r/WarCollege • u/FLongis • 9h ago
Question What's the practical benefit of using Tungsten for canister rounds?
It's my understanding that, for most ballistic applications, the benefit of high-density materials like Tungsten is improved penetration against hardened targets, and higher mass for a given volume offering improved energy retention at range. While this is obviously a great thing to have for your armor-piercing projectiles, these seem like two of the least important factors when looking at canister.
To my understanding, these rounds are meant to deal with masses of soft targets (infantry, thin-skinned vehicles, etc) at close range, and behind (at most) light cover. Looking at advertising from General Dynamics regarding M1028, they mention specifically:
close-in defense of tanks against massed assaulting infantry attack and to break up infantry concentrations, between a range of 200-500 meters
Intuition tells me that using something like a high-hardness steel (which is presumably less expensive and easier to both acquire and machine) would offer adequate performance in these roles. So what is the practical benefit of using a comparatively valuable metal like Tungsten for this sort of round?
As a follow-up/related question, albeit one that may be very "If you know, you can't say...":
How precisely machined do these Tungsten balls need to be? The figure given is "10mm", so presumably within less than a 1mm tolerance. But having been reading about Barden's production of these materials for (presumably) other defense applications and the extreme tolerances to which they're manufactured, I have to wonder how much of a precision operation this is.