US Cartridge 105mm APFSDS-T M900

My old stats for the M900 were:

6dx34(2) pi++ inc; 6,000/18,000 - That's good for punching 518mm of RHA at 0°.

Gun Stats gives:

6dx33(2) pi+ inc; 8,140/26,700 for APFSDSDU.  503mm penetration.

6dx39(2) pi+ inc for long-rod APFSDSDU.  594mm penetration.  "Long-Rod" is defined as a penetrator being 15 times longer than its diameter.  The M900 penetrator is 25x603, 23 and change to 1.  It's a long-rod.

A bit short of both benchmarks I found back in Feb '25.  The round's performance is still classified (sorta) so there's not a lot of official information, but a great deal of "already leaked" information.  War Thunder thinks 522mm.

But 6dx39 is in the ballpark of what I think it should do. 

It's a game, so the important thing is the relative values come out about right even if the precise numbers don't quite.  Gun Stats even has a section about how to use stated penetration values to determine damage.

Take the RHA penetration in mm * 0.787 / armor divisor and that gives dice.  6dx34 in the case of 522mm!  But, like I said in Feb '25, I think it punches more, so I'm going with the long-rod numbers!

Oh Gods!

 

This is a capture of a warning from The Gasmask and Respirator Wiki article on the M25 mask.

I wore an M25 often and for hours at a time.

The filter in question is the M10A1.  The, older, M10 filter sometimes contained asbestos.

Pick your brand of lung cancer!

I don't have any lung cancer at the moment, but the list of potential carcinogens (real ones not just shit that causes cancer in California) I was exposed to in tanks is getting longer and longer.

I'd been all worried about exposure to turbo-shaft oil and the gas mask was what I really should have been paying attention to!

Bravo

Remember this post?

Based on weight, Bravo is the Lancer L5.

Make your plans for use accordingly. 

Deciphering ATEC Project Number: 2014-DT-ATC-M4CAR-F9278 Report Number: ATC-11684 (Poorly)

The magazine makers are labeled A-L.

Alpha is 8.45 oz.  Bravo is 3.86 oz.  Charlie is 5.41 oz.  Delta is 8.92 oz.  Echo is 4.45 oz.  Foxtrot is 4.97 oz.  Golf is 4.34 oz.  Hotel is 3.94 oz.  India is 4.98 oz.  Juliet is 4.32 oz.  Kilo is 4.30 oz.  Lima is 4.23 oz.

Tested in M4A1, M16A4 and M27 weapons. 

Alpha is heavier than the others, prolly a steel magazine.

Delta is heavier than the others and works well in the M27, making me think that it's the H&K High Reliability Magazine.

Foxtrot is a Magpul windowed PMAG M3.  We know that because Magpul pointed it out.

Golf is rumored to be a Lancer Gen1 L5.  Based on weight, Bravo is the more likely candidate for a Lancer L5.

India is rumored to be a USGI Enhanced Performance Magazine (EPM).  Debunked!

Kilo is the legacy tan-follower USGI magazine.

Lima is the Enhanced Performance Magazine.

No rumors as to what Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Echo, Hotel, India and Juliet are. 

Golf and India did not fit in the M27.

Class I failures can be corrected by the user within 10 seconds with tools on hand.  Class III failures require an armorer.

M4A1 results:

Alpha: 4 failures.  3 weapon, 1 system.

Class I: 1 system.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Bravo: 10 failures.  8 magazine, 2 weapon.

Class I magazine: 8 bolt over base M4A1.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Charlie: 10 failures.  5 magazine, 5 weapon.

Class I magazine 3 double feed, 1 bolt over base, 1 OTH; weapon 3 bolt over base.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Delta: 2 failures.  2 weapon.

Class I weapon 1 bolt over base.

Echo: 2 failures.  2 weapon.

Class I no failures.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Foxtrot: 2 failures.  2 weapon.

Class I no failures. 
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Golf: 29 failures.  1 ammunition, 28 magazine.

Class I 1 ammunition, magazine 22 failure to lock to the rear, 1 BLE.
Class III magazine 2 OTH.

Hotel: 5 failures.  1 magazine, 4 weapon.

Class I magazine 1 bolt over base.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

India: 19 failures.  16 magazine, 3 weapon.

Class I magazine 16 failure to lock to the rear.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA, 1 OTH.

Juliet: 2 failures.  2 weapon.

Class I no failures.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Kilo: 2 failures.  2 weapon.

Class I  no failures.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Lima: 4 failures.  4 weapon.

Class I  weapon 2 failure to eject, 1 failure to extract.

M16A4 results:

Alpha: No failures.

Bravo: 2 failures.  2 weapon.

