Quote:
Originally Posted by MatthewVilter
Any reason the fragmentation couldn't be on the outside of the casing?
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If you're thinking of shedding the fragmentation in flight I'd advise against it in a realistic setting for a number of reasons:
The aerodynamics of the round would be massively altered by such a change which would alter the path of the round. Either the targeting system would have to be extremely precise (and the timing of the discard similarly precise) or the bullet would need guidance. I will concede that it is technically possible but you'd end up going through an awful lot of trouble to make it work when there's no good reason to do so.
I suspect that an outer case of fragmentation material would travel poorly as well and in weapons meant to be fired rather than thrown might to problematic things inside the barrel.
Even if you did overcome that issue it would be a boutique round, popular with the tacticool crowd, since the mechanical and software complexities will probably increase both the cost and risk of malfunction. Any serious warfighting group would just carry both concussive and fragmenting rounds. Unless there is a persistent need to change from fragmenting to concussion ever few seconds there is no actual benefit.
Put another way if you're going into a situation where "we need 10 frag grenades" is as likely to be true as "we need 10 concussion grenades" you know so little about the situation that you should bring ten of each!
The point of a non-fragmenting round is to prevent people or the environment from people hit by fragmentation for some reason. This doesn't entirely stop that problem since it would leave the fragmentation speeding toward the target at a very high speed. Essentially you've fired a shotgun along with your explosive. At close range a worst case scenario is the explosion might turn still airborne fragments into ordinary fragmentation and they're guaranteed to be closer to
you than the target.