Magic Bullet

Since the first atomic explosion at Alamogordo, N. Mex., in 1945, uranium has been the key ingredient in nuclear armaments. Now, in a surprising change of role, the heavy metal is showing promise in more conventional weapons. When fired from test guns, tiny uranium projectiles produced by California's TRW Systems and several other companies, have had such devastating effects on targets during recent demonstrations that the Department of Defense has been awarding contracts for further development work.

TRW's magic bullets are unimpressive at first glance. Less than 4 in. long and one-tenth of an inch thick, they resemble the steel flechettes (French for "little arrows") used in some U.S. antipersonnel weapons in Viet Nam. What the TRW flechettes lack in size, they make up in penetration power. In recent tests, they punched completely through a 2-in.-thick armor plate that would stop most steel flechettes or heavy-caliber bullets fired at it.

Dramatic Travel. It is the uranium that gives the flechettes their impressive muscle. Cleansed of its fissionable isotopes U-235, the depleted uranium is safe to handle. Because it is one of the heaviest natural elements (a 1-ft. cube of uranium weighs 1,167 lbs.), even a tiny uranium flechette fired at high velocity from a gun has so much kinetic energy that it can penetrate a target at an angle as oblique as 60DEG.

When it enters the target, the flechette is stripped of an ablative coating that has protected the uranium from the 1000DEG F. temperature generated by air friction (solid uranium will ignite at 338DEG F.) As the bare depleted uranium comes in contact with steel, an exothermic, or heat-producing, effect occurs when the metals react chemically. This instantaneous heating, combined with the searing heat of impact, raises the temperature of the surrounding steel to such a degree that the flechette literally melts its way through, leaving a hole many times its own diameter.

The most dramatic portion of the flechette's travels is yet to come. As it emerges from its target in a shower of hot gases and molten steel, the hot uranium again comes in contact with air. Without its ablative coating to protect it, it oxidizes explosively, producing overpressures that on a large scale could damage a tank or bunker.

TRW hopes soon to adapt the uranium flechettes for firing from a multi-barreled, rotary Gatling gun that can spew out hundreds of rounds per second. When this weapon system has been perfected, there seems little that will be able to stand in the way of its deadly rain of uranium bullets.

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