Military Application of Tungsten Alloy

Tungsten Alloy is often used in harsh environments because of its high density, strength, good plasticity and hardness, such as bullets in military fields, prefabricated fragments of tungsten alloy, kinetic energy armor-piercing projectiles and so on.

Taking shotguns as an example, the melee weapon of Chinese special forces is QBS09 military shotguns, which are different from the traditional shotguns equipped with gunpowder, steel or lead-iron balls, such as American No.00 deer bombs, etc. QBS09 military shotguns using tungsten alloy and high-speed shotguns are used in range, penetration and dispersion area.

Tungsten alloy prefabricated fragments are generally used in mines, grenades, aerial bombs or artillery shells, etc., which form a large number of high-speed fragments by high-speed impact and blasting to kill living bodies or armored vehicles. Compared with the traditional prefabricated fragment material, tungsten alloy has higher specific gravity, greater hardness and stronger impact energy, and the prefabricated fragment made from it has larger size, higher initial velocity and stronger lethality.

For example, in 1980, a multi-purpose air defense missile-"Northwest Wind" portable surface-to-air missile was developed at the request of the French armed forces, which was mainly used to deal with low-altitude and ultra-low-altitude targets, and was equipped with troops in the late 1980s. The warhead adopts prefabricated fragment technology, which contains 185 tungsten alloy balls with a diameter of 2.5 mm. After detonation, the warhead penetrates the target shell at a speed of 1500m/s with an effective killing radius of 3 m. The missile has a total combat weight of 21.4kg, a maximum missile speed of 2.6Ma, a maneuvering overload of 40G and a maximum range of 6km.

In addition, tungsten alloy is also an important material of kinetic energy armor-piercing projectile. The armor-piercing projectile with tungsten alloy as its core boosts the firepower of China's main battle tanks and greatly enhances its combat capability. For example, the Type 15 tank uses a new type of 105mm tank gun, which is full of firepower due to the use of all tungsten alloy bombs.

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