Steve at The Firearm Blog writes:
A Russian inventor emailed me photos of his patent-pending bullet design. These bullets are loaded in 12.7×108mm cases.
The inventor did not explain to me how this design is beneficial but according to a study done by the US Military in the 1950s (PDF Link), the center of gravity affects how a bullets will yaw when it encounters a solid object. Yawing (and tumbling) can be reduced by make a bullet nose heavy.
Do you think it would work? Does the physics make sense?
For civilian use i.e. hunting i expect it would produce nice holes, but would not transfer much energy, by Yawing, Deformation, or Fragmentation
That is, i expect high armor piercing capability, but only restricted applicability..
he bullet may be stabilized by a plastic sabot in the cartride, it may better be used in repeating rifles...
Would like to see the bullet`s drag and precision data.
For target shooting applications, the behavior of the projectile after it strikes the paper (steel plate, soda can, etc) is utterly irrelevant; it simply needs to reach the target in a precisely repeatable trajectory.
For martial applications, tumbling is a good thing, because rounds that tumble once they reach the target cause more tissue damage. This is absolutely central to the design of small bore high velocity rounds like the 5.56mm. 5.45mm and 5.7mm and .17hmr. They cannot cause sufficient wounds to stop a target without coming in very fast and tumbling. Look up the terminal ballistics of a 5.56mm round; the wound channel looks like the Challenger explosion.
So while he may be right about reducing yawing, that's not actually something to crow about.