• Gnomedalf Ironsight
• Ironsight Best Gun
• Ironsight Precision Barrel Vs Modified Rifling

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArmorPiercingAttack

1. Jun 18, 2018  Armor Piercing VS Soft Point Bullets. What they do they do and how do they work? In this Episode of Ironsight I'm going to explain to you the difference between the Soft Point Bullets and the.
2. The 'armor' in 'AP' is hard plate, not soft body armor. Of course, advances in technology have allowed us to create materials resistant to typical AP combat rounds, as well, but it is still not soft armor.

Go To

The Dragunov sniper rifle is a semi-automatic sniper/designated marksman rifle chambered in. The firing pin is a 'free-floating' type and, as a result, some soft-primered. The rifle features mechanically adjustable backup iron sights with a sliding. In order to fire effective Armor-piercing incendiary (API) ammunition,.

So you've been managing well with your current skills, dispatching enemies with your familiar attacks and weapons. Now you've encountered a Heavily Armored Mook. Using your basic attacks and abilities you ... fail to hurt the Mook at all. Not good.

So what do you need? You need Armor Piercing! Basically, it's an attack, weapon, or munition that rips through the armor that your enemies wear (or their special shield, or whatever's protecting them), often as if they had no armor to begin with. Sometimes this goes to the point of Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, with the anti-armor weapon useless against foes with no armor; another option is that the weapon or attack will destroy the armor, after which your normal attacks will work. Destroying some kind of armored shell is a pretty common first step in a multi-stage Boss Battle. This can also be turned against the player as well; for example, if normally their life bar only decreases once their armor bar is depleted, late-game enemies might get attacks that damage both bars at once, or even ignore the armor bar entirely.

Obviously, this isn't quite how things work in real life.

It is true that some weapons tend to be more effective than others against a given type of material. Padded clothing for example, can protect against cuts and blows, but is easily pierced by a sharp object. Solid armour-piercing shot is certainly better at punching through armoured warships and tanks than a simple high-explosive shell. However, fiction tends to treat armour-piercing properties as being able to defeat any protective measure with ease, while weapons that cannot pierce armour are considerably less effective, to the point of doing little more than Scratch Damage at best.

Firstly, it is possible for a weapon to cause considerable damage without managing to penetrate protection. A Bulletproof Vest may be able to stop a bullet, but the force of the bullet has to go somewhere, often cracking ribs. This is elementary physics at work: all the kinetic energy that went into propelling the bullet has to end up somewhere, after all. These physics were exploited by the warhammer in medieval times, particularly when plate armor was at its heyday: while swords and arrows couldn't penetrate through plate armor, warhammers could do the next best thing and injure the wearer straight through it. This also applies to tanks as well: if struck hard enough, armour plating can deform, which leads to portions of the inner facing breaking off and turning into dangerous shrapnel (called 'spall').

Secondly, there is no such thing as a weapon capable of 'ignoring' armour. Anything designed to breach armour, whether it is a solid projectile or a shaped charge warhead, will encounter some level of resistance. Moreover, the actual effectiveness of a weapon against armour is dependent on factors other than its design and construction. A solid armour-piercing shot from a tank cannon for instance, is strongly affected by environmental conditions (i.e., air resistance and gravitational pull) that will reduce its power over longer distances.

See also Depleted Phlebotinum Shells and Clothing Damage (if the armor is destroyed). Compare Fixed Damage Attack, which always does the same amount of damage to everything. Tends to work well against enemies that employ Damage Reduction. Might cross over with Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors if the armor is made from one element and the skill or weapon uses the opposed element. Not related to Armor-Piercing Slap or Barrier-Busting Blow. May be used in combination with Armor Is Useless and/or One-Hit Polykill. Compare Anti-Armor, when a technique does more damage instead of bypassing defenses, and Unblockable Attack for attacks that blow through Defend Command.

Examples:

• In Blood+, Saya's katana cannot cut through James Ironside's carapace. The Schiff use polearms that do the job nicely though.
• Dragon Ball Z: Piccolo's Special Beam Cannon can pierce through foes whose raw strength would ordinarily block Ki Attacks, provided he's given enough time to charge it.
• The Rising of the Shield Hero: Since his Legendary Shield forces him to be purelydefenseoriented, this means any attacks designed to either ignore or work off the target's defense stat is one of Naofumi's weaknesses. Thankfully, learning the Hengen Musou allows him to overcome this.
• Hunter × Hunter: Prince Halkenburg, upon finding out he's been caught in a succession battle with his brothers and sisters to become king with no way out but to survive, awakens an ability in the form of an arrow, created by a weaponized life force known as Nen, that other Nen defenses are completely powerless to stop. However, this attack does not so much 'pierce' as much as Halkenburg can suppress any Nen-based defenses as soon as he's chosen a target, as could be seen when Shikaku's shields were able to manifest only in an incomplete, nonfunctional state before he was shot.
• Mazinger Z: In episode 54 Mechanical Monster Jeiser J1's hide was too tough to be pierced by Mazinger-Z's weapons. In order to solve the problem, the Institute'sscientists treated the Mazinger's fists with Photon Atomic energy radiation to harden them. Ïn the next fight Mazinger's Rocket Punch easily tore through the Jeiser's armor.
• One Piece: Most of Trafalgar Law's abilities divide people into pieces without harming them, but this can be countered by armoring your body using Haki. However, Law's Gamma Knife is a short energy sword that can selectively ignore and pass though certain tissues, and greviously wound others; in practice, this means that he can stab your internal organs while completely ignoring your Haki-hardened skin.

• Judge Dredd's lawgiver has this as an option along with several others.

• In Cosmic Warriors Jadeite creates a barrier to block an incoming weapon thrown by Experiment-D-U-D (Diarmuid Ua Duibhne), but his red lance flies right through it.
• In Four Deadly Secrets Ruby’s scythe style includes several strikes designed to pierce an opponent’s armour and their protective aura.
• Some of the guns in The Next Frontier are designed with the express purpose of averting this trope. It turns out the inability to penetrate anything vital in a target wearing armor is a small price to pay for a round that won't penetrate anything vital in the spacecraft.
• In My Huntsman Academia, Izuku eventually upgrades the buckshot of his shotgun gauntlet-boot set, the Emerald Gust, into armor-piercing slugs because he realized that having specialized long-range ammo is pointless when he's a Close-Range Combatant. He doesn't actually use them until his final exam in Live Exercises, during which they prove to be powerful enough to vaporize the armored skull of an Alpha Beowulf in one hit.

• In Kingsman: The Secret Service, when the mooks are making no headway against Eggsy's Immune to Bullets umbrella, one of them brings out a Sniper Rifle, which proceeds to shoot right through it.

• The Stormlight Archive: Shardblades are magically Invested and can effortlessly cut through anything other than another Shardblade or Shardplate Powered Armor, so regular armor is useless against it.
• The Imperial Radch trilogy: The pistols created by the Sufficiently Advanced Alien Presger fire shots that penetrate absolutely any substance to a depth of precisely 1.11 meters. This is revealed to be a side effect of whatever Clarke-level technology lets them destroy a Radchaai warship with a single shot.

