Flechette

A flechette (/fleɪˈʃɛt/ fle-SHET) is a pointed, fin-stabilized steel projectile. The name comes from French fléchette, meaning "little arrow" or "dart", and sometimes retains the acute accent in English: fléchette. They have been used as ballistic weapons since World War I. Delivery systems and methods of launching flechettes vary, from a single shot, to thousands in a single explosive round. The use of flechettes as antipersonnel weapons has been controversial.^[1]

Air-dropped

During World War I, flechettes were dropped from aircraft to attack infantry and were able to pierce helmets.^[2][3]

Later the U.S. used

The weapons were designed to be dropped from an aircraft. They contained no explosive charge but as they fell they developed significant kinetic energy making them lethal and able to easily penetrate soft cover such as jungle canopy, several inches of sand or light armor.[5]^{[6][full citation needed]} Lazy Dog munitions were simple and cheap; they could be dropped in huge numbers in a pass.^{[6][full citation needed]} Though their effects were often no less indiscriminate than other projectiles,^{[citation needed]} they did not leave unexploded ordnance (UXO) that could be active years after a conflict ended. Lazy Dog projectiles were used primarily during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.^{[citation needed]}

Small-arms ammunition

The excellent ballistic performance and armor-piercing potential of flechettes have made the development and integration of this class of munition attractive to small-arms manufacturers. A number of attempts have been made to field flechette-firing small arms.^{[citation needed]}

Work at

A number of prototype flechette-firing weapons were developed as part of the long-running Special Purpose Individual Weapon (SPIW) project. The Steyr-Mannlicher ACR rifle was a prototype flechette-firing assault rifle built for the US Army's Advanced Combat Rifle program of 1989–90.^{[citation needed]}

A variation of the flechette addressing its difficulties is the SCMITR, developed as part of the Close Assault Weapon System, or CAWS, project. Selective-fire shotguns were used to fire flechettes designed to retain the exterior ballistics and penetration of standard flechettes, but increase wounding capacity through a wider wound path.^{[citation needed]}

Shotguns

During the Vietnam War the United States employed 12-

Smaller flechettes were used in special artillery shells called "beehive" rounds (so named for the very distinctive whistling buzz made by thousands of flechettes flying downrange at supersonic speeds) and intended for use against troops in the open – a ballistic shell packed with flechettes was fired and set off by a mechanical time fuse, scattering flechettes in an expanding cone.^{[citation needed]}

During the Vietnam War 105 mm howitzer batteries and tanks (90 mm guns) used flechette rounds to defend themselves against massed infantry attacks. The ubiquitous

The 70 mm Hydra 70 rocket currently in service with the US Armed forces can be fitted with an anti-personnel (APERS) warhead containing 1,179 flechettes.^[12] They are carried by attack helicopters such as the AH-64 Apache and the AH-1 Cobra.^{[citation needed]}

Russo-Ukrainian war

Flechettes have been used during the

• Kinetic energy penetrator

References

Bibliography

• Eades, J. B.; Powers, C. (1964). Static and Dynamic Stability Studies on Several Lazy Dog Configurations. Naval Ordnance Laboratory. DTIC AD0352807. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
• Karmes, David (2014), The Patricia Lynn Project: Vietnam War, the Early Years of Air Intelligence, iUniverse,
  ISBN 978-1-4917-5227-2
• Pursglove, S. David (February 1962). "Bizarre Weapons for the Little Wars".
  ISSN 0032-4558
  . Retrieved 17 May 2018.

External links

Look up flechette in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• "How flechettes work"—The Guardian newspaper
• Missiles and Flechettes Archived 2013-07-30 at the Wayback Machine—Pictures of air dropped flechettes, from World War I through the 1970s at big-ordnance.com