AQUA-PLAN
US military ‘testing underwater bullets for Navy SEALs to use on counter-terrorism missions’, reports claim
NAVY SEALs could soon sink enemy boats and puncture submarines by shooting holes in them from below the surface of the ocean.
That's because the US military is testing bullets that can be fired underwater.
Normal bullets slow down in water because it's eight times denser than air, rendering most weapons harmless in the ocean.
US Special Operations Command is attempting to get around this with specially designed ammunition, reports .
Bullets are tipped with tungsten, which creates an air bubble around the round to reduce drag.
The specially-designed ammo, developed by Virginia weapons research firm DSG Technologies, can apparently travel up to 200ft underwater.
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The bullets could be used to shoot boats from below the surface, or by helicopter gunners to strafe periscope-depth submarines.
According to DSG Tech: "This ammunition is suitable for use in partial or fully submerged weapons, regardless of if the target is in water or on the surface."
It's likely they would be used by frogmen, Navy SEALs trained in underwater combat, before anyone else.
A spokesperson at the US Special Operations Command told Business Insider that the rounds were being tested by the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO).
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The bullets have been dubbed "supercavitating ammunition" after the cavity of air they create to counter drag.
Odd Leonhardsen, DSG's chief science officer, told that the firm was selling the bullets to governments around the world.
DSG only plans to sell them to NATO member countries and NATO-friendly countries, he added.
The company showed off its underwater "CAV-X" bullets at a shooting range in North Carolina last month.
Terrifying space weapons of the future
Here are three of the scariest...
Rods from God
- A strange but utterly terrifying weapon has been dubbed "rods from the God" and is based on the concept of creating man-made meteorites that can be guided towards the enemy.
- Instead of using rocks rods the size of telephone poles are deployed.
- These would be made out of tungsten — a rare metal that can stand the intense heat generated by entering Earth's atmosphere.
- One satellite fires the rods towards the Earth's atmosphere while the other steers them to a target on the ground.
- Reaching speeds of 7000mph they hit the ground with the force of a small nuclear weapon — but crucially creating no radiation fall out.
- As bizarre as it sounds, a US Congressional report recently revealed the military has been pushing ahead with the kinetic space weapons.
Molten metal cannons
- This intriguing idea is being developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
- It is called the Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition or MAHEM.
- This game changing rail-gun can fire a jet of molten metal, hurled through space at several hundred miles per second by the most powerful electromagnets ever built.
- The molten metal can then morph into an aerodynamic slug during flight and pierce through another spacecraft or satellite and a munition explodes inside.
Space force ships
- Already the United States is powering head with its spacecraft, although China is busy developing one of their own.
- The top secret American XS-1 under development by DARPA.
- It can travel ten times the speed of sound and launch missiles.
- Meanwhile an unmanned craft is currently being developed in the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre in Mianyang, Sichuan province, which is also known as Base 29.
A video showed the bullet travelling through 13 blocks of 1.3-feet-thick ballistic gelatin and passing out the other side.
The reason [the bullet] does not stop in the same way as conventional ammunition do, is because the CAV-X projectile is perfectly balanced through its own rotation, and the shape helps form the perfect cavitation body around the projectile," Leonhardsen told Business Insider.
"The only part of the projectile that will be in contact with the water to create drag/friction is the tip."
It's not clear when – if ever – the bullets will make it into the field.
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