M855A1 Reduced Velocity | Ballistic Gel Test

hi Andrew here I'm Blue Falcon on our comm and what we're gonna do today is something a little out of the ordinary if you've been following my work on the chopping block or William at the wound channel or mat at buff man range you've seen that m855a1 is capable of some really remarkable stuff this is the holy grail of ammunition that the 556 needs to be obviously I mean I know I'm waxing rather hyperbolic but 581 by all appearances appears to be the pinnacle of 5/6 ammunition development it can punch through virtually any steel body armor that I've seen it tested against even at some relatively low velocities I was even able to punch it through level 3 steel armor from an 11 and 1/2 inch barrel that's pretty impressive and it comes apart like a bomb it is both very penetrative both William and Matt at wound channel and buff man they have shot up through cinder blocks and armor and all sorts of stuff it just punches right through then on top of that it does really good in tissue you can't ask for much more but we're a bit curious how far out it can continue to fragment like a boss so as a first step toward finding the fragmentation threshold for this ammunition I pulled some bullets and reloaded them using 21.5 grains of RL 15 and I fired it from 14 and a half inch one in seven twists m4 rifle let's head up to the range and take a look - 436 okay so I don't know how well you can see this on video but the track continued all the way through both blocks there was definitely some fragmentation you can see the jacket coming off there and if the jacket came off then the core and the penetrator almost certainly separated from each other looks just like another test like there's I just noticed this what are the odds of that there's the core just sitting there the core just barely came out the block well I won't know until I get home but the penetrator might be in there somewhere but as another test the neck was like half an inch maybe an inch some fragments here here temporary cavities probably about eight inches long by two and a half inches wide all right that's pretty impressive to put that in perspective that velocity is approximately equivalent to what you would see with normal factory ammunition at 215 meters from a 14 1/2 inch barrel or 265 meters from a 20 inch barrel give or take it still fragmented perfectly had great deep penetration a bear in mind that in a military application that really isn't such a thing as too much penetration it's did really well and how about how about that core just pooping out the back end of the last block there what are the odds of it hitting exactly just the perfect velocity that it was able to come out but not off of the table because if it didn't hit the table I would have considered it lost makes me kind of wonder how many bullets landed within 10 or 20 feet of the end of my table and my other tests overall did really outstanding now is this the the limit no of course not not even close I would expect that it could frag at a substantially lower velocity so I will continue testing this was just a sort of baseline to kind of get an idea of where we can go from here and it looks like that limit is going to be much lower can sitting how it still went off like a boss if you have any questions or if you think I got something wrong definitely leave a comment below as always have a great day you

Channel: AR15.COM

Views: 18,776

Rating: 4.9292035 out of 5

Keywords: m855a1, m855a1 gel test, m855a1 ballistics, ballistic gel test, military ammo, ar15, ar-15, gel test, ballistic gel, m855a1 test, ar15.com, arfcom, ar15 gel test, ar-15 gel test, military ammunition

Id: PeNR4YDbwR0

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2017