Are lighter, faster projectiles the future of defensive handgun ammo?
I wasn't sure, but with how well the lighter Underwoods are preforming along with the Liberty Civil Defense stuff, to a lesser degree (hollowpoints), I feel more convinced.
I have a feeling the Underwood screwdriver's performance, as seen on boar, has more to do with getting closer to the voodoo wounding velocity and less to do with redirected liquid jets from the flutes, but I could be mistaken.
I'd love to see how a 35gr, brass jacketed aluminum 9mm solid @ 2400 fps would preform in various mediums. The downside is, of course, they shed energy at range much more quickly, and non solid super fast bullets fragment and may under-penetrate. That being said, I think it's a worthy trade as almost all defensive shootings are under 25 yards,
The best solution to address the lackluster wounding seen in handgun loadings is to get out of handgun velocities.
this is a blue board, stop posting lewds.
I want a mach three pistol more than anything in the world.
>buy .223 to .17 sabots
>16gr bullets
>load into 5.7 cases
>3000fps
my CCW is a light gas gun. It fires a speck of dust at 23,000fps.
Honestly this. A bull barreled sabot pistol with the barrel itself being a smoothbore made from a single crystal like those f35 turbines, firing a 2mm×18mm fin stablized tool steel rod weighing just under 10 gr, plus sabot @ 4300 fps with its ETC plasma primer+ RDX based propellant.
>tool steel instead of tungsten, which is both more dense and has higher hardness
>not using magnetically contained anti-iron for the propellant
it's like, are you trying to make it neocalifornia compliant?
What is that thing in front of the ruler
dude what are you even making a thread about? what the frick is going on?
>dude what are you even making a thread about? what the frick is going on?
GPT-2 posting
No.
Penetration is literally the only factor that matters with handguns, light fast handgun rounds don't penetrate enough.
have a nice day zoomer moron.
Light fast solids penetrate fine what do you mean?
Their penetration is unreliable, and since the don't expand the overall wound volume and chance of striking a vital structure are less.
You're meme loads will never catch on.
>Unreliable penetration
what the frick are you talking about? Solid projectiles have the most reliable penetration characteristics.
The thing about speed is that things slow down and lighter bullets slow down faster than heavier ones. Lighter bullets have unreliable penetration because they're going at wildly different speeds when they actually hit something. This problem is severely mitigated by using a heavier bullet more resistant to velocity changes.
>Your meme hollowpoint rounds will never catch on.
>Your meme SCHV rifle ammo will never catch on.
>Your meme handgun red dot will never catch on.
You're literally spouting boomer tier Fudd shit, grandpa. Monolithic copper or brass, machined projectiles have proven themselves extremely capable in penetration and wounding characteristics, depending on the shape of the nose. Everyone's rightly raving about Lehigh's pills, but the 7.5 Fk is probably the best round on the market that nails the concept of the (relatively) Small Caliber, (for a handgun) High Velocity concept.
Depends on bullet construction.
That is substantially true because most handgun cartridges are very slow.
A non deforming round with a spear-point will over penetrate a human even if it is extremely light, even with velocities in excess of mach two.
>Penetration is literally the only factor that matters with handguns
Mostly true.
>light fast handgun rounds don't penetrate enough.
This is literally complete backwards. No heavy lead round penetrates as well a 68gr or 90gr copper monolithic screw driver. Liberty ammo is mostly meh outside super niche usage, but the lehigh (used by underwood0 and g9 bullets offer fantastic performance.
uniformed moron
>https://viperweapons.us/ballistics-testing-1
See "2016-17 Joint Agency Ballistics Test for Defensive Handgun Ammunition (pdf)"
The underwood XD projectiles are the best performing pistol rounds on the market. Nothing else comes close.
Fort Scott TUIs have better armor penetration at a given velocity, anyway.
Notice they didn't test hard cast bullets.
Underwood's meme screwdrivers penetrate the same or worse as hard cast bullets that have been around for 200 years.
>uniformed moron
How did you know I'm wearing a uniform?
You have so many mistakes, moronic takes, and claims supporting marketing wank that's been disproven for almost 40 years, you should honestly just consider suicide, theres no helping your level of moronation
No.
Bullets reach a velocity threshold where the body you're striking places more resistance on the bullet than if you had struck it slower. Basically the bullet uses up a shitload of energy creating a larger wound cavity.
