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China Builds A Recoilless 7.62 Round… For Drones!

 

Drone warfare is here to stay, and around the world, military researchers are figuring out how to arm these small unmanned aerial vehicles. One of the most recent breakthroughs we hear of is from China, where scientists have developed a new recoilless 7.62-caliber cartridge, intended to arm drones.

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Arming unmanned aircraft

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has shown the lethal capability of even consumer-level drones, but the smaller versions come with some restrictions. The idea behind these Chinese researchers’ study was to allow a small drone to fire a bullet without its stability being thrown too off-kilter.

The news reports from China are not entirely clear on how the researchers achieved this goal and no doubt some of the details are lost in translation. However, it seems they achieved their recoil reduction goal in two ways. First, they vent gas out the back of the receiver when the cartridge is fired. No surprise there, that’s similar to how recoilless rifles like the PIAT have worked through decades of military usage.

Obviously, bleeding gas out the back of the receiver will reduce pressure, which in turn reduces the bullet’s velocity. To address that problem, there is a secondary propellant built inside the bullet itself. This propellant ignites when a built-in chip receives a firing signal. Reading the Chinese reports, it appears an inductive coil around the gun’s barrel signals the bullet that it’s time for this secondary stage of propellant to ignite.

With this design, the 7.62mm bullet is supposed to reach muzzle velocity in the 2400-2900 fps range, similar to 123-grain bullets from the 7.62×39 cartridge, or even more powerful.

Despite that hitting power, the researchers say their new cartridge’s recoil only moves the drone backwards about half an inch.