Saw that earlier. That is really going to hurt Mark Serbu's sales. He produced the rifle, but some punk kid designed it. That breech cap is a serious design flaw. It has a safety factor of only 1.5 (rated at 85k psi when 50bmg is typically ~55k), and uses a safety mechanism that is fatal when catastrophically failing. For a big scary caliber with big scary pressure and heavy fucking parts, the rifle needed better design.
That's not to say the rifle is entirely at fault; those rounds are suspect; likely to be counterfeits moreso than just improperly stored/aged judging by their look and performance. The rifle was rated to handle 85k PSI, but those rounds were likely far in excess. Their sabots looked too new, didn't look to be the same profile (real SLAP rounds had brown sabots and the tracers were red, similar to the ones he fired but NOT the same), and their performance too wild. I'm placing a strong bet on shitty counterfeit loads.
The manufacturer should have done a failure mode effects analysis to identify and mitigate high impact failures like that. Even something as simple as a tether would have retained the end cap sufficiently to reduce the impact of a failure. Out of spec hot rounds are easily foreseeable, and there should have been fail safe design features to deal with them.
No amount of extra gunpowder can fit in that round to produce that effect.
not enough gunpowder can though (squib)
its probably a sabotaged bullet.
Underloaded bullets cause MORE explosive events like shown ,than overloaded. Putting in as much gunpowder as you want wont increase the explosive force so much that the bullet wont properly exit the jacket and enter barrel
multiple videos of UNDERLOADED gun mishaps:
Here are many videos of big time explosions from NOT ENOUGH gunpowder (probably) : https://www.outdoorhub.com/stories/2015/01/22/9-catastrophic-gun-malfunctions-can-learn/
SABOTAGED BULLETS enter resale markets. USA dropped thousands of explosive tamperred .50 cal across middle east in recent decades, and even in vietnam the USA sabotaged bullets. :
Why? to cause fear and terror at using seized found bullets
Know Where Your Ammo Comes From! Project Pole Bean: How Sneaky Green Berets Blew Up a Few Guns and Frightened an Entire Army:
EARLIER :
British slipped exploding rifle cartridges into enemy caches during the Second Matabele War (1896-1897) in what is now Zimbabwe. The British scouts were led by an American, Frederick Russell Burnham, who probably put them up to it.
That article claims only large caliber (.50) and mortars are typically sabotaged, to minimize maiming farmers.
my thoughts are pretty much identical. i also didnt trust this mechanism prior to this. the threads would have to be huge in order to ensure the barrel explodes first. anything explodes before the barrel you've basically made a gun that fires backwards if theres an issue...
What about something like a cotter pin type mechanism where after the thread is tightened a strong pin adds another layer of protection. Like a threaded bolt hole on either side plus chain holding the cap.
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