Class I: weapon 2 bolt over base.

Charlie: No failures.

Delta: No failures.

Echo: No failures.

Foxtrot: No failures.

Golf: 3 failures.  1 magazine, 2 weapon.

Class I: magazine 1 failure to lock to the rear; weapon 1 bolt over base.

Hotel: 1 failure.  1 magazine.

Class I: magazine 1 double feed.

India: 1 failure.  1 magazine.

Class I: magazine 1 failure to lock to the rear.

Juliet: No failures.

Kilo: No failures.

Lima: 1 failures.  1 weapon.

Class I: weapon 1 BLE.

M27 results:

Alpha: 5 failures.  1 magazine, 4 weapon.

Class I: magazine 1 bolt over base; weapon 2 bolt over base.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Bravo: 79 failures.  36 magazine, 30 weapon, 13 system.

Class I: magazine 1 double feed, 25 bolt over base, 1 stuck round; weapon 29 bolt over base, 1 BLE; system 12 bolt over base, 1 BLE.
Class III: magazine 2 OTH.

Charlie: 51 failures.  19 magazine, 32 weapon.

Class I: magazine 3 double feed, 13 bolt over base, 1 FSR; weapon 29 bolt over base.
Class III: magazine 1 OTH; weapon 1 FRA

Delta: 1 failure.  1 weapon.

Class I: weapon 1 bolt over base.

Echo: 1 failure.  1 weapon.

Class I: 1 bolt over base.

Foxtrot: 4 failures.  1 ammunition, 3 weapon.

Class I: ammunition 1 failure to fire; weapon BLE.
Class III: weapon 1 FRA.

Golf: Did not fit in magazine well.

Hotel: 1 failure.  1 weapon.

Class I: 1 bolt over base.

India: Did not fit in magazine well.

Juliet: 15 failures.  3 ammunition, 4 magazine, 7 weapon, 1 system.

Class I: ammunition 3 failure to fire, magazine 3 bolt over base, 1 stuck round; weapon 7 bolt over base; system 1 failed to chamber BLE.

Kilo: 6 failures.  6 weapon.

Class I: weapon 3 bolt over base, 2 fail to fire, 1 stuck round, light strike.

Lima: 17 failures.  1 ammunition, 8 magazine, 8 weapon.

Class I: ammunition 1 failure to fire; magazine 4 bolt over base; weapon 8 bolt over base.
Class III: magazine 1 OTH.

Considering the number of weapon failures with the M27 compared to the M4A1 and M16A4, I think we can put to bed the whole "pistons are better than direct impingement" argument.

"System" stoppages don't have an identifiable source.  BLE is associated with the bolt breaking and/or the nose of the round getting stuck on the feed ramp, OTH seems to be a generic "other" cause.  FRA is some kind of feed ramp failure.

The most common failure, overall, was failure to feed because of bolt over base.

Golf's most common failure mode was to fail to lock to the rear.

Again, if anyone has a list of who was what vendor, or even which 11 vendors were tested, drop a comment!

A Red Letter Day

Today, in 1987, I reported to the MEPS station in West Des Moines to begin my adventure in the US Army!

At least that's what the DD214 says, I remember it being the 9th.

It did not start well, I have a congenital shoulder problem that makes it hard for me to do push-ups and I ended up spending a couple of months in a Fitness Training Unit before heading to OSUT.

In essence, it takes about twice the effort for me to do a push up than you'd think it should. 

Still More Shots

When I was issued an M1911A1 they gave us two spare magazines.

That'd be 21 rounds if war were declared.

When I was issued an M9, they only gave us one spare magazine.

That's 30 rounds.

But two spares was cemented in my mind.

I took two spare magazines to the Czech-German border for my Glock 17 and harangued them to issue me 51 rounds.

We were, emphatically, forbidden from carrying one in the chamber.

Color Me Jealous

They wouldn't even issue us a 1/2" drive ratchet for doing the track.  We had a breaker bar for that.

7d pi Is (Still) 7d pi

Very interesting stuff.

Link to InRange mud test.

Yikes

They don't throw grenades or do land nav anymore?

Even my tanker ass threw two live grenades in the grenade course.

It's an interesting read and I've long held that spending money on ammo in training was superior to gadgets.

The 3-round burst on the M16A2 and M4 was a work-around to teaching the troops how to properly use the happy setting on the rifle.

I said, at the time, and I was a wee young waif then, "full auto is something you don't need in your service rifle very often, but when you need it, you NEED it."

The 3-round burst is an example of where you might NEED full auto, and ain't got it.

I notice it was dropped and all the M4's were converted to M4A1's with the SOCOM heavy barrel.  Really shoulda called that an M4A2.