• Most modern-day RPGs have some kind of armor-piercing bullets.
• Several examples from BattleTech:
  • Armor-piercing shells for standard and light autocannons may inflict critical hits — though no internal structure damage as such — even through armor. (This is in addition to the usual chance of a lucky roll on the hit location table.) Many players don't consider that effect worth putting up with their reduced accuracy and halved number of shots per ton, though.
  • Tandem-charge missiles function similar to the above, but don't suffer the same to-hit penalty and increase the chance of causing a critical hit by often scoring multiple hits with a single salvo and checking for armor penetration on each. Their main downside is that they're only available in the short-range missile version.
  • Infantry anti-'Mech attacks likewise usually have a chance to inflict critical hits through armor; that is in fact the main point of 'leg attacks', which may well do less damage than a regular volley from that infantry unit normally would but stand a decent chance of taking out actuators, potentially crippling the targeted 'Mech's mobility.
• In Big Eyes, Small Mouth, weapons can have 'penetrating' or 'piercing' properties to bypass some of the damage reduction from armor or force fields. Conversely, the 'non-penetrating' defect increases the effective damage reduction in exchange for decreasing the point cost of the weapon.
• Champions
  • The Armor Piercing power advantage reduced defending armor by half versus the attack.
  • The Penetrating power advantage: even if the attack is completely stopped by enemy defenses, a little (averages to 1/6) will always get through.
  • Taken to the logical conclusion with the No Normal Defense and Attack Vs. Limited Defense advantages, which both allow an attack to simply ignore whatever defense would normally apply against it. These are still limited in two ways for balance purposes, though: first, some defense that still works against them must be specified (NND attacks are simply all or nothing while AVLD ones treat that special defense as their normal one), and second, they're normally limited to nonlethal attacks because they by default cannot inflict BODY damage even if they normally would. (A further advantage can remove the latter restriction, but generally requires GM permission to take at all and will drive up the power's cost once more even then.)
• Dungeons & Dragons
  • In 3rd Edition and '3.5,' a number of attacks can ignore certain categories of defenses, and become a very major part of the strategy in advanced play. Many spells ignore armor and require their targets to make a saving throw to avoid them, while 'touch' spells just require the caster to get their hands on a target, negating any equipment bonus to their Armor Class. A handful of spells also ignore spell resistance and saves or deal damage of a type that is virtually impossible to resist - spells with all four of these traits are highly valued. A rogue or ninja's backstab attacks, conversely, ignore dodging and a number of related defenses which are often the best options against magic damage. Lances do not actually negate any defenses outright, but due to the way accuracy and damage reduction function in the game possess characteristics that make them extremely effective against almost all forms of defense.
  • Certain monk builds based on grappling also negate armor.
  • In 3.0, a combination of very high critical hit rates and the buff Bless Weapon were able to negate armor on 60% or more of all attacks. Nerfed in 3.5, where critical buffs cannot stack and are exclusive with any buff that would actually make them worthwhile anyway.
  • In the 4th Edition, attacks that use a weapon but target Reflex are effectively armor-piercing attacks. Armor-Piercing Strike and Piercing Strike are attack powers that are Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Earthdawn had armor-defeating hits: basically, if you rolled well enough on your attack role, you could ignore the effect of your target's armor. In addition, some weapons and spells (razor orb being the most notable) were designed to cut through armor so a lower roll could still be an armor defeating hit.
• In Eclipse Phase armor has separate protection values against kinetic and energy weapons. And weapons have armor penetration values that reduce the protection armor gives against them. As a general rule kinetic weapons have better penetration than energy, excepting microwave agonizers and plasma rifles, while railguns have better AP than chemical firearms. And any projectile weapon can load Armor-Piercing ammo that raises AP at the cost of a little damage, conversely hollow-points increase damage and reduce AP.
• GURPS has various 'armor divisors' from 2 through infinity. For example: in the Ultra-Tech book even handgun bullets can be loaded with the High Explosive Multi-Purpose (HEMP) warhead which reduces the effectiveness of armor to one fifth normal by using a sort of shaped charge.
• Hc Svnt Dracones armor has HP that normally has to be depleted before the wearer is hurt, Armor piercing ammo does some damage directly to the wearer. Weapons that deal Cut damage will completely bypass armor with less than 10 HP, but won't damage armor with 35 HP or more at all unless equipped with a Vibrox enhancement.
• The Hero Clix ability Precision Strike allows any character who wields it to still do 1 damage even if it would normally be reduced to 0. They still have to have at least a damage value of 1, though. Then there are more traditional armor - piercing attacks like Exploit Weakness for melee attacks and Penetrating / Psychic Blast for ranged. And then there is the Pulse Wave - if you're in the Area of Effect, nothing will help you because Pulse Wave shuts down EVERYTHING, including but not limited to damage reduction, evasion, and damage ignoring - effects. Once it draws a line of fire to a character, no ability (except something that explicitly says 'cannot be ignored') will be active before the attack resolves.
• Many varieties of exotic ammo in Infinity.
• In Magic: The Gathering, spells ending in -dict (such as Diabolic Edict), and the annihilator ability, require your opponent sacrifice a card, getting around protection, absorb, indestructibility, damage prevention, high toughness, regeneration, and everything else. Unfortunately, your opponent still gets to choose which card he sacrifices.
• A clip of ammunition with this in Mekton Zeta costs four times as much as a normal round and halves the target's armour value. (For a similar price, you can skip attacking the target's mech at all and shoot electric bullets, which bypass armour and directly affect the enemy pilot.)
• Firearms in Pathfinder target touch AC at close range, effectively bypassing armors and shields just like spells do. Early firearms have poor range increments and only target touch AC on attacks made within their first range increment, advanced firearms target touch AC within their first five range increments and rifles reach as far as crossbows, rendering armor useless in a modern setting that gives everyone access to firearms.
• Shadowrun had APDS (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot) bullets for firearms.
• Armour Piercing attacks in WARMACHINE are staggeringly powerful attacks that halve enemy armour against that hit.
• In Warhammer, the Strength value of an attack inflicts a modifier on the target's armor save value, so that nice suit of full plate armor is unlikely to help much if the wearer is bit by a dragon or hit by a cannonball. Some weapons like crossbows and firearms have the 'Armor-Piercing Attack' ability that reduces the target's armor save further.
• In Warhammer 40,000, weapons have an AP or Armor Piercing statistic that specifies how good they are at punching through armor, and any armor save equal to that value will be nullified if hit by that weapon, but any armor harder will be unaffected - so a Heavy Bolter round will punch right through Imperial carapace armor, but power armor wearers will get to make their full 3+ save against it. This makes life hard for the Imperial Guard, due to both the ubiquity of AP 5 weapons that can punch through their 5+ flak armor save, and because the humble lasgun has no AP value at all.
  • Tau rail weapons are terrifyingly good at this. One piece of fluff describes a tank that had been taken out by one, a hole in one side matching the hole in the other. The inside was still red and sticky due to the crew having been liquified by the hypervelocity round's passage. Indeed, in the game they have the highest Armor Piercing stat possible, which incidentally causes a damage bonus against vehicles if the player rolls a 'penetrating hit'.
  • In the Warhammer 40000 roleplaying games, weapons have a penetration value, which determines how many points of armor they ignore on a successful hit. The rules are much more favorable to the defender than the tabletop war-gaming rules, since no weapons ignore armor altogether, although some weapons like the MP Lascannon and the Exitus rifle have such high penetration scores that only the strongest armors will be of any use against them.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh!, when a monster in Defense Position is attacked by a monster whose ATK is higher than its DEF, the Defense Position monster is destroyed, but the controller of the destroyed monster takes no Battle Damage. However, several Effect Monsters, such as this one, are designed to not only destroy Defense Position monsters, but also inflict the difference between their ATK and the DEF of the defending monster as Battle Damage to the controller of the defending monster. In 2007, the Duelist Pack: Zane Truesdale print of Cyberdark Horn officially dubbed this as 'piercing damage', but it was not until 2011 that the term 'piercing battle damage' in card text was universally and consistently applied to effects that deal this type of damage.
• The One Ring: The Dunlendings' unique 'Heart-Seeker' spears have a one-in-twelve chance of dealing an automatic Wound against a human enemy. Creatures normally have a chance to resist a Wound that's dependent on how well-armored they are, and most enemies die instantly when Wounded.