This is the reason why a 45-70 with hard cast bullets will outpenetrate a 458 Winchester Magnum on soft targets. Sure, the 458 does more damage and expends a lot more energy, but straightline penetration suffers.
Lighter bullets suffer this even worse.
Even if that is the case, concepts like SCHV have proven themselves exceedingly effectively at getting great wounding results despite hitting any reasonable velocity threshold that would cause what you mention.
>It's the slow blade that penetrates the shield.
Logic only really holds for deep, soft targets. Speed is better against armor.
Energy and bullet construction, not velocity. Velocity is a means to attain energy and then you want to concentrate that energy to the smallest point possible.
Hard targets are a way different philosophy than soft targets.
E = 1/2* m * v^2
Energy literally contains velocity.
Right, velocity is a means to attain energy.
Energy is the thing creating action and putting a hole in the target, no velocity. You can throw all kinds of things at extremely high velocities with insufficient energy to create a hole in a hard target.
Mass is equally important but no one says mass is what creates holes in things.
Energy is the bottom line.
How can you say that when energy is the thing that you are converting into penetration power? If your perpetrator has insufficient base moving energy then you already lost the battle.
If you aren't creating energy then you aren't creating action. Energy = Action
There isn't a magic velocity threshold that will cause any bullet to penetrate a hard target, it's different relative to the bullet construction(weight and shape).
How are you measuring momentum, anon? What a moronic post.
Go watch some APFSDS penetration videos or read up on them. Depleted uranium is not particularly "strong" but really heavy. And that's the only thing that matters, especially when everything around the impact area is molten already.
>really heavy
Mass
>at a given velocity
Creates Energy, which translates into action.
>How are you measuring momentum, anon? What a moronic post.
You can have a projectile of equal or greater momentum with equal or lesser energy, dingbat.
>momentum
p = m * v
>energy:
E = 1/2 m * v^2
>for p > E same projectile with same weight and velocity
v > 1/2 * v^2
1 > 1/2 * v
2 m/s > v
>mass and velocity
yep, we came full circle
Both energy and momentum play a role in penetration, as do the physical properties of the projectile, including hardness.
Rounds with a higher relative momentum tend to penetrate further into soft materials.
If energy was the only thing that mattered in penetration, the butt of your rifle would penetrate your shoulder, since the rearward energy of the rifle equals the energy of the bullet leaving the muzzle.
MOMENTUM, the rifle butt has the same MOMENTUM.
200ft/lbs is considered ridiculously high as recoil energy, but pitiful as muzzle energy.
Pressure is the bottom line. Energy over surface area. A 300gn .451 bullet at 2000 ft/s generates much more energy than a 55 .224 bullet at 3000 ft/s, but the .451 cannot penetrate IIIa armour, and the .224 can penetrate III or III+ depending on the bullet construction.
That's not a factor of pressure unless you're talking about lbs/in^2, in which case I agree which I generally say the two most important factors in penetrating hard targets is 1. Energy, because you need to energy to do work and 2. The concentration of energy, which factors in bullet construction and shape.
>Mass is equally important
It literally is not.
It is in practice because a cartridge can only have a particular bullet weight range, short of sabots, once you join the real world and start considering pressures vs Velocity that's actually achievable.
In the real world the velocity gains of going with a very light bullet often has its energy just break even with the heavier one, unless you are way heavy for caliber.
Open up a loading manual if needed.
A 65gr bullet from a 9mm produces about 400ft/lbs of energy at 1750fps~ while a 115gr bullet from a 9mm is capable of 430ft/lbs at 1260fps. Both are max loads from one of my manuals.
Pressures dictate that you CANNOT gain enough velocity to offset the loss of mass. You aren't gaining more energy with lighter bullets because of the pressure constraints of a any given cartridge.
Flip those energies around, the lighter one provides a mild 30ft/lbs MORE than the 115gr bullet. For accuracy.
We will use a 30gr aluminum 9mm bullet.
There's only so much potential energy in a handgun cases volume. Making use of it with a smaller diameter, much higher sectional density penetrator is key if you want to punch armor. TFB has some charts showing light for caliber with increased velocity results in less drop, higher energy even at typical pistol ranges, even with lower bc projectiles.
You're right, to an extent. An arrow will be moving much slower than any bullet, yet penetrate a target deeper. Much higher sectional density. Imagine getting hit by a 3' piece of mild steel rebar moving 800fps. Oof.
