Why don't the police/military use any handgun cartridges between 5.7mm and 9mm?
Something like the Tokarev?
So far as I understand ballistics, the way to penetrate steel/soft body armor is to use a super high-velocity projectile. This tends to work best with small caliber projectiles like 5.7x28mm, which go extraordinarily fast. On the other hand, the best way to penetrate stuff like drywall, animals, ballistic gel, and other stuff, is to use a high muzzle-energy cartridge. This means stuff like the 10mm, 357 sig, or hot 9mm rounds. The 5.7x28 doesn't penetrate ballistic gel very well - it fails the FBI penetration standards for handguns. And 10mm/9mm don't penetrate bulletproof vests very well (even soft vests, which should be easy to penetrate).
Couldn't there be a cartridge in between, that will penetrate all soft body armor (and maybe even 3a hard body armor), but still meets the FBI penetration standards? That is, it can penetrate >12 inches into ballistic gel?
I'm thinking of something like the 7.62x25mm Tokarev, but hotter. And possibly conical. We can machine better steel than 1930s Russia, and so we ought to be able to create a higher-pressure handgun.
0.32 ACP (and similar) is too underpowered to have any armor-piercing/penetration capabilities. There's the 0.327 Magnum, but that's a revolver cartridge. The only modern cartridge that fits my description is the 7.5mm Brno. But that's a proprietary cartridge, only used by one gun, and sold at ridiculous markups.
99% of modern, full-size handguns are built around one of two cartridge lengths. Either 1.15" (9mm, .40 S&W, .357 SIG), or 1.25" (.38 Super, .45 ACP, 10mm). It's almost trivial to start producing and selling a new cartridge the same length as one of these existing ones, plus conversion kits to put it in existing firearms. Or if you are a firearms manufacturer or have an arrangement with one, releasing a version of one of their existing guns for the new cartridge instead of conversion kits. Mostly it's just a barrel in a new caliber, and possibly a little tweaking to the extractor, magazine feedlips, etc., and you have a functional gun. You may want a slightly lighter or heavier slide, etc., before you're ready for mass production, but you can start experimenting almost immediately.
But going for a cartridge that doesn't fit either length is hard; now you really need a whole new pistol. The design work is really not that bad -- you make the frame longer, make the slide longer, make room for the slide's additional stroke, and lengthen a bunch of parts like the trigger bar, firing pin, etc. But now instead of an existing design with one or two parts different, roughly half the parts in the gun have to be made special for the longboi version -- and until you have made one (or really, a small batch) of each part, you don't have anything.
That's why wildcats like 9x25 Dillon or .40 Super (1.25" class) can easily support a cult following, but 7.62x25 (an oddball at 1.38") is still just about 100% limited to old milsurp.
Anyway, if you personally want to spearhead a 7.62x25 revival, your best shot might be trying to standardize a restricted-OAL version that uses the standard case, but loads short-ogive bullets to make 1.25" OAL. Then you can convert any .38 Super/10mm/etc. gun relatively easily -- and the easier it is to convert an existing gun, the more people will try it out, hopefully building a sufficient market to justify commercial ammo production.
Kayden Nelson
>tfw Jow Forums knows things
Samuel Mitchell
in usa at least, back in the day, the army used the .45 m1911 and police used a .38 revolver. literally from the 40s up through the early 1980s. in 1986 we have the miami dade shootout where the FBI gets their collective ass handed to them and has much to [re]consider. so the FBI decided they wanted more firepower than .38 out of a revolver, and also decided that gradpa's .45 in a 1911 wasn't enough, either. enter 10mm in a semi-auto handgun. well, FBI employs women and noodle-wristed faggots, so they did poorly on their competencies and cried about it. FBI acquiesces and goes to s&w and says 10mm gives us better permanent wound cavity but half our staff are pussies. what else ya got. so they cut the 10mm down to .40s&w and then FBI adopts that. plenty of other police departments follow their standard. everyone realizes .40s&w is super gay and now theyre all switching to 9mm and you can get guns cheap in .40 that are expensive in 9mm. wait, what was your question?
Cameron Long
Swedes made a pretty interesting cartridge for the PDW role. 6.5mm CBJ, a bottlenecked 9mm Luger, optionally loaded with a saboted tungsten for even better penetration.