• In Aliens vs. Predator 2, Praetorian Xenomorphs are immune to most standard gunfire, and only vulnerable to a Marine's heavy weapons or special armor-piercing bullets from the lighter ones. Predators have the much manlier option of bringing them down with their spears.
• Ancient Domains of Mystery: There is a weapon called phase dagger that completely ignores the armour of the target. The downside is that on each hit, the game throws at you a message about you easily cutting through the armour, which requires you to press [more] much more often. And the dagger itself doesn't do much damage anyway, making it useful only against Heavily Armored Mooks.
• Arcanum has two guns, both BFGs, that do a sort of this. Blade Launcher ignores Armor Class, allowing you to hit more often (and is the second most powerful gun), while Riffled Cannon ignores Damage Resistance, allowing you to do full damage each time you hit. They both, however, consume 6 bullets per shot.
• While traditionally in Armored Core series, Attack Power is the only attribute to watch out for weapons (meaning, how much you need to pump it to any given target to make them go kablooey), 4/for Answer introduced the Force Field-like Primal Armor and consequently, 'PA Penetration'. Energy weapons, sniper rifles and railguns do this job really well, and since about a good 4/5ths of the game's armor isn't exactly energy-weapon proof, this can only go wrong, were it not for the balancer mechanics.
• Armory & Machine has the Hunter Class skills, all of which deal penetrating damage that bypasses enemy shields altogether. While less powerful than direct-damage Soldier Class Skills, this trait makes Hunter Skills far more useful.
• Melee weapons in Ballpoint Universe Infinite pierce through shields, which most ranged weapons (but not all) cannot get through.
• In Batman: Arkham City, mooks start wearing protective armor and donning SWAT riot shields to combat Batman. To counter, Batman has two attacks that get through this - the Beat Down attack, which has Batman rapid fire punches before delivering a knock out blow, and an attack that has Bats climb their shield, then pounce on them.
• Battlefield 2 had an unlockable anti-materiel sniper rifle for the sniper class, the M95. It's main claim to infamy among the player base was its ability to snipe the pilots of helicopters through their armored canopy glass, something no other gun would do.
• Pistol and machine guns in the BioShock series both have variant armor piercing rounds, as well as standard slugs and anti-personnel rounds. Everything was more vulnerable to one and less vulnerable to the other, with the armor piercing being useful against machinery and Big Daddies, while anti-personnel pistol rounds would one-shot most splicers.
• At the end of the first dungeon of Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django you are rewarded with the three weakest weapons in the game (one of each type), which may nullify enemy defense as a special property. Even with this they're useless, but if you hang onto them and forge them with the strongest weapon available, you can transfer that ability...
• Borderlands: one of Mordecai's skills enables him to bypass enemy shields (100% of the time if this skill is maxed out, too). Against the Guardians, their health bars being tiny, it is absolutely devastating. In the sequel, one of his quest rewards is a sniper rifle that has this very effect.
  • A bugged legendary weapon, the Vladof Vengance, has this effect. In theory, it should allow the machine pistol to occasionally fire rounds that pass through armor to damage health. In practice, this effect can also get passed on to any of the other weapons in your inventory at the time. Shield bypass ability on something with enough damage or enough dakka (or both!) can veer straight into Game-Breaker territory.
• Breath of Fire II had the spell Chop Chop which did a flat damage of 25 to any enemy. This made it a one-hit kill against enemies that had high enough defense to reduce all attack to 1 or 2 damage since even the toughest of these only had 20 health. Too bad it was easily lost forever if you didn't go after it as the first thing you did when arriving at the eastern continent.
• Command & Conquer: Generals and Zero:Hour subvert it by giving the GLA upgrades for armor-piercing bullets and rockets, but those merely increase damage dealt by units using them by 25%.
• Company of Heroes gives AP bullets and shells as special abilities for American and British machine guns and AT guns. The former ability turns the dedicated anti-infantry HMG into a feared light-vehicle counter, while the latter boosts the penetration of the AT guns. As the British 17pdr is already one of the best antiarmor weapons in the game, the AP-Discarding Sabot ability makes it one of the few weapons that can counter King Tigers.
• One of the Samurai's abilities in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice allows half of his basic attack's damage to ignore the enemy's defense. There's also a gun skill called Armor Piercing, but it subverts it by not ignoring the opponent's defense in any way.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a realistic take on this: AP mods for your weapons are most useful if the enemy has heavy armour, with the upgraded pistol ignoring armor entirely, but don't do much better than normal rounds against lightly-armoured enemies due to overpenetration.
• In Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Cranky's pogo cane is able to harm Snowmads with helmets, which would otherwise protect them or even hurt Kongs who jump on them.
• In Dragon Quest IX, the Metal Slime family is almost completely immune to physical attacks and totally immune to magical attacks. All critical attacks bypass physical defense, rendering them the only practical way to take down the stronger Metal Slime variants.
• Dwarf Fortress doesn't have a dedicated armour-piercing weapon class as such, but bludgeoning weapons suffer only a minimal penalty versus plate or chain mail, whereas leather armour is more effective at reducing blunt-force trauma but offers limited protection against stabbing or cutting weapons.
• EarthBound Beginnings has the PK Freeze γPSI power, learned only by the Badass AdorableAna. When used it will always reduce an enemy's HP to critical status (a near One-Hit Kill), regardless of defense.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Bog standard spells ignore armor rating when they strike a target. In order to protect from them, armor needs to be enchanted to reduce, absorb, or reflect magical damage.
  • Throughout the series, this is a common trait of werewolves. Their claw attacks often outright ignore armor. In Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion, blocking the attack of a werewolf with your shield can cause the shield to become instantly completely broken, even if it was in a fully-repaired state.
• Elona: Different types of weapons ignore different (small) percentages of armour when calculating damage. For instance, a club would ignore 0% of armour when attacking, while a long sword would ignore 10% of armour. Lightsabers ignore 100% of armour, and there's equipment which can be worn which will occasionally make any blow you land ignore 100% of armour, regardless of what weapon you're using.
• In Evolve, the trapper character Crow can charge his shots to damage the monster's health through its armor, while Kala's armor reducer temporarily makes every attack into this.
• Fallout
  • Several weapons in Fallout and Fallout 2 have the hiddenability to ignore 80% of a target's Damage Threshold, which is rather helpful when DT can (and often does) reduce an attack's damage to nothing. Both games were also meant to have armor-piercing ammunition, but neither one works: in 1 a bug causes all ammo modifier to be ignored, making every permutation of the same cartridge functionally identical. The modifiers work in 2, but they're so poorly balanced that for most guns armor-piercing rounds are the worst in any situations^Why? . The AP Needler ammo and the AP rocket (!) ammo are the only exceptions. The Fallout 2 Restoration Project includes an option to fix AP ammo modifiers, making them work as intended.
  • In Fallout 3 the Deathclaw Gauntlet ignores armor entirely, as do the Deathclaws' own attacks. The Tri-Beam Laser Rifle in Broken Steel also has this effect when wielded by Super Mutant Overlords, one of a quartet of Demonic Spiders introduced in this DLC. No such luck for the player. The Tribals and Swampfolk in Point Lookout have a similar hax effect with their weapons, the double barreled shotguns being the most deadly, since the armor-piercing damage is applied to each individual pellet, possibly resulting in a One-Hit Kill if all of them connect with the player. Likewise for the Feral Ghoul Reavers' Deadly Lunge, and their gore grenades, which also instantly cripple body parts on a direct hit.
  • Fallout: New Vegas:
    • Due to the way armour is implemented, players may need to use special weapons, ammunition and methods of attack to penetrate an enemy's armour and cause meaningful damage. AP rounds for guns, overcharged energy cells for energy weapons, melee and unarmed weapons with the 'Ignore DT/DR' feature are the most obvious, but using a weapon that deals a large amount of damage per shot/swing (such as the Anti-Material Rifle or the Super Sledge) will also do the job. And of course, if you're the sneaky type, you can also go for a sneak attack critical, which has its damage added to the original attack and thus isn't nearly as affected by DT.
    • The Piercing Palm perk causes all melee and unarmed attacks to ignore 15 points of DT, which effectively means anything not wearing heavy armor might as well not be wearing armor at all.
    • On the enemy side, there's also Giant Rats/Rodents of Unusual Size. If normal-sized rats can chew through so many things, imagine what giant rats will do to humans.
    • The Proton Axe from Old World Blues does 20 bonus damage points against robots and Power Armor, effectively cancelling most of the armor's DT, which includes the player when Lobotomites are wielding the weapon.
    • Lonesome Road's resident Demonic Spiders, the Tunnelers, also seem to bypass the player's damage threshold. At high levels, they deal as much damage as the main game's Deathclaws.
  • Fallout 4 does away with specialised ammo and weapons entirely, but armor penetration can still be gained in various ways. All weapon types (handguns, rifles, heavy weapons, etc.) have perks associated with them that increase their damage and, at higher perk levels, tend to apply a permanent debuff (usually -30%) to enemies' damage reduction when hit with that specific weapon. One can also find weapons with the legendary Penetrating affix, which ignores 30% of the targets DR and stacks with similar buffs like the one conferred by perks. Last but not least, the effectiveness of armor decreases the more powerful the incoming attack is, which means a sufficiently strong hit can make a mockery of whatever protection you might have all on its own.
• Final Fantasy
  • Final Fantasy X does this with armored enemies, who require a specific weapon type to get past it. Fortunately, they begin to show up just as you get the biggest badass around, whose weapons all come with the armor-piercing ability, into your party. The 'Armor Break' skill will remove the 'armored' enhancement from its target, allowing you to damage it normally with non-piercing weapons.
  • In all the Final Fantasy games, Flare and Ultima tend to be armor-piercing attacks, as well as Bahamut's Signature Move Mega Flare.
  • In the DS version of Final Fantasy IV, an Augment you can receive after defeating Bahamut is this for the magic-reflecting spell Reflect.
  • Final Fantasy XII had guns and measures, both of which only calculated the weapon's strength for damage. So while they were good against enemies that had high defenses, it didn't matter how strong a character was when using them. However, it doesn't help that some of the tougher enemies only take 1/16 of the damage from the two weapons.
  • Final Fantasy VI tends to allow its strongest attacks (Bum Rush, Drill/Chainsaw, Ultima) to ignore defence, and they usually always hit too. Unfortunately, this effectively neuters the design philosophy behind some enemies, usually of the 'evasive and tough, but with extremely low health' variety. The most extreme example would be the Cactrot, which follows that model exactly: it has a perfect defence rating (all physicals do 1 damage) and is extremely hard to hit with physicals and magic alike. Catch? It has 3 HP, so anything that always hits and ignores defence, no matter how weak, will kill it.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, Cloud'sSuper Mode (called Ex-Burst) grants him the 'Guard Crush' ability, making all his attacks unblockable. Given that he hits like a semi-truck, it's a good idea to stay the hell out of his reach while he's in this state.
• In the Fire Emblem series, the recurring skill^note Luna either halves or negates the target's Defense or Resistance (whichever is applicable to the attack). In Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, the Black Knight has an exclusive, beefed up variant of this skill called Eclipse which negates defense and multiplies the attack's might by a factor of five. The minimum amount of damage he can deal with it is 191, in a game where the Final Boss has 120 HP. Anyone who takes this is going bye-bye.
• The First Encounter Assault Recon games have several weapons which disregard or degrade the functionality of armor, both for enemies and the player. To be more specific: all weapons, especially in the first game, deal part of the damage directly to the health. However, in most weapons the damage that isn't absorbed by the armor is a very small fraction of the total. There's a weapon in each game (the Penetrator in the first game, the Hammerhead in the second) that ignores armor almost completely, making them true examples of this trope.
• In FTL: Faster Than Light, missile weapons ignore the opposing ship's shields and damage the hull directly.
• Due to the combat mechanic of Galactic Civilizations II, armor is only really effective against mass drivers. Lasers and missiles are affected by armor, but only by the square root of the armor rating (e.g. an armor rating of 9 will only be effective as 3 against non-mass drivers). The same goes for shields (counters to lasers) and ECM/point-defense (counters to missiles).
• In Gems of War, some units have special attacks which ignore enemy armour (dealing 'true damage', in game terminology). The armour will still be there to protect against other normal attacks, but that doesn't matter if health reaches zero — that causes death, even if the unit still has a ton of armour on it.
• In the console versions of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and its sequel, anti-materiel rifles such as the Barrett M95 can penetrate concrete barriers. Future Soldier likewise gives most weapons the option of swapping out the regular ammunition for armor-piercing rounds that deal slightly better damage and can penetrate both the ballistic vests worn by Riflemen players and thicker surfaces enemies may be hiding behind.
• Some weapons in GHOST Squad have a penetration property that varies from weapon to weapon. Some of these piercing weapons can only shoot through thin objects, but two weapons are capable of shooting enemies through virtually anything, from crates to solid walls to tree trunks.
• Gotcha Force features two different ones - drills on the Drill Robot, and the energy lances of the Atlas Tank, the Proto Atlas, and the Atlas Robot (which can switch between the previous two forms). They can go through obstacles, other enemies, and even the rare barriers that some borgs can generate. As one of the borgs that can make barriers is the Final Boss, they're the go-to choice for the final assault.
• Abilities in Guild of Dungeoneering work on a 'X skill does Y damage, and may or may not block Z damage of A type' system. Certain skills, connoted by a 'No Shield' symbol, cannot be blocked. As the tip screens put it 'They go straight through your blocks!'
• In Guild Wars, a few skills have an 'armor penetrating ability' reducing a target's armor by a percent against the one attack. Due to how armor works (Extra armor is multiplicative in how much damage it reduces), this has a varying effect depending on the amount of armor. Guild Wars weapon skills that add damage also add a fixed amount of damage, that is unaffected by armor, making them useful against highly armored targets.
• All hostile attacks in Half-Life 2 are armor-piercing to some extent since Gordon's Powered Armor is incapable of fully stopping hits; it merely reduces their effectiveness. Running around with your suit's power depleted means every hit will deal its full damage to your health instead. It's a justified example because Gordon's suit is meant for dangerous (civilian) engineering work and was never designed to protect against bullets, explosives or focused dark energy blasts.
• Iji features this due to the fact that everything is made of Nanotechnology. To wit, small arms fire such as the machine gun or pulse rounds will chip away at your armour (which is really more of a forcefield) until it is depleted at which point a Hit Point is sacrificed to replenish it. However anything which hits you (as in, a rocket, BFG round or a punch) will deal actual damage to your body directly (and send you flying across the room to boot).
• In Impossible Creatures, creatures that attack with quills or horns will bypass a portion of the enemy's defense.
• Jagged Alliance 2 has armour-piercing ammunition for most weapons; in fact for some weapon classes it's actually the default type. Its effectiveness varies somewhat, as it only gives an attack bonus versus armour and -realistically- a penalty versus targets who aren't wearing any. Since almost every single enemy Mook has some kind of body armour, even a Vietnam-era flak jacket and a steel helmet, it's hollowpoint ammunition and its damage bonus versus unarmoured targets that ends up being highly situational instead.
• Turned against the player in Killing Floor - the Siren's scream ignores armor entirely, while attacks from the Fleshpound and Patriarch typically damage both health and armor.
• In King Arthur The Roleplaying Wargame, certain units can get the armour piercing trait, which reduces enemy armour by 50%. Oddly enough no archer units can get it, but then again King Arthur's archer units are generally considered Game Breakers already and probably don't need any more help.
• Kingdom Hearts II: Some enemies, such as Large Bodies and Berserkers, automatically deflect attacks from the front. Reaction Commands, Magic, Limits, Explosion, and Guard Break will pierce their defenses and deal damage.
• Damage in League of Legends is, as a rule, separated into two types; Physical Damage and Magic Damage, dictated and mitigated by Attack Damage and Armor for Physical, and Ability Power and Magic Resist for Magical. This is, of course, balanced out by stats like Armor Penetration and Magic Penetration, which serve to provide a way for squishy Marksmen and Mages to deal with opponents that stack defensive stats.
  • A stat, known as 'Lethality,' was introduced as of February 2017. While normal Armor Penetration works on flat numbers, allowing X amount of damage to pierce armor - where X is the amount of Armor Penetration a champion has - Lethality is a flat percentage of damage penetration that increases based on the level of the champion dealing the damage. (Up until recently, the percentage was based on the level of the champion receiving the damage.)
  • In addition, some characters have the ability to deal 'True Damage,' which ignores all mitigation stats and items to deal, well, true damage. Notable examples are Garen's 'Demacian Justice,' which deals True Damage to the champion on the enemy team with the most recent kill, and Cho'Gath's 'Feast,' which deals a MINIMUM of 1,000 true damage to neutral monsters and minions, and a bit less to enemy champions.
• In The Legend of Dragoon, the group knows they stand no chance against the Divine Dragon on normal terms, so they go on a quest to find the Dragon-Block Staff (made specifically for fighting dragons), thus allowing them to fight a significantly de-powered Divine Dragon with a chance of victory.
• Mass Effect
  • Variant: acid attacks in Mass Effect bypass your shields. The effects of this range from 'mildly inconvenient' if you have armour with plenty of damage reduction and Immunity up, to 'all right squad, we're taking a break to weep' when a thresher maw begins to spit holes in the Mako or shield-focused Tali gets mugged by a swarm of rachni workers.
  • Mass Effect 2 has three different kinds of non-health defenses. Powers and weapons receive damage multipliers against specific defenses. Powers will not perform their full effect against armoured targets (Attempting to knock down a target with a concussive shot while they are protected will just stagger them), but may still damage their protective barrier (and may even be unable to damage targets who are unprotected - Overload, for example, is a counter to shields and synthetic enemies, and does no health damage to organic enemies, only being able to damage their shields)
