Why is there a small hole in the AK-74 bullet

  • Mar 03, 2021
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Why is there a small hole in the AK-74 bullet
Why is there a small hole in the AK-74 bullet

On some ammunition, including for the Kalashnikov assault rifle, you can see mysterious notches or small-diameter holes that are located at the very edge of the bullet's "nose". Why do we need such ammunition and are they not just some bold artisanal modification of the field craftsmen? At the same time, the main question remains about the functional purpose of a curious structural element.

Expansive ammunition does not have a steel core. / Photo: popgun.ru.
Expansive ammunition does not have a steel core. / Photo: popgun.ru.

Mysterious ammunition is actually quite simple. It should be noted right away that such notches on the bullet nose are not at all some kind of "tuning". In this form, the ammunition leaves the factory. In order to better understand what exactly these bullets are, they should be cut in half. Looking inside such a cartridge and comparing it with a cartridge, the bullet of which has a "normal" ending, it will be easy to notice that the solid metal tip is missing in the first bullet. Instead, a soft lead tip and a bimetal shell.

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Here's a notch. / Photo: popgun.ru.

What does all this mean? And the fact that such cartridges are not combat, but hunting. Steel with a hard tip has the best penetration and ballistic properties. It flies further, falls more slowly, ricochets better. A bullet with a soft tip has less expressive ballistic properties, but ricochet is worse, less often it passes to flight and has a huge stopping effect. Usually, such ammunition is marked with the HP index and is called expansive.

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For hunting with rifled weapons. / Photo: yandex.uz.

The notch at the very edge of the nose of the bullet is needed not to visually distinguish the two cartridges, but to improve the expansive properties. This is a design violation of the integrity of the metal shell of the bullet, made in order to increase the expansive properties of the ammunition. Due to the notch, when colliding with any volume, the bullet is more flattened, which contributes to better transfer of kinetic energy.

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Flowers of death. / Photo: zbroya.info.

Of course, expansive ammunition is prohibited in military affairs by two conventions at once. They are not officially used by any army in the world. However, the convention does not apply to weapons of special services, police, and hunting arsenal. Moreover, in a sense, the use of expansive ammunition in the hunt is a more humane way of killing prey than the use of live ammunition.

Continuing the topic, read about
three pistolsthat pierce the body armor once or twice.
A source:
https://novate.ru/blogs/200720/55379/