A really big perk is because it utilizes 9mm as the parent case, it is specifically designed as a caliber conversion option. They made an SMG for it that can be converted back to 9mm with a barrel swap. In theory the same should hold true in reverse, with 6.5mm CBJ barrels dropping into UZIs or Glocks. Everything else is the same (magazines, bolt face, extractor location) so it should work as a swap-in/swap out option.
It just never got much attention, with the catfight between FN's P90 and H&K's MP7 stealing all the limelight.
No demand for it, for your average cop, 99.999% of whatever they shot at is unlikely to have plates, so its not cost effective to arm your entire force with an ap-capable handgun. If they do have to fight armor, thats what rifles with appropriate loading are for (SWAT units)
For Militaries, handguns are almost never used so again, its not worth it
Jonathan Clark
Oh shit, that's whats going on? It's essentially just momentum?
Crap. It had to be something like that.
Honestly, I know that a few semi-autos have been released in 357 magnum. Coonan released a 357 magnum handgun in 2008. And I remember something named Grizzly or something that was released in the 1980s.
With modern machinery tools, I could probably get my hands on one of those, and scan the parts.
If maximum penetration is my goal, it probably makes more sense tot to increase the overall length of the round to something like the 0.357 magnum (which is 1.59, I think).
Aaron Perry
normal policemen dont meet anyone with body armor often enough to warrant needing to carry AP ammo as standard they barely fire their guns enough to warrant any major expenditure beyond keeping up with the joneses
cost and reliability are really whats important, and 9mm does both of those enough to not really require a replacment except for very specialized scenarios
Kevin Phillips
Yeah, but did they sell it to anyone? Can a SWAT team buy it? Can an average consumer?
I wouldn't expect regular police to use my hypothetical cartridge. Just like they don't use the FN 5.7. But SWAT/military use the FN 5.7.
For SWAT/military, a handgun is a backup weapon. You only use it if your rifle is somehow rendered unusable, because it got hit with shrapnel, hit with a bullet, jammed, ran out of ammunition, or was grabbed in close combat, et cetera.
If the military never use handguns, then why bother with the FN 5.7? Hell, why bother with a handgun at all?
Aiden Jones
a modern tokarev gun would be cool probably more popular than 5.7 or 22tcm idk, interesting thread
Andrew Murphy
>Yeah, but did they sell it to anyone? Can a SWAT team buy it? Can an average consumer? Marketing the round, they tried too hard to sell their $4000 uzi knockoff with it, instead of focusing on potential $200 conversion barrels, so everyone lost interest.
Juan Perez
You don't need to be able to pierce armor when your job consists of shooting and harassing unarmed POCs
Gavin Lopez
>high muzzle energy rounds >lists 9mm >doesnt list 45acp Wanna know how I know youre a limp wristed capacity cuck?
Alexander Collins
>So far as I understand ballistics, the way to penetrate steel/soft body armor is to use a super high-velocity projectile. This tends to work best with small caliber projectiles like 5.7x28mm, which go extraordinarily fast. high energy but mostly speed with a small diameter >On the other hand, the best way to penetrate stuff like drywall, animals, ballistic gel, and other stuff, is to use a high muzzle-energy cartridge. This means stuff like the 10mm, 357 sig, or hot 9mm rounds. it's mostly a function of momentum not energy and having a small diameter helps here too Normally caliber momentum value is figured in power factor (pf) which is just (grains*velocity)/1000
Landon Cooper
45 acp has roughly the same muzzle energy as 9mm
Henry Powell
Yes, the most straightforward way to make a non-milsurp 7.62x25 pistol is to take a Coonan .357 and rebarrel it. A few people have done that.
>makes more sense to increase the overall length of the round to something like the 0.357 magnum If you just want one gun for yourself, sure; increasing the OAL would give you a little more room; might be able to squeeze in some of the shorter AP bullets designed for rifles, or just have more case capacity with normal handgun ogives.
But if you have some dream of bringing it into wider existence, requiring an expensive gun like Coonans, Automags, Wildeys, and Deagles is not the way to gain popularity.