  • Mass Effect 3 buffs armor piercing attacks, making them work against improper defenses at 1/3rd effectiveness, or their listed damage. Overload is treated in a particularly nice, given that it stuns humanoid targets, and can be upgraded to knock unprotected targets off their feet entirely for an even longer stun time. Although, this fits in with the games overall greater focus on powers.
  • Certain guns and mods also give your bullets penetration, which reduces the damage reduction armored enemies possess, and lets it go through cover, which includes the other-wise invincible riot shields. A Javelin sniper rifle with maximised penetration mod, maximised high-velocity barrel, and Garrus's specialty ammo can go through thicker cover than actually exists in the game.
• In Master of Magic for units with Armor Piercing attack a target has effectively 1/2 (rounded down) of its normal defense value.
  • Same in the Dominions series (though the defense stat is called 'protection', while the stat called 'defense' is really evasion). Dominions also adds armor negating, which completely ignores the target's armor. (No, it does not make the armor negative!)
• In Master of Orion 2 some weapons can be made in armor-piercing variants (and some in shield-piercing, for that matter) so that damage that passes through armor/shields is applied to the target ship's internals immediately.
  • Heavy and Xentronium armor negate armor bypassing, but neither can protect against an attacker equipped with an Achilles Targeting Unit device. Shield piercing weapons can be stopped with the Hard Shields device.
  • The iOS port called Starbase Orion has the Gauss Turret, which completely ignores armor. The downside is that it doesn't do much damage to shields and requires the ship to close in to short range for maximum effectiveness.
• In Mega Man Battle Network there are four kinds of armor that can be pierced - Shielding (which yields to Break), Shadow (which yields to Sword), Barriers and Auras (which yield to Wind), and Invisible (which yields to Cursor).
  • Mega Man Star Force retains most of these except for the Cursor-Invisible relationship. You can still bypass Mercy Invincibility under certain circumstances, though.
• Mega Man X: Command Mission has several weapons that your party members can equip that have armor- or shield-ignoring properties. The base damage on them is rather low, however, but they're quite helpful against enemies with high defenses, and also bypass defense-enhancing buffs. Some enemies and bosses also have at least one piercing attack in their arsenal, subject to the same properties but sometimes a lot more dangerous due to the foe's high attack power.
• In Mercenary Kings, you can equip AP Ammo which provides this effect.
• The Void Walker demon in Nexus Clash has Precision of the Assassin, an attack that completely ignores the target's armor due to the Void Walker's maybe-real insubstantial state. This doubles as a Death-or-Glory Attack since it drops the attacker's own armor into negative numbers and makes the Void Walker liable to get killed in a few shots if they can't defeat their target quickly.
• Featured in Paper Mario with Watt, whose basic attack ignores the enemy's defense (making her one of the most useful partners in the game, especially against high-defense enemies), as well as badges which would apply this property to your Jump or Hammer attacks. (Items and the Star Storm power also ignore defense.)
  • The Thousand-Year Door also features many of the same badges (and items/damage-dealing Star Powers), and included Yoshi, whose spit attack had this property (and was needed to beat a mid-level boss who pretty much had infinite defense), as well as the secret character Ms. Mowz, whose attack is literally an Armor-Piercing Slap. However, there are also several enemies (mostly Elite Mooks) in this game that can pierce your defense, negating all defense badges you have equipped and leaving you with the standard choice of a regular Guard to stop 1 damage or a trickier Superguard to stop all of it.
• Pathways into Darkness has armor-piercing ammunition for the AK-47 and M79, which is required to defeat the Greater Nightmares near the end of the game.
• In PAYDAY 2, sniper rifles, the 5/7 pistol, and certain shotgun ammo types^note can penetrate the body armor of Maximum Force Responders, as well as Shields' shields. The Killer Instinct perk in the Rogue tree gives a 25% chance for any attack to pierce body armor, and the aced version of the Surefire skill gives a 100% chance for ranged weapons.
• Perfect Dark has the Callisto NTG's Secondary Fire setting (High-Impact Shells) and the Farsight sniper rifle. Both will make short work of any shield.
• Plants vs. Zombies:
  • The Fume-shroom can ignore screen doors, newspapers, ladders, and trash cans that some zombies are holding.
  • The Laser Bean in the sequel can pierce through Shield Zombie's Deflector Shields.
• Pokémon
  • Brick Break and Psychic Fangs, which break any Reflect and Light Screen shields the opponent has set up before damaging the opponent.
  • Chip Away, Darkest Lariat, and Secret Sword, which do damage while disregarding opponent's stat boosts in defenses.
  • The Abilities Unaware and Infiltrator ignore stat changes and Reflect/Light Screen/Aurora Veil/Substitute respectively.
  • Sound moves such as Hyper Voice and Sparkling Aria can bypass Substitutes in Gen VI onward.
  • There are also moves that bypass Protect and similar protection moves, such as Hyperspace Hole and Phantom Force.
  • Attacking Z-Moves overpower invulnerability moves like Protect, Spiky Shield, King's Shield and Baneful Bunker.
  • Sunsteel Strike and Moongeist Beam no-sell Abilities that would protect the target, such as Shell/Battle Armor, Fluffy, Unaware, and even the Disguise ability! And both moves are super effective against the Pokemon with the latter ability.
  • The Abilities Mold Breaker, Teravolt, and Turboblaze allow the user to ignore any of the target's Abilities while attacking. This trope comes into play when the opponent has an Ability that reduces or prevents damage, such as Thick Fat, Levitate, Wonder Guard, Bulletproof, and the aforementioned Disguise.
• Ragnarok Online not only has weapons that ignore defense, but a dagger called the Ice Pick, which isn't reduced by the target's defense and then proceeds to do more damage depending on how much defense it had. Wearing armor actually makes you take more damage. Thankfully, they are quite rare.
• Shadowrun Returns Dragonfall Director's Cut, in addition to making armor an explicit value that attacks have to be stronger than in order to harm the user, also introduces attacks that can either degrade or ignore that armor.
• The Pierce skill in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, which allows those who have it to ignore the enemies' physical resistances, immunities, and drains (but not repels). You get it just in time, too, since that's the point in the game when your randomly encountered enemies may have as many as four or five out of eleven elements be useless against them. Having the skill, and jumping through a few hoops to be able to get it on your Mons, changes the last part of the game from insanely hard to merely sanely hard.
  • Devil Survivor and its sequel have it too, but only work for physical attacks. Still, being able to pummel bosses who otherwise drain or nullify physical attacks with a dose of Deathbound or Multi-Strike is quite satisfying.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV expands this to six different Pierce skills: one for normal Physical attacks, one for Gun, and four elemental Pierces. All are exclusive to the DLC, the Elemental Pierces all learned by Aeshma, Phys Pierce by Sanat and Gun Pierce by Masakado's Shadow form. Each of the Four Archangels learns an elemental attack that will have the Pierce feature built in: Tornado of God, Hailstorm of God, Lightning of God and Inferno of God.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, piercing attacks take another level since piercing attacks can now bypass repel, meaning that one must either take the full brunt of a piercing attack, or be lucky enough to dodge it.
  • In a more general sense, Almighty-class attacks punch through any form of defense, at the price of having incredibly high HP/MP costs and no elemental advantages.
• Shores of Hazeron had the deadly Glue Gun, which due to a glitch, could ignore any amount of armor. Players would storm ships armed with nothing but a glue gun, which could pierce the Powered Armor of its crew, killing them without damaging the armor - in fact, it would actually repair their armor.
• In Soldier of Fortune, high-power weapons such as the sniper rifle can pierce both the player's and enemy's armor.
• Starting in Space Empires IV, weapons can now skip armor, in addition to shields. A spin-off called Space Empires: Starfury had this, too.
• In Splatoon 2's Salmon Run mode, the Grizzco Slosher has the unique ability to damage to any enemy it hits. Including bosses like Flyfish and Steelheads that are otherwise invincible unless they reveal their weakpoints. The sheer kill power is balanced by being a Painfully Slow Projectile. This concept was later implemented with the Explosher, which has a more limited version of this trait but, unlike the Grizzco Slosher, is not Purposely Overpowered and can be used in the other online modes.
• Both StarCraft I and Starcraft II have two different armor/damage systems in play. In both games, the amount of armor on a unit subtracts from the damage dealt by an attacking unit: if an attacker deals 3 damage and the target has 2 armor, 2 damage will be subtracted from the attack and only 1 damage will actually be dealt. In gameplay terms, this means that weaker attacks will be disproportionately less effective than higher damage attacks against armor, although this could be easily overcome by Spam Attack from faster attacks or through sheer numbers.
  • As for the secondary armor/damage systems, Starcraft has one in which different attack types may do half, three-quarters, or full damage depending on unit type, with 'concussion' type attacks dealing full damage to 'light' units, three-quarters damage to 'medium' units and half damage to 'heavy' units. StarCraft II does away with the system, opting instead for one in which some units receive a bonus to attack against certain unit types. A Terran Marauder for example, deals 10 damage to most targets, but receives an extra 10 damage against any 'Armored' type ground unit for a total of 20 damage. Like Warcraft III, abilities in both games ignore physical armor but may be affected by unit type, with Irradiate capable of dealing up to 200 damage on biological units but remaining completely ineffective against mechanical ones.
  • The Terran EMP Shockwave destroys the shields of anything it hits. Not very useful against the Terran or Zerg who don't have shields at all, but a Protoss Archon has 350 shields and 10 health...
• Star Ruler has weapons that partially and completely ignore armour, but usually don't do that much actual damage. The Galactic Armory mod adds weapons that are good at killing shields but don't do anything to armor or health.
• Star Trek Online:
  • The Engineering boff power 'Directed Energy Modulation' allows your energy weapons to do a percentage of their damage directly to the target's hull instead of having to batter down the shields first.
  • Plasma procs cause a damage-over-time effect that eats hull.
  • Transphasic torpedoes do half-damage direct to the hull when they hit a shielded target. The Voth love to fire transphasic chroniton torpedoes in salvoes, and they hurt bad if you're in a typical Glass Cannon-built tacscort.
• Most weapons in Stellaris have an armor penetration stat. Energy weapons in particular specialize in melting through ship armor, with their superheavy Tachyon Lances reigning supreme due to their 90% AP modifier. Similar mechanics apply to Deflector Shields (it's actually a damage bonus instead of penetration in this case, but the outcome is largely the same). Special mention goes to the Cloud Lightning and Arc Emitter weapons due to them having 100% penetration of shields and armor, which is balanced by their massive damage randomization.
• Super Smash Bros.. feature several attacks that can completely break through the defenses of a shielding opponent.
  • Marth and Lucina's Shield Breaker attack, when fully charged, can break a full shield.
  • Bowser Bomb can also break an enemy's shield.
  • Ganondorf's up-tilt attack can shatter a full shield.
• Several attacks in Summoners War: Sky Arena ignores the target's defense. This made them highly lethal against low hp, high defense monsters, and are staple in the game's PvP scene.
• The Shield Piercer perk in Sundered allows the player’s attacks to bypass an enemy’s shields, if it has any. In exchange, the perk makes the player’s own shields regenerate at a much slower rate.
• The armor piercing tech in Sword of the Stars. It makes kinetic weaponsmore accurate and less likely to bounce off the hull, though you get less actual damage in return. The Polarized Plasmatics sub-family will deal extra damage depending on the extra health granted by armour upgrades. Gluonic Torpedoes go through Deflectors and Disruptors, while Mesonic Torpedoes go through all shields other than Meson Shields. Shield Breaker Rounds can bring down all shields, though they don't do any actual damage to the ship.
• Sword of the Stars II goes for Sequel Escalation on the original. Instead of Critical Existence Failure, ships now have 'armor matrices' that need to be brought down until you have a clear 'path' through to the internal structures, with any shot that penetrates the armor dealing critical damage, such as damaging key systems and killing crew. Also, 'armor layers' enable a ship to No-Sell any attack that doesn't have a high enough AP level. Every weapon has its own 'damage pattern' against the armor matrix; for example, some like lasers have better armor penetration than mass drivers. However, that means that each subsequent laser shot has to hit the same exact column to make a difference, while mass drivers can wear down a larger area of armor with each shot. Rapier vs mace in other words. More advanced weapons create dispersed, deeper effects making such painstaking accuracy no longer necessary. As in Prime, Mesonic Torpedoes are the best at penetration, going through 10 permanent armor layers. This breaks the rules of the setting, since the normal maximum of permanent layers a ship can have is 5.
• Syndicate (2012) has the Secondary Fire of the Kusanagi assault rifle that can penetrate shields and light cover. The Kusanagi sniper rifle can do the same in both fire modes. The Gatling Good is powerful enough that it cuts right through the Deflector Shields of liquid armour trooper without needing to Breach first.
• Certain guns in the Syphon Filter series ignore or destroy armor, for example, the snipers in The Omega Strain completely nullify your Armor gauge on the first shot, with the next likely being a One-Hit Kill. Starting with the second game, some enemies fire headshots that instantly kill regardless of armor condition.
• Team Fortress 2: Sort of; in Mann vs Machine, Giant Robots are immune to the Spy's Back Stab due to their stronger armor, thus requiring the Spy to upgrade his knife to inflict a certain fixed damage upon the Giant Robot on back stabs (each of the four upgrades increases damage by 25% of the maximum 750).
• In the Total War series, certain units (such as longbowmen or those armed with axes in ) actually put heavily armored units, including those with the extremely expensive armory upgrades, at a disadvantage with this ability.
  • Post-Marian Reforms legionaries in Rome: Total War can shrug off almost any kind of missile attack due to their heavy armour, but a volley of armour-piercing javelins from the right angle can devastate them. Especially fun with Bull Warriors, who have very poor defence for their price but sport the most pimped-out AP missile attack stats of any unit in the game.
• In Touken Ranbu, yari have the ability to bypass equipped troops and always directly strike the opponent's HP. However, they can't bypass a Kiwame wakizashi's blocking.
• In the first two Tribes games, the Blaster goes straight through shield packs, unlike every other weapon but the melee Shocklance. The shield-penetration and the comical ability to peg unwitting players from across the map with glowing red ricochetingPainfully Slow Projectile spam prevents it from being a completeJoke Weapon.
• UFO Aftermath has no less that seven damage types: soft, universal, hard, laser, plasma, burn (fire and acid), paralyze and warp (the more armor you have, the more it hurts). Transgenants and armors have separate resistances for each. There is an eighth type referred to as 'exception' for a few weapons like the psionic crusher.
• The Wing Commander series, starting with Wing Commander 2, features capital ships with shields or armor that is too heavy to be threatened by the weapons normally carried by fighters and smaller warships. To overcome this, heavy fighters and bombers can carry large, bulky torpedoes which are designed to 'phase' through the enemy's shields and strike with a nuclear or antimatter warhead. The process of finding the right frequency for the shields justifies you needing to make long approaches towards an enemy ship which is actively trying to kill you before you can finally release the torpedo (and hope it doesn't get shot down itself). Later in the series, it goes back and forth between whether non-torpedo fighter weapons can or can't harm capital warships.
• Warcraft 3 has various damage and armor types. Certain damage types may deal more or less damage depending on armor type, while armour amount also influences how much damage is received through percentage reduction. One type of armor (Divine) is practically immune to any damage except one type of damage (Chaos). Spells tend to ignore physical armor when inflicting damage, but may instead be affected by some abilities or fail to work altogether on some unit classifications.
  • In World of Warcraft, this trope used to exist as Armor Penetration, a very desirable stat for classes that mainly inflict physical damage, such as rogues and warriors, but it was removed due to balance issues, though those two retain abilities to reduce the opponent's armor with a debuff for the benefit of their allies.
• Warframe has three physical damage classifications - Slash, Puncture, and Impact - which deal bonus damage against certain enemy types. The 'Punch-through' ability on certain weapons and weapon mods is normally used for One Hit Poly Kills, but can also go straight through the riot shields of Grineer Shield Lancers. Corrosive damage will eat away at enemy armor, and Magnetic will do the same against shields.
  • The Void damage dealt by Operators is the prime example of this; no enemies in the game have any resistance to it whatsoever, and it has special properties against Sentient enemies (dealing Void damage to Conculysts and Battalysts negates their Adaptive Ability, and it's the only thing that can destroy Vomvalysts' spectral forms or remove the shields of Eidolons.)
• In White Knight Chronicles, Adolmea the Sun King is considered the most powerful Knight in part because of it's nigh impenetrable magical shield. The tables are turned once Leonard finds Falcyon, a sword that can break through the shield.
• This type of attack is nearly mandatory in World of Tanks - not every gun has good HE damage, meaning that often times your ability to deal damage relies entirely on penetrating the enemy's armor from any direction possible.
  • Justified since the game is based as closely as possible on Real Life tank warfare, where armor penetration is king.
• X-COM: UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep starts you with 'armor piercing' weapons. Subverted, since that's only the damage type rather than the ability, and the non-armor piercing attacks are better at breaking through armor. To be more specific, the armor piercing weapons won't overcome the high armor and damage reduction of Lobstermen and Triscenes^note .
• XCOM 2 broke from its predecessor by having armor reduce incoming damage instead of just adding hit points to a unit, but also introduced a 'shred' mechanic that allowed certain attacks - upgraded grenades, a Grenadier's BFG, certain heavy weapons, etc - to reduce a target's armor after it partially absorbed a shredding attack. Alternatively, XCOM's Proving Grounds can make Armor-Piercing Ammo, which can be equipped by any soldier to allow their attacks to completely ignore armor, but can't be built directly, and are instead a potential result of the repeatable Experimental Ammo project. The War of the Chosen expansion added titular bosses' Darkclaw pistol and and Katana sword, which ignore up to a few points of a target's armor by default. A Psi Operative's Psychic Powers ignore armor but can only directly target organic units; only Area of Effect ones^note can affect robotic hostiles.
• The Mass Driver in the X-Universe games is a high-velocity gatlingrailgun that will ignore ship shields (which is 90% of a ship's overall health, generally) and damage the ship's hull directly. Mounted en masse, this small, fighter-based weapon is hilariously effective at killing4 kilometer long destroyers.

