Polymer Cartridges

[rardoin]

I'll chime in on this one.  A friend and fellow F-class competitor (F-TR) works as a product engineer with a company that produces hybrid composite/brass based cartridges on a military contract.  I happen to have a .50 BMG dummy round with associated plastic belt link in my truck given to me by Craig.  Very cool item.

They ARE reusable/reloadable and Craig has used the .308 cases in competition once.  He said the case volume is very consistent as well as the neck tension and resizing is not needed.  I don't recall why he does not use them currently but I'll likely see him and eat a few meals with him at our LR state champ matches this coming weekend and will ask.

The weight advantage works to the tax payers advantage in that shipping costs are MUCH less than brass cased ammo and those costs are significant in the military's budget.  Attack helo pilots have thanked him profusely as they can carry full ammo loads with much higher fuel loads that allow greatly improved loiter times.  You can imagine how that helps the ground troops.

[jvw2008]

So there IS continuing development in this area. Thanks for that info Robin. ? I sure appreciate that the most appropriate intended application at this time is military. We've had a lot of technical advances over the years that have come from a lot of different venues. It will be interesting to see where this goes with time. I don't think there will ever be an effort for precision shooting without the efforts of folks who care about that discipline.

[LeadHammer]

Very interesting concepts.  I would have thought that they would deform under high heat, or become sticky in the chamber etc. Guess not.

[rardoin]

This appears, from my conversations with Craig, to be the future of military small arms cartridges.  I will have to ask if airborne cannon rounds are in the que for composite cartridge development.  A lot more 20mm rounds could be carried or have an increased operating range (time/distance) for ground support aircraft. 

Another interesting note.  I asked him about neck 'tension'/grip and he said they have plenty with bare necks but they use an adhesive to make sure that the bullets will not dislodge under rifle recoil/simian handling.

Some pics below:

[Windsage]

Every time I see discussions like this I think of the H&K G11 and it's solid rocket ammo.  It didn't have a case at all, and was built in the 1980's.  It never went commercial, but I still think it's a cool action design.