I Missed Something

 

I don't even wanna talk about his legal case, except the press keeps using this pic when he's an NCO now and not a SPC.

What confuses me about this picture is the Stetson.

SPC Perry is wearing all the 11 series accoutrements, brassard, branch rings, hat braids; but a 2-Cav crossed sabers hat badge.

Back in the wild west days of the Reagan era there weren't official rules for when you got to wear a Stetson with your uniform like today.

We'd have been up in arms about some grunt wearing the hat at all, doubly so if he didn't wear crossed rifles up there.

We got all bristly about that because the crunchies have all manner of special badging and we armor folks got nothin'.  When someone noticed the hat was authorized for 19 series, we jumped on it and defended our turf!

Things sure have changed.  As I understand it, you now need to do a "spur ride" that's akin to getting an expert infantryman's badge.

The rules are rather vague, but there are more now than there were.

Back in my day!  What you needed was for your CO to allow it and for EVERYONE to buy the damned thing.  We didn't even have our rank on ours.  Oh, and once A company convinced our CO...  The whole battalion had the hats next dining out.

This is where "the rules" hit.

Every branch has its own badge and colored cords.

The US Cavalry Store (RIP) supplied us with our needs.

The non-19K types ordered different cords and a hat badge to match their dress uniform.

It would appear that the hat badge is now unit associated and not branch.

Interesting.

I'd Like It To Be Less Traceable

Cam Edwards suggests a tax credit for getting firearms training to assuage the worries of the gun-grabbers that without a class requirement to get a permit; the permitless toters will be opening the blood taps and flooding the streets.

I suppose it's not any more traceable than getting a permit is now.

But it galls me that it can be traced.

Not so much that I didn't get the permit, of course.

I'm certain I'm on "the list" already and before moving to Florida.

But why jump into a situation to be tracked once you've finally gotten out of another?

I have a suggestion, though, about the training.

Start teaching it to everyone in high-school.  Maybe even middle-school.

Add it to the physical-education curriculum.

But that doesn't much help the people who're long outside the primary education system, does it?

The cost of just giving the training away is trivial compared to the rest of the Pentagon's budget and, amazingly, it's something Congress is authorized to spend money on in the actual text of The Constitution!

Arming and training the militia.

It'd mean creating something I've long thought we should replace that NICS system with anyways.

An instant go-nogo check system that only gives a thumbs up or thumbs down response and doesn't record thumbs up transactions.

Get the thumbs up, you get the class for free and now you're trained militia!

Wins for everyone!

We could even have multiple levels of this training.

I mean, if it's so important that people be trained, shouldn't it be important enough to make it available to anyone who can own a gun for free?

Overqualified

Still plinking along with Sabers and...

I realized while making a couple of characters for the world and assigning skill levels that I am vastly overqualified compared to the average trooper in the American West of 1899.

I qualified sword and shield in the SCA.

I passed the saber course the WW1 reinactors put on for British cavalry.

I've read and practiced some of what's in the official saber manual for the time period.

Because of my, brief, dalliance in WW1 cavalry reinacting, I've even done some shooting from horse back.  Spoiler: I suck at it.

But all of that puts me head and shoulders over the typical US Army cavalryman who barely got an explanation of which end of the rifle was where the bullets came out before being tossed into situations where they might have to shoot someone!

And they were considered to be better trained than their predecessors who were in the actual thick of the Indian wars!  By 1899 things had calmed down a LOT and there were many fewer instances of shoot at someone.

Ceci N'est Pas Un Char

This article reminds me of a story.

One of the things the cannon cockers do is to train for direct fire.

You never know when you might be near to being over-run and a direct hit from a 155mm round is nothing to sneeze at.

At some point in live fire training, our commanding general must have felt the M109 crews were getting a bit too confident in their ability to deliver fire directly.

He whirled onto our range just as my tank was getting ready to start our table and he commandeered us to the range where the arty guys were.

He set us up "head to head".  Fire as many rounds at the target as you can when you get the "go" order.

We were confused, but it was simple enough.

GO!

Gunner, HEAT, SPG!

Identified!

UP!

FIRE!

On the way!

That took us three seconds.  The range was, in our minds, ridiculously close because we and the target were stationary.

HIT!  Re-engage!

UP!

FIRE!

On the way!

Five seconds.

HIT!  Re-engage!

UP!

FIRE!

On the way!

BOOM! from the M109.

CEASE FIRE!

The arty guys are kinda looking around embarrassed.