• There are several characters in Worm who can produce this effect:
  • Immediately before the Leviathan attack, Armsmaster invented a modification of his Halberd that would allow it to cut through just about anything by severing the molecular bonds.
  • When Shadow Stalker is in her shadow form and fires her crossbows, the bolts remain in the shadow form for a little while before returning to an interacting-with-matter-normally form.
  • Flechette can imbue her weapons and ammunition with her power to make them unaffected by normal matter for however long she wishes — meaning she can time their return to coincide with the moment they intersect with her target. The end result is that her attacks penetrate virtually any defense, even Leviathan, who was too tough for Armsmaster's aforementioned Halberd to fully penetrate.
    • The full extent of Flechette's power doesn't become clear until later in the story. The guaranteed piercing effect even nullifies reaction powers like Gray Boy's auto-resurrection via time travel as is revealed to be a sting the titular eldritch horrors use to kill each other, essentially making her power a 4-D death ray.

• The invention of firearms is one of the main factors that made mail armor obsolete. While it was already in the process of being rendered obsolete by plate armor, the penetrative power of early firearms made it more trouble than it was worth compared to plate armor, which, although it had a higher resource cost, was both more protective and less restrictive on movement. Over the next few centuries, firearms would become more powerful so that plate armor strong enough to protect against it would become too restrictive, so it became limited to just helmets and breastplates, even then, only for heavy cavalry.
• Interestingly, knives are this to a bulletproof vest. There are effectively two kinds of body armor, the ballistic (bulletproof) vest and the stab resistant vest, and both are quite different in design. It might take a bit more effort, but a ballistic vest will do little if anything to protect against an attacker armed with a knife since the blade will slice the Kevlar fibres with little difficulty.
• There are also good old fashioned armor piercing rounds, such as the 5.56mm M995, which is absurdly expensive compared to conventional rounds but do Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Of course, Armor-Piercing rounds aren't strictly necessary to penetrate armor or cover. Most firearm rounds still travel at high enough velocities to wound or kill even after penetrating an obstacle. This is why, as our Gun Safety page will tell you, you should always be sure of your target and what lies beyond it. This goes especially for the Kevlar-weave vests most commonly seen in non-military applications, which are designed to protect against most handgun rounds but can't withstand the bigger, heavier and faster impact from your typical rifle bullet, or the 'heavy' pistol shot, like .357, .44, .50AE, and most recently, 5.7x28mm by FN Herstal. Much howling is made in the media over 'assault weapons' that have the ability to defeat these vests; this isn't wrong in most cases, but it omits that Grandpa's old .30-06 deer rifle will go through Kevlar just as easily, and have a chance of defeating a military grade LV 4 plate.
• It's also worth pointing out that while the bulletproof vest is designed to stop the round itself from penetrating you, it does little if anything to stop the force itself other than dispersing it over a wider area. The full force of the round still hits you, and as expected, you will be (often seriously, and potentially still fatally) wounded if hit center of mass by a shot. For this reason portions of armor like helmets and shoulder pads are designed to deflect the round as opposed to stop it outright.
• For the very reason outlined above, a Real Lifeaversion exists as a home-defense round, and is specifically designed to penetrate as little of a wall or obstacle as possible. It is worth noting that anything that will penetrate a human will also easily penetrate the sort of materials often used for home building, at least in the US, where the emphasis is placed on affordability and insulation rather than durability or fortification.
• While not an attack per se, something as slight as a paint chip can punch right through the pressure hull of a spacecraft due to the sheer velocities involved. This is the reason space debris is such a massive danger.
• Going along with the discussion of body armor above, it is worth noting that different types of armor will provide different degrees of protection, and there is no such thing as impenetrable armor protection. Ballistic vests are designed with varying degrees of protection, from lightweight 'second chance' vests, designed to provide some protection against smaller handgun rounds, to heavier and bulkier Class IIIA armor, which incorporates ceramic armor plates to defend against rifle rounds. Even with the heavier armor, the common wisdom is that it's only promised to protect you from the first shot that hits you, and not even with the heavies. 30-06 is on the V50 standard; 50% of the time it succeeded in stopping. After that, it's advised that you seek cover, as the ceramic plates will likely be shattered beyond use by a couple of rifle rounds, likely 3-5. Meanwhile, that same rifle round will go through the lighter kevlar and other such aramid vests as if they weren't there, and may get shrugged off by heavier vehicle armor as a minor nuisance. The page image above provides an excellent example of this concept in action: The soldier's breastplate was probably enough to protect against most melee weapons and perhaps a pistol, but proved inadequate against field artillery, but then again... Field artillery is field artillery.
• Gamma rays are highly energetic electromagnetic waves that penetrate anything. Their intensity and effects can only be weakened depending on the material in their path^note , but a sufficiently powerful directed gamma ray source would render most contemporary vehicle armor technology useless, not to mention body armor. If the radiation dosage that makes it past the shielding is high enough, anyone affected by it would suffer symptoms ranging from acute radiation sickness, followed by an agonizing death over weeks, to extreme cases of almost instant loss of consciousness and then death within minutes. Thankfully, although militaries across the globe are probably experimenting with the tech, no weapon of this kind has made it into field deployment yet. Let's hope it stays that way.
  • The fact that neutron radiation is similarly penetrative and difficult to shield against in the field has spawned the concept of the Neutron Bomb, and these weapons do exist.

