Flechette Guns

mmarsh

Active member
About 10 years ago, TIME magazine did a article called 'the soldier of the future'. One of the new gizmos the journalist wrote about was guns that would use flechette rounds with self deploying fins. These guns would replace all the traditional 'ball' type ammunition.

Does anyone know whatever happened to the idea?
 
The Flechette guns were used in Vietnam for a while but they caused such terrible injuries there was an international outcry and they disappeared from sight.
 
In Vietnam, Flechette rounds were used in 12 Gauge Shotguns.

And so were a 105mm round called a Beehive round I believe.

You can still buy Flechette rounds. (In Florida they're outlawed.) I see them as a waste of time.

Standard ammo still does more damage than all of other new space age crap out on the market. And Flechette rounds are those rounds.
 
http://www.janes.com/regional_news/africa_middle_east/news/jdw/jdw010522_2_n.shtml

I can see a definite use for them in tank rounds as proscribed in the above link. I dont understand a lot of the outcry about the use of these rounds because I don't see how a flechette is any different than a piece of shrapnel from a grenade or anti-personell mine. War is nasty, troops aren't out there to make friends. An upside I can see for their use in shotgun rounds in urban combat the flechette round will not penetrate a wall and kill a civilian hiding inside. Much like the frangible rounds I would keep in my pistol at home after I had children.
 
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