Depleted Uranium Tank Ammunition | DEADLY DARTS 💀☄️

[Music] [Music] welcome back everyone it is me Maximus thank you so much for being here today I really appreciate you stopping by we are talking about depleted uranium ammunition today on tanks and I want to make something very clear before we proceed this video is not going to be discussing the controversial topics about the ammunition in regards to health effects etc I know there is already some very healthy debate on this kind of ammunition being used and if you wish to discuss that in the comment section you're more than welcome to but it's not going to be the primary focus of this video today I'm more gonna be focusing really in on the specifications of the ammunition its history and how it came to be so the use of depleted uranium as a penetrator really has resulted in some of the most superior armament for tanks across the battlefield the tank is the primary offensive weapon in any army and nations normally compete to field the best tanks in both peace and war the same thing applies for the ammunition being fired from them in the 1980's the US Army took a drastic step of arming its tank the beautiful m1 Abrams with the ultimate upgrade a tank killing round made of yes you guessed it uranium the heaviest naturally occurring element on earth the result is an unmatched tank killer capable of destroying just about any fielded tank armor the m1 Abrams tank was first fielded by the US Army in the 1980s the army had preferred the 105 millimeter gun the British designed raw ordnance l7 also known in the United States as the m60 8 the N 68 had armed the m60 series of tanks for decades and was considered a proven good enough gun the emmalin's turret could only accommodate 55 rounds of the 105 millimeter ammunition a reduction from these 62 rounds the older m60 tank could carry an even larger gun would further reduce the ammo capacity to a mere 40 rounds Pentagon officials on the other hand wanted to equip the m1 with the larger German design Rheinmetall m256 120-millimeter smoothbore gun the civilian leadership felt obliged to use the gun in part way to offset German participation in the NATO AWACS program a larger gun would also future-proof the m1 allowing it to defeat future tanks with heavy armor a compromise resulted in which the m1 would be initially manufactured with the m-68 gun but would be upgraded to the m256 at a later date moreover a later version of the tank laid to call the m1a1 would come standard with the larger m256 while the tank was now future proved the point about the small ammunition capability stood still the fire control system the m1 was so advanced that it could hit a moving target at 2,000 meters with a 90% accuracy kill ratio the problem was not going to be misses and wasted ammunition but ensuring that hits translated into actual kills at the same time the United States was researching the use of depleted uranium as an armor penetrator a byproduct of nuclear reactor fuel depleted uranium was harder and denser than existing tungsten tip penetrators accelerated to extremely high speeds this allowed two pleated uranium really to smash through just about any kind of amount of armor the nature of uranium and steel would cause D you to catch fire upon penetration causing catastrophic damage inside the enemy tanks the standard tungsten anncr morale for the m60 tank the M 735 could penetrate three hundred and fifty millimeters or thirteen point seven inches of steel rolled homogeneous Armour or RH a the standard measurement for armored vehicle protection the M 833 D you round however could penetrate 420 millimeters of RH a position at 60 degree angle for maximum armor thickness by comparison the largest Soviet 125 millimeter gun on the t-72 tank could penetrate four hundred and fifty millimeters of armor most importantly the m77 four could penetrate the t-72s frontal hull and tear armor where the armor was thickest meanwhile efforts to future-proof the Emmons armlet were coming in handy the soviet union was known to be deploying the new main battle tank the beautiful t 80 US intelligence believed that the T 80 like modern tanks such as the m1 and leopard 2 had shifted away from an all steel armor to mixed composite matrix that included ceramic armors the result was really improved with the composit armor protection the t-80 had a frontal turret protection of 500 millimeters of RHA and the frontal hull protection of 400 50 millimeters of RHA the 105 millimeter gun had finally run its course as an effective armament for most main battle tanks of the day improved m1a1 tanks equipped with the larger 120 millimeter gun began rolling off assembly lines in 1985 the 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq's will be m8 to 9 a one depleted-uranium round used by m1a1s against t-72s with devastating effect nicknamed the Silver Bullet the round could penetrate an estimated 500 and 70 millimeters at 2,000 meters giving it a fairly good penetration even against the t-80 at typical ranges amazingly the m8 to 9 a1 has a flat laser light trajectory out to 3,600 metres meaning it does not incur any ballistic drop due to gravity over a distance of two miles that gives one idea of the pure power behind the 120 millimeter gun with this kind of ammunition the latest generation of the MA - 9 series round known as the ma 294 is designed to penetrate even further than previous versions the exact extent of which is classified and to defeat active protection systems such as those built on the latest Russian tanks whether or not the m82 e4 can penetrate the armour of the Russian new t14 Armada tank is pretty much unknown the US Army is not pushed the arm to the m1 with a longer gun barrel to