An armor-piercing shell,^[a]AP for short, is a type of ammunition designed to penetrate armor. From the 1860s to 1950s, a major application of armor-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armor carried on many warships. From the 1920s onwards, armor-piercing weapons were required for anti-tank missions. AP rounds smaller than 20 mm are typically known as 'armor-piercing ammunition', and are intended for lightly-armored targets such as body armor, bulletproof glass and light armored vehicles. The classic AP shell is now seldom used in naval warfare, as modern warships have little or no armor protection, and newer technologies have displaced the classic AP design in the anti-tank role.

An armor-piercing shell must withstand the shock of punching through armor plating. Shells designed for this purpose have a greatly strengthened body with a specially hardened and shaped nose. One common addition to later AP shells is the use of a softer ring or cap of metal on the nose known as a penetrating cap, which both lowers the initial shock of impact to prevent the rigid shell from shattering, as well as aiding the contact between the target armor and the nose of the penetrator to prevent the shell from bouncing off in glancing shots. Ideally, these caps have a blunt profile, which led to the use of a thin aerodynamic cap to improve long-range ballistics. AP shells may contain little or no explosive, in this case known as a 'bursting charge'. Some smaller-caliber AP shells have an inert filling or incendiary charge in place of the bursting charge.

As tank armor improved during World War II, AP designs were introduced that used a smaller penetrating body within a larger shell. These lightweight shells fired at very high muzzle velocity and retained that speed and the associated penetrating power over longer distances. In modern designs the penetrator no longer looks like a classic artillery shell design, but is instead a long rod of dense material like tungsten or depleted uranium (DU) that further improves the terminal ballistics. Whether these designs are considered to be AP rounds depends on the definition and may be included or excluded from reference to reference.

• 2Types
  • 2.1Armor-piercing shells
  • 2.2Armor-piercing shot

History[edit]

The late 1850s, saw the development of the ironclad warship, which carried wrought iron armor of considerable thickness. This armor was practically immune to both the round cast-iron cannonballs then in use and to the recently developed explosive shell.

The first solution to this problem was effected by Major Sir W. Palliser, who, with the Palliser shot, invented a method of hardening the head of the pointed cast-iron shot.^[1][b] By casting the projectile point downwards and forming the head in an iron mold, the hot metal was suddenly chilled and became intensely hard (resistant to deformation through a Martensite phase transformation), while the remainder of the mold, being formed of sand, allowed the metal to cool slowly and the body of the shot to be made tough^[1] (resistant to shattering).

These chilled iron shots proved very effective against wrought iron armor but were not serviceable against compound and steel armor,^[1] which was first introduced in the 1880s. A new departure, therefore, had to be made, and forged steel rounds with points hardened by water took the place of the Palliser shot. At first, these forged-steel rounds were made of ordinary carbon steel, but as armor improved in quality, the projectiles followed suit.^[1]

During the 1890s and subsequently, cemented steel armor became commonplace, initially only on the thicker armor of warships. To combat this, the projectile was formed of steel—forged or cast—containing both nickel and chromium. Another change was the introduction of a soft metal cap over the point of the shell – so called 'Makarov tips' invented by Russian admiral Stepan Makarov. This 'cap' increased penetration by cushioning some of the impact shock and preventing the armor-piercing point from being damaged before it struck the armor face, or the body of the shell from shattering. It could also help penetration from an oblique angle by keeping the point from deflecting away from the armor face.

Types[edit]

Armor-piercing shells[edit]

AP shells containing an explosive filling were initially distinguished from their non-HE counterparts by being called a 'shell' as opposed to 'shot', mostly used in British terminology with the invention of the first shell of this type, the Palliser shell with 1.5% HE in the shells in 1877. By the time of the Second World War, AP shells with a bursting charge were sometimes distinguished by appending the suffix 'HE'. At the beginning of the war, APHE was common in anti-tank shells of 75 mm caliber and larger due to the similarity with the much larger naval armour piercing shells already in common use. As the war progressed, ordnance design evolved so that the bursting charges in APHE became ever smaller to non-existent, especially in smaller caliber shells, e.g. Panzergranate 39 with only 0.2% HE filling. Modern full caliber armor-piercing shells as dedicated anti-tank projectiles are no longer the primary method of conducting anti-tank warfare, but are still in use in over 50mm caliber artillery, however the tendency is to use semi-armor-piercing high-explosive (SAPHE) shells, which have less anti-armor capability, but far greater anti-materiel/personnel effects. The modern SAPHE projectiles still have a ballistic cap, hardened body and base fuze, but tend to have a far thinner body material and much higher explosive content (4–15%). Common abbreviations for modern AP and SAP shells are: HEI(BF), SAPHE, SAPHEI, and SAPHEI-T. The primary shell types for modern anti-tank warfare are kinetic energy penetrators, such as APDS.

Common abbreviations for modern AP and SAP shells are:

• (HEI-BF) High-explosive incendiary (Base Fuze)
• (SAPHE) Semi-armor piercing high-explosive
• (SAPHEI) Semi-armor piercing high-explosive incendiary
• (SAPHEI-T) Semi-armor piercing high-explosive incendiary tracer

First World War era[edit]

Shot and shell used prior to and during World War I were generally cast from special chromium (stainless) steel that was melted in pots. They were forged into shape afterward and then thoroughly annealed, the core bored at the rear and the exterior turned up in a lathe.^[1] The projectiles were finished in a similar manner to others described above. The final, or tempering treatment, which gave the required hardness/toughness profile (differential hardening) to the projectile body, was a closely guarded secret.^[1]

The rear cavity of these projectiles was capable of receiving a small bursting charge of about 2% of the weight of the complete projectile; when this is used, the projectile is called a shell, not a shot. The HE filling of the shell, whether fuzed or unfuzed, had a tendency to explode on striking armor in excess of its ability to perforate.^[1]

Second World War[edit]

During World War II, projectiles used highly alloyed steels containing nickel-chromium-molybdenum, although in Germany, this had to be changed to a silicon-manganese-chromium-based alloy when those grades became scarce. The latter alloy, although able to be hardened to the same level, was more brittle and had a tendency to shatter on striking highly sloped armor. The shattered shot lowered penetration, or resulted in total penetration failure; for armor-piercing high-explosive (APHE) projectiles, this could result in premature detonation of the HE filling. Highly advanced and precise methods of differentially hardening the projectile were developed during this period, especially by the German armament industry. The resulting projectiles gradually change from high hardness (low toughness) at the head to high toughness (low hardness) at the rear and were much less likely to fail on impact.