Subcal projectiles only make sense for increasing penetration at typical pistol engagement distances, you can't usually go small enough sub-cal diameter and long enough to keep some mass in the projectile. For other projectile designs take a look at:
>dagny dagger (penetrator can be anything, copper, nickel welding rod, tungsten electrodes, etc)
>DM91
>Various russian ap, as pictured
>THV type projectiles (which is what all the various lehigh screwdrivers are, just in copper)
>Belgian VBR 9mm 6.3ap
>There's only so much potential energy in a handgun cases volume. Making use of it with a smaller diameter, much higher sectional density penetrator is key if you want to punch armor. TFB has some charts showing light for caliber with increased velocity results in less drop, higher energy even at typical pistol ranges, even with lower bc projectiles.
Aluminum cored projectiles should be used to achieve higher velocities with greater projectile strength. Aluminum is significantly stronger than lead, and so light in comparison it has a much higher theoretical speed limit in any given cartridge.
You're going to have very light bullets taking up the same amount of case capacity as lead cores, you won't be able to push them as fast as you seem to believe.
You'l probably end up with less overall energy despite being around 200fps faster because you've reduced your mass so much.
Copper solids can already manage a greater than 200FPS advantage over jacketed lead though. Al's speed limit would be substantially higher.
Also, equal or lesser energy with stronger projectile materials at high velocity can produce substantially better armor penetration characteristics, this has been a well known fact for over 100 years.
Case capacity will ensure you can't gain all that much more velocity, you will reach the maximum safe pressure quickly by trying to push it all that much faster.
Velocity doesn't matter, it's a means to attain energy to create action. Put a hard spire on a train moving 2mph, place an immobilized car in front of it. That spire will skewer that car with ease because you've concentrated all the energy the train carries into a small point, the train's velocity was dirt slow but because of its MASS and VELOCITY combined you have ENERGY to create action.
It's really basic.
F = (1/2M)(V^2)
Velocity provides more energy, than mass does. You're conflating energy with momentum, and are mentally moronic.
You're not measuring momentum and it has nothing to do with penetrating that car, dumbass.
Provide an example of this velocity advantage, copper solids of a correct shape will penetrate hard targets better. On soft targets there is no advantage over hard cast lead. Not only is the greater weight a benefit, but the lower engraving resistance of lead allows for hotter loads in handguns relative to their copper jacketed/solid equivalents.
>Provide an example of this velocity advantage
Off the top of my head certain Lehigh Copper solids in 9mm can beat 1500, or even 1800fps out of long pistol barrels. Is there any non hollow point, lead core round that does the same?
>Provide an example of this velocity advantage
Railguns.
But there are literally rounds that prove you wrong.
Like I said, copper solids already have a greater than 200fps maximum velocity advantage over lead, and perform significantly better against armor even at the same velocity, therefore with lower energy.
>you will reach the maximum safe pressure quickly by trying to push it all that much faster.
Buddy lighter rounds produce less pressure with the same propellant.
Found this pic detailing vbrs paralight a bit more. An effective starting point. Nickel welding rod section with a zinc/pewter alloy/aluminum sabot instead of brass and its perfectly legal. Shellshock cases allow slightly higher case capacity (perhaps decreasing the length of the sabot would also be effective if there still sufficient bearing surface to stabilize) and higher pressures. Lower density materials allow for higher velocity.
>lighter rounds produce less pressure with the same propellant.
Case crimp has to play into this as well. I posted about one anons struggle freeing a libcd's projectile a few mo ths ago. I take it that theres a fairly fine line between heavy enough crimp to build pressure to increase velocity and blowing apart your gun and hand. Thats actually one piece I've been waiting to hear about from the dagny crew. Whatever the combo of powder, case, sabot, core is, then the crimp also has to play a role. They have a chamber pressure rig, so this is something they could test and share data about eventually.
All cartridges have a range of powders suitable for them, so when I start talking about "fast" and "slow" I'm talking about relative to a cartridge's useful range, not all powders.
Generally, slower powders(for a cartridge) will give you top velocities at the max pressure, but it is possible to have a useable powder that is too slow for lighter bullet weights. The lighter bullet doesn't allow for enough pressure to get a complete, efficient burn. Meaning you don't get good velocities and could have a secondary pressure event.
So what do you do to compensate?
Well you use a faster powder that generates pressure faster. This is especially true for extremely light-for-caliber bullets that you guys are talking about. By changing to faster powder, you aren't actually reducing pressure, but you are ensuring that you're still getting top velocities for that bullet.
