullet out of Alka-Seltzer? :D
 
Wasn't there just a thread here a few days ago about bullets that do that already, minus the air bubble shit? Maybe it was just something I ran across on youtube.

OK found it. Not a thread just something I ran across on YT.

 
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