The general screams at them, "YOU ARE NOT FUCKING TANKERS! THAT TANK KILLED THREE OF YOU BEFORE YOU GOT OFF EVEN ONE ROUND AND H-E AGAINST THE FRONTAL ARMOR WOULD JUST MAKE THEM MAD AT YOU!"

We, diplomatically in my mind, didn't mention that the Ma Deuce would have sufficed for a 109.

Wandernde Null

Anyone remember in the way-back when Germans were saying that once their G36 got hot, the zero shifted and they started to miss?

The German government investigation moves slow, but grinds fine.

Random sampling of rifles reveals no change of zero in the guns in the inventory.  This was also noticed by many gun bloggers shooting their semi-auto clones, but the semi-auto clone might not meet the same specifications as guns for the Heer.

These same rifles all met the accuracy standard required of the specification, which is on par with other 5.56 battle rifles.

At the end of the day it turns out to be a training issue and not a weapon issue.

To the point of not being certain that rifles going into combat being zeroed at all.  !!!

But the real issue is the Germans not getting training that let them react constructively to incoming fire then blaming their poor response on the tools at hand.

PS:

If someone can find the article I read, I'd appreciate it.  It was in German and I read it translated by Google.  It was published this year amid the debates about actually spending the money to replace them.

My search history got wiped when I forgot to isolate it from CCleaner...

PPS:

It's the gun!  No it isn't!  Yes it is!  Nuh uh!  Uh huh!  Repeats in several cycles around this gun in the German media too, so this latest "revelation" could be just another cycle.

Uh...

There's a thread on Arfcom asking what gun for a female.

I posted a pic of The Lovely Harvey's Kevina.

Seen here with Brenda...

My logic for getting Harvey semi-auto pistols and AR's was that we teach every know-nothin' 'cruit how to use an M16 or M4 and many how to use a pistol.

There's no damned reason that a "female" cannot learn to use any particular gun.

It's sexist to assume otherwise.

Maybe It Was The "Training"?

I've noticed that as time progresses and I shoot more...

The M9 doesn't bother me near so much.

I wonder, now, that I've learned more about shooting if it was the lack of teaching the US Army gave me that made the M9 seem so wrong.

I got a lot more instruction on the M1911A1, and put many more rounds downrange with it before we got our M9s.

Even so, it was a Glock 17 that fired my first non-45 pistol qual.

Nostalgia led me to get an M9 and it's not such a horse pistol to me now that I've learned some shooty that isn't anchored in the US Military's past.

It's an interesting place to be.  I hated the M9 when I first fired it in the familiarization session.

Now... It's just another 9mm.

Though I find I prefer the S&W mod 59 to it.

It's OK Anne, We Got Better

Anne Hathaway is concerned that her country is gassing children.

It's OK, Anne, we were men by the end of OSUT.

I guarantee you, Ms Hathaway, we got substantially heavier doses than can be delivered outdoors.

I got it twice because I foolishly dropped my helmet-liner when I unmasked.

Declaring Victory

A while ago, almost two years in fact, I was ranting about how there were many companies making new AR charging handles to compensate for breakage from using the things in a manner other than designed and intended.

It was asserted that the TTP's (Tactics Techniques and Procedures) had changed since Stoner and Sullivan first sold the gun to Colt.

I requested documentation of that assertion.

The deafening silence caused me to look up said training standards.  In 2010 they were still "chicken-clawing" the charging handle, just like they trained me to do in 1987 and just like they taught my uncle in 1969.

I've gotten no refutation or proof, just an assertion then silence.

The really amusing part of the entire episode is the assertion that things had changed in the TTP's underscored my point that people were using the charging handle in a manner that was never intended, and in a manner which made it "handed".

Pistol Table

When I scoff at the idea that I was actually trained by the Army to be an actual expert in shooting a pistol, despite the Expert marksman badge hanging on my uniform...

This is why.

You'll note that it's still geared to an M1911A1's magazine capacity.

Despite the 31m maximum range, you merely have to hit a full-size torso target anywhere.  I think that's the same size as an IPSC cardboard cut out.  Hitting that anywhere on the cardboard would count.

The amount of time to engage each target is generous and the targets are easy to see.

The purpose of the Army training is more along the lines of learning us to not shoot ourselves or each other.  Then proving that with live ammo.

Room And/Or House Clearing

There's two schools of thought that have been used successfully in more than one war and found to be effective in keeping your troops safe.

First, lob in fragmentation grenades until you're out of bad-guys.  Don't forget to give the first couple a three count without the spoon so they can't throw it back.

Second, apply fire until there's an empty lot.

Do you think a training school would shit if I pulled out a hand-grenade, let the spoon fly and started my three-count?  Or lit the pilot on a flamethrower?

Prolly lose my deposit.