Aerial shooting
Here’s a name I suspect very few of you may know. Meet Mr. William Dalrymple Maitland Bell, aka W.D.M. Bell, aka ‘Karamojo’ Bell, Mr. Bell is otherwise known as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, African elephant hunters. He was born too late for the real prime period of ivory hunting, but that didn’t stop him from shooting over 1,000 tuskers at a time when many were lucky to get a few. How? He studied their anatomy, went ‘WAY back into the bush (rumor had it he had to re-stock some of his rifles because pushing through jungle thorns literally wore significant patches of wood off the sides of their stocks!) One fella estimated he WALKED 50,000 miles chasing elephants. Helluva man… but why are we talking about him?
Bell was an innovator, and a great shot. In those days an elephant gun might be a 10 bore, 8 bore, (or in an extreme case a 2 bore! whose owner, Samuel Baker, called it “Baby”.) Bell sawed apart many an elephant skull and knew exactly where the brain was. By placing his shots j-u-s-t so, he could put a relatively small bullet (think as small as a .256!) into the brain and drop the elephant in his tracks. That’s some shooting! Especially at halitosis ranges.
But to the point – one time Bell lucked onto some 6,000 rounds of unreliable rifle ammo for disposal. Hey, it might not go off all the time – but in the fun part of disposal, Bell found that shooting at the birds wheeling around the falls at Lake Victoria was a challenge. Flying birds, open sights, a hundred yards away. Good sized birds, cormorants…but at that range, hitting one wheeling through the erratic air currents? They say some sport shooters just had to see this marvelous shotgun Bell had that was hitting birds 100 yards away- and found he had a military RIFLE and was getting about an 80% success rate. Like I said, he was a great shot.*
What does that have to do with us? Not much… but wouldn’t a rifle shot like that come in handy nowadays in The War of Drones? You betcha, to quote Ms. Palin. And now, we have that potential. Enter the DKC (Drone Killer Cartridge) family.
DKC is designed for use in rifles, automatic rifles and machine guns, but it disperses a cluster of projectiles upon firing with an effective range far greater than a conventional shotgun’s capabilities. The effect increases probability hits and kills against Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) threats in a way that also minimizes risk of collateral damage from projectiles that don’t impact the target.
The DKC family of loads includes both pelletized and segmented designs. The segmented version includes a one-piece projectile that mechanically self-separates into discrete, spin-stabilized sub-projectiles prior to muzzle exit. Pelletized DKC includes a projectile assembly containing a stack of high-density, spherical buckshot-sized pellets mechanically disbursed at muzzle exit.
Okay, it doesn’t turn every rifleman into a WDM Bell. But it allows them to take down drones and UAVs at rifle and automatic weapon ranges, rather than shotgun ranges. Figure most shotguns are good to maybe 60-70 yards (fact: one of the airports in Ohio used to have a shotgun range facing the runways – but a safe 200 yards away.) That lets drones get up close and personal. But in a machine gun? Now you could be talking a few HUNDRED yards away.
“We’re enabling extended range, shotgun-style effects through automatic rifles and machine guns with nothing more than an ammunition change,” said Brian Hoffman, man-portable weapons chief engineer at NSWC Crane. During a recent demonstration at Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh, Ind., DKC achieved a 92 percent success rate against drones.“By design, DKC provides broader terminal coverage on and around the intended target, which increases effectiveness against stationary and moving drones by helping offset imperfect aim,” said Hoffman. “There’s a good reason why bird hunters use shotguns. We’ve applied a similar philosophy to killing drones while amplifying overall performance. American Rifleman
I think Bell would be proud.
* Bell became a pilot in WWI, and at one point was credited with an enemy kill when his machine gun jammed after one round – but the enemy went down. The story goes that he argued against it, but his CO was unwilling to lose the kill and ordered him to accept it.
For a fun read, find a copy of “Death in the Silent Places” by Peter Hathaway Capstick. In it he profiles not only Bell, but Lt. Col John Henry Patterson, Chauncey Stigand, Col. Edward James Corbett… they’re a seriously hairy-chested lot.
Category: Science and Technology
Traveling thousands of miles to kill VERY large animals does have a ring of valor in my lexicon.
There have been stories of hunters sparing villages of vexatious predators and the context frequently sounds as the ends justify the means. There is a slippery slope with so many contentions.
For the most part, in a free world, you may spend your money and have your fun.
It would be a pleasure to take a bolt action .22 to antifa assemblies on public land and selectively manage “group think”. Leave the brass in the chamber, go home,tidy up a wee bit and forget all about it.
Bells name never rang a bell in my head and reading the post was very interesting… Watched on TV a guy shooting an arrow through a tossed in the air finger ring.
I have a bit of an issue with the description of the projectiles. Especially the one about the “buckshot sized” round. The Services are using .223 or 5.56mm cartridges. IIRC #4 buckshot is about .24 +- caliber. Just how are they getting multiple buckshot pellets into a round of a smaller diameter? It would be a job to do it with a 7.62 weapon much less a 5.56.
With the way ammo prices are, it’s called shrinkage…
A simple upper change to .458 SOCOM chamber with a smooth barrel would make it easy. You could use the same magazine with 10 round capacity. Then you would have to work up a 458 load for a few pellets of buckshot.
Using a rifled barrel would be pointless. The shot would balloon out and be too widely scattered to hit anything accurately.
But the real question is; “are they really using 5.56?” Last I checked the army was transitioning to 6.8mm. 6.8 is roughly .26″ so #4 buck would fit, barely.
I did say shotguns were ideal for point defense on drones.
Unfortunately there are two very large problems now. Firstly they have been unable to defend the TPY-2 Radars in theater and most of the active systems in theater have been destroyed. This wouldn’t have been such a huge problem because there were backup sets staged in the region. However; if you guessed that they left the sets exactly where they were after hostilities began which were stored not in bunkers, but in light equipment sheds you win a prize. I think the very poor line of reasoning may have been that the Iranians were unaware of their locations, importance or able to target them. Even if the Iranians didn’t know where they were the Russians sure did, so now all of the back up sets have been destroyed as well without ever leaving the garage.
This has resulted in the US pulling assets out of Korea, much to the unhappiness of the ROK, whose president made an open protest but admitted there was nothing he could really do about it. Each of the sets currently run about $500,000,000 each and have a lead time of about 18 months to build so our air defense capability has been crippled and will remain so for years to come. Before hostilities there were 20 in the world, now maybe 16.
Also damaged heavily was the only FPS-132 Radar in the region, a $1,200,000,000 strategic asset of which there was only one in theater. This asset took six years to construct. Whoever is running the air defense fight there is badly outmatched and playing by pre-Ukraine rules, which haven’t applied since at least 2022.
This leaves us leaning heavily on the PATRIOT system. At least it would if we hadn’t depleted our PATRIOT assets by giving them to the Ukraine, where many were destroyed in combat. How many were destroyed? Estimates are as high as 30 launchers, or let us call it at least a Battalion MTOE. Not only that but many are still in use.
A MAN with a set of major league clackers.