APHE shells for tank guns, although used by most forces of this period, were not used by the British. The only British APHE projectile for tank use in this period was the Shell AP, Mk1 for the 2 pdr anti-tank gun and this was dropped as it was found that the fuze tended to separate from the body during penetration. Even when the fuze did not separate and the system functioned correctly, damage to the interior was little different from the solid shot, and so did not warrant the additional time and cost of producing a shell version. They had been using APHE since the invention of the 1.5% HE Palliser shell in the 1870s and 1880s, and understood the tradeoffs between reliability, damage, HE %, and penetration, and deemed reliability and penetration to be most important for tank use. Naval APHE projectiles of this period, being much larger used a bursting charge of about 1–3% of the weight of the complete projectile,^[1] but in anti-tank use, the much smaller and higher velocity shells used only about 0.5% e.g. Panzergranate 39 with only 0.2% HE filling. This was due to much higher armor penetration requirements for the size of shell (e.g. over 2.5 times caliber in anti-tank use compared to below 1 times caliber for naval warfare). Therefore, in most APHE shells put to anti-tank use the aim of the bursting charge was to aid the number of fragments produced by the shell after armor penetration, the energy of the fragments coming from the speed of the shell after being fired from a high velocity anti-tank gun, as opposed to its bursting charge. There were some notable exceptions to this, with naval caliber shells put to use as anti-concrete and anti-armor shells, albeit with a much reduced armor penetrating ability. The filling was detonated by a rear-mounted delay fuze. The explosive used in APHE projectiles needs to be highly insensitive to shock to prevent premature detonation. The US forces normally used the explosive Explosive D, otherwise known as ammonium picrate, for this purpose. Other combatant forces of the period used various explosives, suitably desensitized (usually by the use of waxes mixed with the explosive).

High-explosive anti-tank [edit]

HEAT shells are a type of shaped charge used to defeat armoured vehicles. They are extremely efficient at defeating plain steel armour but less so against later composite and reactive armour. The effectiveness of the shell is independent of its velocity, and hence the range: it is as effective at 1000 metres as at 100 metres. This is because HEAT shells do not lose penetration over distance. In fact, the speed can even be zero in the case where a soldier simply places a magnetic mine onto a tank's armour plate. A HEAT charge is most effective when detonated at a certain, optimal distance in front of the target and HEAT shells are usually distinguished by a long, thin nose probe sticking out in front of the rest of the shell and detonating it at the correct distance, e.g., PIAT bomb. HEAT shells are less effective if spun (i.e., fired from a rifled gun).

HEAT shells were developed during the Second World War as a munition made of an explosive shaped charge that uses the Munroe effect to create a very high-velocity partial stream of metal in a state of superplasticity, and used to penetrate solid vehicle armour. HEAT rounds caused a revolution in anti-tank warfare when they were first introduced in the later stages of World War II. A single infantryman could effectively destroy any existing tank with a handheld weapon, thereby dramatically altering the nature of mobile operations. During World War II, weapons using HEAT warheads were known as having a hollow charge or shape charge warhead.^[2]

Claims for priority of invention are difficult to resolve due to subsequent historic interpretations, secrecy, espionage, and international commercial interest.^[3] Shaped charge warheads were promoted internationally by the Swiss inventor Henry Mohaupt, who exhibited the weapon before the second World War. Prior to 1939 Mohaupt demonstrated his invention to British and French ordnance authorities. During the war, the French communicated Henry Mohaupt's technology to the U.S. Ordnance Department, who invited him to the US, where he worked as a consultant on the Bazooka project. By mid-1940, Germany had introduced the first HEAT round to be fired by a gun, the 7.5 cm fired by the Kw.K.37 L/24 of the Panzer IV tank and the Stug III self-propelled gun (7.5 cm Gr.38 Hl/A, later editions B and C). In mid-1941, Germany started the production of HEAT rifle-grenades, first issued to paratroopers and by 1942 to the regular army units. In 1943, the Püppchen, Panzerschreck and Panzerfaust were introduced. The Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck or 'tank terror' gave the German infantryman the ability to destroy any tank on the battlefield from 50 – 150 m with relative ease of use and training (unlike the UK PIAT).

The first British HEAT weapon to be developed and issued was a rifle grenade using a 2 1/2 inch cup launcher on the end of the barrel; the British No. 68 AT grenade issued to the British army in 1940. By 1943, the PIAT was developed; a combination of a HEAT warhead and a spigot mortar delivery system. While cumbersome, the weapon at last allowed British infantry to engage armour at range; the earlier magnetic hand-mines and grenades required them to approach suicidally close.^[4] During World War II, the British referred to the Munroe effect as the cavity effect on explosives.^[2]

High-explosive squash-head or high-explosive plastic [edit]

High-explosive, squash-head (HESH) is another anti-tank shell based on the use of explosive. A thin-walled shell case contains a large charge of a plastic explosive. On impact the explosive flattens, without detonating, against the face of the armour, and is then detonated by a fuze in the base of the shell. Energy is transferred through the armour plate: when the compressive shock reflects off the air/metal interface on the inner face of the armour, it is transformed into a tension wave which spalls a 'scab' of metal off into the tank damaging the equipment and crew without actually penetrating the armour.

HESH is defeated by spaced armour, so long as the plates are individually able to withstand the explosion. It is still considered useful as not all vehicles are equipped with spaced armour, and it is also the most effective munition for demolishing brick and concrete. HESH shells, unlike HEAT shells, can be fired from rifled guns as they are unaffected by spin. In American usage it is known as high-explosive plastic (HEP).

The high-explosive squash head (HESH) was developed by Charles Dennistoun Burney in the 1940s for the British war effort, originally as an anti-fortification 'wallbuster' munition for use against concrete. HESH rounds were thin metal shells filled with plastic explosive and a delayed-action base fuze. The plastic explosive is 'squashed' against the surface of the target on impact and spreads out to form a disc or 'pat' of explosive. The base fuze detonates the explosive milliseconds later, creating a shock wave that, owing to its large surface area and direct contact with the target, is transmitted through the material. At the point where the compression and tension waves intersect a high-stress zone is created in the metal, causing pieces of steel to be projected off the interior wall at high velocity. This fragmentation by blast wave is known as spalling, with the fragments themselves known as spall. Unlike high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds, which are shaped charge ammunition, HESH shells are not specifically designed to perforate the armour of main battle tanks. HESH shells rely instead on the transmission of the shock wave through the solid steel armour.

HESH was found to be surprisingly effective against metallic armour as well, although the British already had effective weapons using HEAT, such as the PIAT. HESH was for some time a competitor to the more common HEAT round, again in combination with recoilless rifles as infantry weapons and was effective against tanks such as the T-55 and T-62.

Armor-piercing shot[edit]

Armor-piercing solid shot for cannons may be simple, or composite, solid projectiles but tend to also combine some form of incendiary capability with that of armor-penetration. The incendiary compound is normally contained between the cap and penetrating nose, within a hollow at the rear, or a combination of both. If the projectile also uses a tracer, the rear cavity is often used to house the tracer compound. For larger-caliber projectiles, the tracer may instead be contained within an extension of the rear sealing plug. Common abbreviations for solid (non-composite/hardcore) cannon-fired shot are; AP, AP-T, API and API-T; where 'T' stands for 'tracer' and 'I' for 'incendiary'. More complex, composite projectiles containing explosives and other ballistic devices tend to be referred to as armor-piercing shells.

Armor-piercing[edit]

Early WWII-era uncapped (AP) armor-piercing projectiles fired from high-velocity guns were able to penetrate about twice their caliber at close range (100 m). At longer ranges (500-1,000 m), this dropped 1.5–1.1 calibers due to the poor ballistic shape and higher drag of the smaller-diameter early projectiles. In January 1942 a process was developed by Arthur E. Schnell ^[5] for 20mm and 37mm Armor Piercing rounds to press bar steel under 500 tons of pressure that made more even 'flow-lines' on the tapered nose of the projectile which allowed the shell to follow a more direct nose first path to the armor target. Later in the conflict, APCBC fired at close range (100 m) from large-caliber, high-velocity guns (75–128 mm) were able to penetrate a much greater thickness of armor in relation to their caliber (2.5 times) and also a greater thickness (2–1.75 times) at longer ranges (1,500–2,000 m).

Armor-piercing ballistic capped[edit]

In an effort to gain better aerodynamics APC rounds were given a ballistic cap to improve muzzle velocity and reduce drag. The hollow ballistic cap would break away when the projectile hit the target. These rounds were classified as (APBC) or armor-piercing ballistic capped rounds.

Armor-piercing capped[edit]

Due to the increase in armor thickness during WWII, the projectiles’ size and impact velocity had to be increased to ensure perforation. At these higher velocities, the hardened tip of the shot or shell has to be protected from the initial impact shock, or risk shattering. To raise the impact velocity and stop the shattering, they were initially fitted with soft steel penetrating caps. The resulting rounds were classified as (APC) or armor piercing capped.

Armor-piercing capped ballistic capped[edit]

Since the best performance penetrating caps were not very aerodynamic, an additional ballistic cap was later fitted to reduce drag. The resulting rounds were classified as (APCBC) or armor-piercing capped ballistic capped. The hollow ballistic cap gave the rounds a sharper point which reduced drag and broke away on impact.^[6]

Armor-piercing discarding-sabot [edit]

An important armor-piercing development was the (APDS) or the armor-piercing discarding sabot. An early version was developed by engineers working for the French Edgar Brandt company, and was fielded in two calibers (75 mm/57 mm for the Mle1897/33 75 mm anti-tank cannon, 37 mm/25 mm for several 37 mm gun types) just before the French-German armistice of 1940.^[7] The Edgar Brandt engineers, having been evacuated to the United Kingdom, joined ongoing APDS development efforts there, culminating in significant improvements to the concept and its realization. The APDS projectile type was further developed in the United Kingdom between 1941-1944 by L. Permutter and S. W. Coppock, two designers with the Armaments Research Department. In mid-1944 the APDS projectile was first introduced into service for the UK's QF 6 pdranti-tank gun and later in September 1944 for the 17 pdr anti-tank gun.^[8] The idea was to use a stronger penetrator material to allow increased impact velocity and armor penetration.