increase muzzle velocity or a larger diamonds gun since the are martyrs introduction an interesting non-development in the face of this new tank threat despite this a munitions attention to obvious controversy the round is really not all that new the military is experimented with it for a very very long time it's a lot less denser than its cousin tungsten uranium can penetrate nearly all heavy armor types but whereas tungsten projectiles become rounded at the tip upon impact uranium shells burn away at the edges this self sharpening helps them bore into Armour something that is also highly attracted to the military is depleted uranium abundance depleted uranium is a byproduct of the process by which uranium-235 is created it's the most radioactive and most useful form the uranium isolated from natural mineral ores in 1998 the US of energy had about 500 thousand metric tons of depleted uranium in storage depleted uranium armored piercing incendiary or API munitions come in two main forms one is fired from the suitably named tank Buster a 10 Thunderbolt aircraft and the other shoots from the beautiful m1 Abrams which is also enforced with the D u armor both types of API munitions total 300 tons were used during the Gulf War but only a TENS were used during the operation Allied Force in Yugoslavia according to a statement by NATO secretary-general Lord Robinson some 31 thousand rounds of D ammunition were used throughout Kosovo during the 11 weeks of operation Allied Force each round of 1/10 EU ammunition contains around a 300 gram d-u penetrating slug which brings a total amount of depleted uranium dropped here in the conflict to a little less than 10 metric tons interestingly normal uranium is not as hard as tungsten but as a classified technique allows it to be hardened it produces this amazing ammunition to be used on tanks this is believed to involve alloying it with titanium and cooling it that forms a single large metallic crystal rather than a chaotic mass of tiny crystals this structure is extremely strong and produces an improvement similar start of the difference between a brittle pencil lead and a carbon-fiber tennis racket the final advantage of the iranian really is though the cost machine tungsten is extremely expensive the government supply of D U is more or less free it is likely the D U ammunition will eventually be phased out but not for health reasons or controversy that you're thinking of more for the military ones it was introduced to solve the problem of breaking through heavy armor but tank armor is concentrated mainly at the front facing the main threat it is thinner on the sides and thinner still on top if the entire vehicle were clad in thick armor it would be extremely heavy to move that's the point that we're kind of hitting on today it's almost like trying to make a microprocessor even faster and faster every day eventually we will be limited to the physics of a vehicle and the physics of the ammunition we just can't make enough armor to stop these things to make it thick enough and to make an engine powerful enough to move these things around instead of the brute force the clever approach would really be to attack the weakest point which as we already know is either the rear or the the vehicle you know how I'm going with this guy's anti-tank missiles are normally starting to come into the spotlight a lot heavier than these kind of a munitions and I'm not saying that these are redundant and saying in the near future we may see different kinds of technology coming out that may phase out D u type of ammunition overall the service record of this type of ammunition is very impressive we know it's capable of defeating most modern armors today and especially with many types of guns being used to fire them they can do a hell of oil damage to most tanks today the US military using D U does have the severe controversy behind it and of course it's gonna be probably a bit of a reason as to why they may no longer want to use it but the reality is that technology is advancing an extremely high pace and that conventional munitions may change very very much in the near future folks I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit about D u penetrators today and if you do have any comments or concerns about today's video please leave them in the comment section below I'd love to hear your opinion on this type of weapon system if you wish to follow my channel please feel free to hit the little bell button by the subscribe button if you want to support my channel then I would really appreciate you going to check out my patreon page anyone who's been donating towards my patreon page really can't thank you enough for doing so it really really does mean a lot to me and thank you all for being here today have a wonderful one all the best bye bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: Matsimus

Views: 1,307,109

Rating: 4.777741 out of 5

Keywords: Depleted Uranium, Depleted, Uranium, Tank Ammunition, weapon, tank, Sabot round, tank ammo, radioactive, Armour, Armour penetration, tungsten penetrator, depleted uranium rounds, M1A1 Abrams, M1 Abrams, abrams tank, tanks, PGU-14, A-10, 120mm tank gun, 120mm smoothbore, tank armour, tank armor, depleted uranium tank ammunition, weapons, weapon technology, A-10 warthog, matsimus

Id: MTh8lxRk8FY

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 16 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/FlorentPirot]

You should visit depleteduranium.org for a synthesis on the issue - read for instance the free ebook, link on top, for a start. You'll understand why DU is not needed for armour piercing and get a lot of proof on its massive use, outside the well known APFSDS shells