Beehive anti-personnel round

Overview

It was a anti-personnel round packed with metal flechettes fired from an artillery peace It was official designation, antipersonnel-tracer (APERS-T). The name comes from the buzzing noise it made as it flew through the air.

The concept

The artillery round variant of a shotgun cartridge full of Fleshettes.

The weapon

The first example was the 105mm howitzer M546 anti-personnel tracer (APERS-T), first fired in combat in 1966. The M546 was direct fired from a near horizontally leveled 105 mm howitzer and ejected 8000 flechettes during flight by a mechanical time fuze.

Beehive rounds were also created for recoilless anti-tank weapons: the 90 mm and 106 mm along with the Ontoses APERS-T rounds were available for 90mm gun on M48 tanks and the 152mm gun on the M551 Sheridan armored reconnaissance/airborne assault vehicle. After the Vietnam War the 105mm tank gun was also provided APER-T ammunition. 40mm APERS-T rounds were also available for the M79, M203, and M320 grenade launchers.

Low-angle air burst techniques such as 'Killer Junior' made it obsoleat in the USA after the Vietnam War.

The Soviets had it to

It was reported that the USSR had developed similar rounds for 122 mm and 152 mm artillery for use in indirect fire in response to the American's usage in Vietnam.

Legal controversy

Randomly firing shells full of then in to a urban zone and\or a civilian crowd can be considered a indiscriminate attack. Those made of plastic (other than inevitably the metal penetrating tip) don't show up easy on X-rays, thus making removal very difficult and in some cases impossible. Both of these things are illegal under international law! X-rays can see dense matter like narcotics, stone, cement, explosives, metal and bone.

Also see

1. Guns
2. Fleshettes
3. 'Kill Junior'
4. Vietnam War
5. Artillery
6. War Technology
7. 'Killer Junior'
8. Tanks and APCs
9. The rules of war

Sources

1. http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-armour/allied/ontos.htm
2. http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m546.htm
3. http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/090/90-12/CMH_Pub_90-12.pdf
4. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beehive
5. https://www.ovguide.com/beehive-anti-personnel-round-9202a8c04000641f8000000000a6d046
6. http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Beehive_anti-personnel_round
7. http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beehive_anti-personnel_round
8. https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0LEV01bGdhXR3MACH1XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=Beehive+Anti-personnel+Round&fr=yset_chr_cnewtab
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Beehive_anti-personnel_round
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive_anti-personnel_round
11. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=bee+hive+kit&tag=mh0a9-21&index=aps&hvadid=3171149936&hvqmt=b&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_6scf9lv4p0_b
12. http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Beehive_anti-personnel_round
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray
14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventional_Weapons