The armor-piercing concept calls for more penetration capability than the target's armor thickness. Generally, the penetration capability of an armor-piercing round increases with the projectile's kinetic energy and also with concentration of that energy in a small area. Thus, an efficient means of achieving increased penetrating power is increased velocity for the projectile. However, projectile impact against armor at higher velocity causes greater levels of shock. Materials have characteristic maximum levels of shock capacity, beyond which they may shatter, or otherwise disintegrate. At relatively high impact velocities, steel is no longer an adequate material for armor-piercing rounds. Tungsten and tungsten alloys are suitable for use in even higher-velocity armor-piercing rounds, due to their very high shock tolerance and shatter resistance, and to their high melting and boiling temperatures. They also have very high density. Energy is concentrated by using a reduced-diameter tungsten shot, surrounded by a lightweight outer carrier, the sabot (a French word for a wooden shoe). This combination allows the firing of a smaller diameter (thus lower mass/aerodynamic resistance/penetration resistance) projectile with a larger area of expanding-propellant 'push', thus a greater propelling force and resulting kinetic energy. Once outside the barrel, the sabot is stripped off by a combination of centrifugal force and aerodynamic force, giving the shot low drag in flight. For a given caliber, the use of APDS ammunition can effectively double the anti-tank performance of a gun.

Armor-piercing fin-stabilised discarding-sabot [edit]

An armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding sabot (APFSDS) projectile uses the sabot principle with fin (drag) stabilization. A long, thin sub-projectile has increased sectional density and thus penetration potential. However, once a projectile has a length-to-diameter ratio greater than 10^{[citation needed]} (less for higher density projectiles),^{[citation needed]} spin stabilization becomes ineffective. Instead, aerodynamic lift stabilization is used, by means of fins attached to the base of the sub-projectile, making it look like a large metal arrow.

Large caliber APFSDS projectiles are usually fired from smooth-bore (unrifled) barrels, though they can be and often are fired from rifled guns. This is especially true when fired from small to medium caliber weapon systems. APFSDS projectiles are usually made from high-density metal alloys, such as tungsten heavy alloys (WHA) or depleted uranium (DU); maraging steel was used for some early Soviet projectiles. DU alloys are cheaper and have better penetration than others, as they are denser and self-sharpening. Uranium is also pyrophoric and may become opportunistically incendiary, especially as the round shears past the armor exposing non-oxidized metal, but both the metal's fragments and dust contaminate the battlefield with toxic hazards. The less toxic WHAs are preferred in most countries except the US and Russia.^{[citation needed]}

Armor-piercing composite rigid [edit]

Armor-piercing, composite rigid (APCR) is a British term; the US term for the design is high-velocity armor-piercing (HVAP) and the German term is Hartkernmunition. The APCR projectile has a core of a high-density hard material, such as tungsten carbide, surrounded by a full-bore shell of a lighter material (e.g., an aluminium alloy). However, the low sectional density of the APCR resulted in high aerodynamic drag. Tungsten compounds such as tungsten carbide were used in small quantities of inhomogeneous and discarded sabot shot, but that element was in short supply in most places. Most APCR projectiles are shaped like the standard APCBC shot (although some of the German Pzgr. 40 and some Soviet designs resemble a stubby arrow), but the projectile is lighter: up to half the weight of a standard AP shot of the same caliber. The lighter weight allows a higher velocity. The kinetic energy of the shot is concentrated in the core and hence on a smaller impact area, improving the penetration of the target armor. To prevent shattering on impact, a shock-buffering cap is placed between the core and the outer ballistic shell as with APC rounds. However, because the shot is lighter but still the same overall size it has poorer ballistic qualities, and loses velocity and accuracy at longer ranges. The British devised a way for the outer sheath to be discarded after leaving the bore. The name given to the discarded outer sheath was the sabot (a French word for a wooden shoe, also used to describe the standardized wood or paper-mache wadding around round shot in a smooth bore cannon). The APCR was superseded by the APDS, which dispensed with the outer light alloy shell once the shot had left the barrel. The concept of a heavy, small-diameter penetrator encased in light metal would later be employed in small-arms armour-piercing incendiary and HEIAP rounds.

Armor-piercing composite non-rigid [edit]

Armour-piercing, composite non-rigid (APCNR) is the British term and known by the Germans as Gerlich principle weapons, but today the more commonly used terms are squeeze-bore and tapered bore. These shells are based on the same projectile design as the APCR - a high density core within a shell of soft iron or other alloy - but it is fired by a gun with a tapered barrel, either a taper in a fixed barrel or a final added section. The projectile is initially full-bore, but the outer shell is deformed as it passes through the taper. Flanges or studs are swaged down in the tapered section, so that as it leaves the muzzle the projectile has a smaller overall cross-section.^[6] This gives it better flight characteristics with a higher sectional density, and the projectile retains velocity better at longer ranges than an undeformed shell of the same weight. As with the APCR, the kinetic energy of the round is concentrated at the core on impact. The initial velocity of the round is greatly increased by the decrease of barrel cross-sectional area toward the muzzle, resulting in a commensurate increase in velocity of the expanding propellant gases.

The Germans deployed their initial design as a light anti-tank weapon, 2,8 cm schwere Panzerbüchse 41, early in the Second World War, and followed on with the 4.2 cm Pak 41 and 7.5 cm Pak 41. Although HE rounds were also put into service, they weighed only 93 grams and had low effectiveness.^[9] The German taper was a fixed part of the barrel.

In contrast, the British used the Littlejohn squeeze-bore adaptor, which could be attached or removed as necessary. The adaptor extended the usefulness of armoured cars and light tanks, which could not fit any gun larger than the QF 2 pdr. Although a full range of shells and shot could be used, changing the adaptor in the heat of battle was highly impractical.

There are some significant drawbacks that are inherent with weapons designed to fire APCNR rounds. The first is that designing and producing tapered bore guns requires both an advanced level of technology and high quality standards in manufacturing the gun barrels, resulting in a higher cost per unit. The second is that by tapering the bore to increase the velocity of the round subjects it to increased wear from having to deform the projectile during firing, shortening the barrel life of the weapon.

The APCNR was superseded by the APDS design which was compatible with non-tapered barrels.

Small arms[edit]

Armor-piercing rifle and pistol cartridges are usually built around a penetrator of hardened steel, tungsten, or tungsten carbide, and such cartridges are often called 'hard-core bullets'. Aircraft and tank rounds sometimes use a core of depleted uranium. The penetrator is a pointed mass of high-density material that is designed to retain its shape and carry the maximum possible amount of energy as deeply as possible into the target. Depleted-uranium penetrators have the advantage of being pyrophoric and self-sharpening on impact, resulting in intense heat and energy focused on a minimal area of the target's armor. Some rounds also use explosive or incendiary tips to aid in the penetration of thicker armor. High Explosive Incendiary/Armor Piercing Ammunition combines a tungsten carbide penetrator with an incendiary and explosive tip.

Rifle armor-piercing ammunition generally carries its hardened penetrator within a copper or cupronickel jacket, similar to the jacket which would surround lead in a conventional projectile. Upon impact on a hard target, the copper case is destroyed, but the penetrator continues its motion and penetrates the target. Armor-piercing ammunition for pistols has also been developed and uses a design similar to the rifle ammunition. Some small ammunition, such as the FN 5.7mm round, is inherently capable at piercing armor, being of a small caliber and very high velocity.

The entire projectile is not normally made of the same material as the penetrator because the physical characteristics that make a good penetrator (i.e. extremely tough, hard metal) make the material equally harmful to the barrel of the gun firing the cartridge.

Active protection systems[edit]

Most modern active protection systems (APS) are unlikely to be able to defeat full-caliber AP rounds fired from a large-caliber anti-tank gun, because of the high mass of the shot, its rigidity, short overall length, and thick body. The APS uses fragmentation warheads or projected plates, and both are designed to defeat the two most common anti-armor projectiles in use today: HEAT and kinetic energy penetrator. The defeat of HEAT projectiles is accomplished through damage/detonation of the HEAT's explosive filling or damage to the shaped charge liner or fuzing system, and defeat of kinetic energy projectiles is accomplished by inducing yaw/pitch or fracturing of the rod.

See also[edit]

Footnotes[edit]

1. ^American English, armour-piercing shell in Commonwealth English
2. ^'Shot' in this sense is a solid-metal artillery projectile similar to a 'shell', but without any explosive charge. It is also used to describe other non-explosive artillery projectiles such as case shot or grape shot

Citations[edit]

1. ^ ^abcdefghSeton-Karr, Henry (1911). 'Ammunition' . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 864–875.
2. ^ ^abBonnier Corporation (February 1945). 'The Bazookas Grandfather'. Popular Science. Bonnier Corporation. p. 66.
3. ^Donald R. Kennedy,'History of the Shaped Charge Effect, The First 100 Years — USA - 1983', Defense Technology Support Services Publication, 1983
4. ^Ian Hogg, Grenades and Mortars' Weapons Book #37, 1974, Ballantine Books
5. ^Western Hills Press, Cheviot Ohio Page 3-B May 30th 1968
6. ^ ^abPopular Science, December 1944, pg 126 illustration at bottom of page on working principle of APCBC type shell
7. ^'Shells and Grenades'. Old Town, Hemel Hempstead: The Museum of Technology. Archived from the original on 16 October 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-23.
8. ^Jason Rahman (February 2008). 'The 17-Pounder'. Avalanche Press. Archived from the original on 9 November 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-23.
9. ^Shirokorad A. B. The God of War of the Third Reich. M. AST, 2002 (Широкорад А. Б. - Бог войны Третьего рейха. — М.,ООО Издательство АСТ, 2002., ISBN978-5-17-015302-2)

Gnomedalf Ironsight

External links[edit]

Ironsight Best Gun

Ironsight Precision Barrel Vs Modified Rifling