Jordan Thompson
>9mm roughly has the same energy as a 50bmg >9mm roughly has the same energy as DU 30mm I could go on, but I think you see my point that 9mm cucks think their cartridge is the most powerful thing on the planet. And dont forget about their last resort in a debate >muh capacity
post what ft/lb your 45 auto has at the muzzle with your self defense load.
Aaron James
Why not make a wildcat, based on .38 Super or 10mm, that's equal or superior to 7.62x25?
Luis Thompson
Small dicked .45 fags buy the biggest rounds to compensate for their lack of manhood and assume bigger rounds is better cuz muh stoppin powah when in reality, capacity> size especially when the round isnt even .100 of an inch bigger (.355 vs .451) and most of the fudd boomers carrying .45 use a 1911 which has 8 rounds compared to a full size 9mm of 18 rounds
Carter Gray
Go mow your lawn, boomer
John Murphy
What you are looking for is .357 sig or 9x25 Dillon.
Sebastian Gomez
Wait what? Didn't they just have the barrel grooved anticlockwise that made it go through kevlar
Blake Bailey
>.38 Super Assuming you mean one of the rimless variants like .38 Super Comp, 9x23 Winchester, etc., sure. But you basically wind up with something almost exactly like short-loaded 7.62 Tokarev, only with zero brass available. Sure, you could straighten the walls a little vs. 7.62x25, but you'll barely gain any case capacity that way, IMO not enough to be worth the hassle of having to convert all your brass.
>10mm That could actually work -- significant gain in case capacity (probably more than 's stretched 7.62x25, but this runs in standard 10mm mags), could be worth the effort.
Gavin Flores
Doesn't 7.5 FK use the same bolt face as 10mm Auto? Also, I think a modern .30 carbine load could be a pretty good contender. Or maybe 5.7 Johnson Spitfire?
>Doesn't 7.5 FK use the same bolt face as 10mm Auto? Yep, but the same OAL as the 7.62x25. 7.5FK is basically the same relation to 7.62x25 as .357 SIG is to 9x19.
Ian Ward
What if you took a .44 magnum case and necked it down for a .357 magnum bullet? Could you cut down/reuse the cylinder from a .44 gun in a .357 revolver?
Wyatt Hill
You mean .357/44 Bain & Davis?
Bottleneck cartridges in revolvers are a little finicky, they're susceptible to setting back and tying up the action. It can be done, but I'd sooner use sabots -- my Dad had a pet load with a cast .357 bullet in .44 magnum.
9mm is within their budget, otherwise they use .40S&W.
Angel Walker
kek
Dylan Fisher
Possibly. I actually don't know enough about ballistics to determine whether a 1.25'' overall length 7.62x25mm would significantly under-perform a 1.59'' overall length 7.62x25mm.
>requiring an expensive gun like Coonans, Automags, Wildeys, and Deagles is not the way to gain popularity Hmmm.
Is the Coonan/Automag/Deagle inherently expensive to manufacture? I always assumed that they were just proprietary, and there were few/no competitors making similar guns, and a small target market, so they could charge a lot of money. Any potential competitor would have significant entry costs - designing another 0.357 magnum semi-auto would cost a few hundred thousand dollars, and have a small target market. So nobody else creates one, and Coonan can charge $1800 per gun.
I bet that a mass-produced Coonan 0.357 magnum would cost $800 or so. And if they tried to make a cheaper version, they could get it down to $400 - $500.
I suspect that the key to creating a cheap handgun in this cartridge is to get widespread adoption, even at somewhat expensive prices. And then as multiple corporations manufacture a handgun in this caliber, let the price slowly fall as competition increases, and new (cheaper) designs become common. Probably, the best way to get widespread adoption of my hypothetical 1.59 overall length "hot" Tokarev is to either
1) Market directly to the military/SWAT, or 2) Appeal directly to consumers, probably using the "sexy super-penetrative ballistics" factor.
The FN 57 obviously used the first approach. The 50 AE used the second approach (except they replaced "sexy super penetrative ballistics" with "it's 50 caliber, bro, and it's in a vidya game".
Yeah, you're probably right. It's a lot more practical to just swap barrels with a 10mm.
Oliver Campbell
>Is the Coonan/Automag/Deagle inherently expensive to manufacture?
