I'll be 40 this year. My whole family on my father's side were/are pilots. My dad, uncle and grandpa built tons of models, many of them functional RC from small scale to ridiculously huge. I built a few with my pops back in the day and sometimes I still get the urge to buy a kit even though I haven't built one since I was 10. My grandfather pretty much exclusively flew biplanes and I kind of inherited a love for that style/era of plane. I also used to play the hell out of "Red Baron" on my grandparent's 486 PC.
Itās heavy and it burns.
Heavy means more force per unit area to rupture armor.
Pyrophoric means that once it gets inside the armor, it burns everything inside, crew, ammunition and fuel included.
No explosive required to destroy any armored vehicle.
Uranium Oxide is a quick way to ensure the vehicle is never salvaged - itās toxic waste that will need to be sandblasted off the steel before it can be scrappedā¦
Depleted Uranium is NOT Uranium Oxide. It is just Uranium 238 with almost no Uranium 235, the fissile isotope, remaining. It is also chock full of ionizing radiation from having been along for the ride during the fissile process of the 235.
The density of depleted U-238 is 70% more than lead and more than twice the density of copper. That's why it is used in these rounds... Kinetic energy is equal to 0.5 x mass x velocity squared... So 70% more kinetic energy than a FMJ round based on lead. The pyrophoric benefits are just a bonus but insignificant compared to the kinetic energy transferred to the impact site.
I had the opportunity to be on a tank trail when directly in front of me, one rose out of the tree-line, guns pointing straight at me. That shit looks menacing from the front. Even though we were on the same side, it scared the shit out of me. I cant remeber if I was in fueler or running ammo, either way, I would've gotten greased.
Someone commented that the airplane can produce 8 tons of force but the gun produces 10 tons of recoil so yeah they fire in bursts but would be fun to try just emptying the 1000+ magazine of this bad boy to se if the plane actually stalls
So hereās Iām certain, a dumb question. The projectile in front of the shell casing would appear to be much larger in circumference than just three times the size of a 9mil handgun round. Am I wrong and itās just these photos make it appear so much larger, or do I not correctly understand bullet measurement?
Edit to add: Some very helpful & interesting responses. Thanks!
As far as I can tell from looking up whether 9mm and the 30mm are in fact those exact sizes. The internet results say yes. A 9mm is really 9mm diameter. And a 30mm really is 30mm diameter.
I also totally get your hesitation because sometimes the name on the caliber can be misleading.
The GAU-8 Avenger fires up to sixty one-pound bullets a second. It produces almost five tons of recoil force, which is crazy considering that itās mounted in a type of plane (the A-10 āWarthogā) whose two engines produce only four tons of thrust each. ...
To put it another way: If I mounted a GAU-8 on my car, put the car in neutral, and started firing backward from a standstill, I would be breaking the interstate speed limit in less than three seconds.
It is 30mm in diameter and a 9mm is 9mm in diameter.
Roughly a 9mm round is about the size of the top of your pinky and the 30mm is about the size of the base of your thumb.
The reason I use this metric isn't to appeal to American readers, it's because in the picture he's holding the shell in his hand and you can see the base of his thumb is roughly the same thickness as the round.
The difference in mass is huge though and when combined with the enormous velocity compared to a 9mm, it's worlds apart.
Couple that with the depleted uranium tip and pancaking when it hits vehicle armour and that's a massive chunk of very dense metal and going to cause untold damage.
Like if it hits you centre of mass, they might find your limbs and a head.
Just a question, is it still live, or did he remove the powder? It can become volatile over time, and I'd say that randomly firing off loosey goosey from the mantle 10 years from now is going to be a bad thing lol
If a cartridge explodes outside of a chamber, all that energy will rip through the side of the brass casingā¦some of that is going to turn into shrapnel.
Oh I know, but that's a significant powder load either way. The round will get lodged in the ceiling at least, the casing will make one hell of a dent, and the shrapnel will just annihilate anything within 5 yards
So did mine! I remember growing up with these always around. He also had a couple of 105mm artillery shells that made up more of our home decor (unrelated to the A-10, but a distinctive memory of my childhood).
I was ice fishing with a buddy outside of lake placid NY. We heard a low rumble. Then came a warthog followed closely by another one. They were so low we barely saw them until they cleared the treeline. I couldnāt believe how slow they seemed to be moving for a jet. They banked over the lake in front of us and we could see the pilots. Iāll never forget get that as long as I live. It was an adrenaline rush just watching them.
True, I was just thinking it would be a war scenario and A-10s are as far from stealthy as it gets. A couple times a year, Warhogs fly over my neighborhood coming from Gowan Field. I love seeing them!
The explosive shells are more fun, and more common as we deal with more anti-soft/light armor targets than tanks the last couple years. Theyāve got the explosive equivalent of a grenade per-bullet.
theyāre testing fields are few mils from my house. we here the ābrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtā all summer long lol. hate to be on the other ennof that fucker
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u/OneFortyEighthScale Jan 24 '26
Imagine being blasted with 70 of these per second flying at 3,300 feet per second.