XM1028 120mm Canister Tank Round

[ostketten]

Developed for the US Abrams MBT, this round has BALLS.... literally 1150 of them, made of tungsten!! I would hate to find myself in the beaten zone of one of these things. I believe I have discovered the worlds largest shotgun.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... /m1028.htm

[tmanthegreat]

Cool! The modern incarnation of grapeshot. I guess that with the urban combat going on these days, such a weapon would be more effective. Afterall, anti-tank rounds aren't necessairly what you need to take care of unarmored insurgents...

[ostketten]

It's been out for a while. we did a validation gunnery at Fort Stewart last year, and have been training with it since Jan 2007.

Crews get to fire two rounds per qualification. The Blast effect is at the muzzle (no choke). The beaten zone is pretty wide and deep. The tungstun balls are about 7.62mm so the effect is similar to a very fast machine gun.

Dispersion picks up at distance, but the initial effect does sober ones attitude about getting in front of an Abrams.

Awesome... Tungsten is a relatively dense metal so it tends to retain velocity even at considerable distances. I'd be interested to hear what you've heard or what your experiences are, but according to some sources the balls can retain lethal force as far out as 350 meters or more, wow...that's pretty impressive.

[Rylau]

The 105's in Viet Nam had shotgun shells filled with little steel arrows called fleschettes. The rouds were called beehives because they sounded like a swarm of bees going over head. Very effective for stopping human wave attacks, but very sloppy picking up the pieces in the morning. Bob