Coonans are not, they're just a 1911 with modified geometry. Your numbers are valid there, you certainly could mass produce them cheaper. The Deagles are a very different design, they are a much more complex design than most semiauto pistols, they are legit more costly to manufacture. I don't know enough about the Wildley to comment on it.
>>I suspect that the key to creating a cheap handgun in this cartridge is to get widespread adoption, and that's the catch-22. It has to be cheap or there won't be widespread adoption. It's circular logic.
Logan Butler
>and that's the catch-22. It has to be cheap or there won't be widespread adoption. It's circular logic. Not really. The FN 57 got widespread adoption without being cheap. Both the round and the gun are still expensive. The military/SWAT use it because it has excellent ballistic performance, and they have large enough budgets to pay for it. And everybody else buys it because it's cool and has interesting ballistics. Plus maybe some security personnel need to penetrate body armor.
I'm pretty sure that you either need to demonstrate it's ballistic effectiveness (thus persuading the military/SWAT to adopt it), or you need to persuade consumers that it's terribly sexy. Basically, it needs to follow the marketing strategy of the FN 57, or the "Dirty Harry" .44 Magnum.
Eli Torres
Remember that the cost of machining is directly related to the volume of material you have to remove. Machinists don't make parts. They make chips and whatever's left is the part. So yeah, all else being equal, the larger the magwell, the more expensive it is to make.
At the same quantity, a rotating bolt design (Deagle, Wildey, Automag) is gonna be more costly to produce than an old-school Browning tilt-barrel (Coonan), which will be more costly than a modern, ejection-port-locking tilt-barrel. But most of these guns' price difference is from the low production quantity, not the inherent differences in design.
>I suspect that the key to creating a cheap handgun in this cartridge is to get widespread adoption, even at somewhat expensive prices. Exactly. Cartridges that fit in existing (cheap and/or widespread) guns let you take a shortcut of making it cheap so it can become popular, otherwise you have to make it popular so it can become cheap.
>1) Market directly to the military/SWAT, >or >2) Appeal directly to consumers, probably using the "sexy super-penetrative ballistics" factor. Good analysis. Of course, the firearms world is littered with failures that tried to follow each of those plans, but you're basically correct with both of those success stories. It's worth noting, though, that the Five-Seven was created as a companion for the already-existing P90, and the Deagle was originally conceived as a .357 Mag pistol, then was in production in .357/.41/.44 Mag for some years before .50AE was invented. So neither one is exactly a case of successfully bootstrapping a new handgun and a new cartridge simultaneously.
Wyatt Peterson
I mean, the 5.7x28mm was built to fulfill a US (or NATO? I forget) request for a firearm that worked both in a handgun and in a rifle, and could penetrate body armor. So my approach is not entirely unprecedented.
But you're right. This is looking harder and harder. And I obviously don't have the resources that FN had. Of course, if some other corporation wanted to try designing a Tokarev-like competitor to the FN, that would be cool, but it wouldn't be my project.
I think the suggestion of modifying a 10mm handgun, by creating a barrel for 7.62x25mm with an overall length of 1.25mm is probably the best approach. Of course, this is somewhat similar to the cartridge that has been mentioned earlier, the CBJ. Except that cartridge doesn't appear to be available to consumers;. And maybe not even law enforcement.
Jordan Bell
Yeah, CBJ is chasing that big licensing deal where someone else sets up the actual production line and they just rake in the cash -- unless or until that happens, the ammunition is basically unavailable.
Anyway, I believe CBJ is a substantially smaller cartridge -- I don't have any figures on the internal volume, but the brass is the same length, and being loaded to 9mm's OAL means the bullet occupies more of that volume. So comparing solid vs. solid, short-loaded 7.62x25 should be at least as good, maybe beat them by a little. Of course, the whole point of that round is CBJ's sabot tech, which is going to take a lot of R&D to match, and the use of solid tungsten bullets, which is just plain expensive.
Don't forget 's idea, if you neck 10mm (or 9x25) down to 7.62, you lose the off-the-shelf brass availability, but on the other hand you gain a lot of case volume, and don't have to tweak mag lips to make your 10mm mags work with a narrower cartridge.