Crimping really has no effect on pressure. It's a small amount of brass rolled into a cannelure, you won't find a manual that talks about crimping's effect on pressure, nor does Quickload mention it to my knowledge.
Alliant Power pistol is good shit
Velocity that allows you to exceed the elasticity limit of flesh matters man.
ITT this frickin moron
thinks he's hot shit cause he handloads, but doesn't realise 5.7x28 already uses aluminum bullets, which is most likely why
had the idea
Energy doesn't matter that much overall.
Pistol caliber bullets in general don't contain much energy regardless.
Focus on wounding internal organs directly, not trying to dump energy into the target that doesn't mean much.
How about a very small plastic sabot to load .312/.32acp projectiles in 9x19 cases? The small 50gr lehigh cavitators have slightly higher sectional density than their 65gr .355 cousins. Puts a small advantage towards the smaller projectile right off the bat, and the decreased mass could reach similar velocities to the libcd's schp. Or you could cast a zinc/pewter/aluminum cavitator/xp projectile, around an extended penetrator, and have something that will still tear up flesh but also bring along some ap ability, similar to the vbr paralight projectile design.
Agree aluminum is an under utilized projectile material. Did jay wolf ever get his titanium cored 5.7 projectile project off the ground?
>Agree aluminum is an under utilized projectile material. Did jay wolf ever get his titanium cored 5.7 projectile project off the ground?
Not sure, but I heard of someone making Al. 45-70 rounds a while back, if you can believe it.
Does aluminum have to be jacketed? It seems to generate a lot of friction.
As I recall yes.
Does it have to be a metallic jacket? Could an aluminum or other harder than copper material be poly/powdercoated?
>dagny dagger
I wish this wasn't just a pipe dream being run by an autist. I really would love to buy some before 2100.
It really shouldn't be that hard to reverse engineer, it's just a plastic bullet with a thin metal rod in it. With such low weight, basically any metal would do, Lead, Aluminum, Tin, Pewter, Copper, Basically anything pointy will go through Kevlar at mach 2
If I wanted to I'd clip a tungsten rod and do it myself but for something that is essentially a pointless novelty I'd rather just pay the premium.
.223 is superior tp 7.62x39 because it flies faster. It pens armor which 7.62 can't pen.
t. Ukrie
I agree with you on this.
Light and fast is the future for handguns.
Bullets can only get so fast before they start exploding mid air because of inconsistent air density
Black person what
I'm guessing they need to be moving a hell of a lot faster (5x? 10x? more?) for that to even come into consideration.
One of the most moronic sentences I've ever read. Every school you've ever been to owes their tax payers a refund.
I love you autismo
Bruh what +++++P magnum loads are you using to get double digit percentage of C speeds.
I want a 100kpsi .224 Boz shooting a M855A1 bullet. Rifle damage from a 4" pistol barrel out to 50+ meters.
I had this exact debate with myself looking what caliber to get for a PCC It's a project gun where I'm building custom srocks for it but wanted to explore the potential of long range shooting with one. I looked into 10mm and exotic underwood/ Buffalo bore loadings.
The best handgun ammo ballistically is 9mm NATO. 124 grain loaded slightly spicier than usual. A very boring answer. The 10mm pissing hot philipshead bullets simply bleed energy too quickly and go parabolic. Terrible ballistic coefficient and Sectional density. The regular 10mm is too underpowered to compensate it's higher SD.
>The best handgun ammo ballistically is 9mm NATO. 124 grain loaded slightly spicier than usual. A very boring answer. The 10mm pissing hot philipshead bullets simply bleed energy too quickly and go parabolic. Terrible ballistic coefficient and Sectional density. The regular 10mm is too underpowered to compensate it's higher SD.
This is why you convert 10mm to 9x25 Dillon.
Yes
Long range shooting with a handgun round is a pretty minuscule niche though anon. For the vast majority (and OP mentions "defensive" use) handgun round expected engagement envelope is strictly <20yd. That's like 99.7% of defense cases. <7yd is still like 90%. There is absolutely nothing wrong with challenging yourself to ring steel or nail targets at 100yd or 200yd for that matter, but that's not a defense or even hunting use case at all that's pure sport.
So I think for the vast majority it absolute makes sense to have less recoil and improved velocity/penetration/energy in exchange for much faster falloff/worse ballistics. It simply doesn't matter that dropoff falls like a rock past 50yd, no one is using it in a serious way past that distance anyway.
Personally I also strongly considered a PCC project gun last year and ended up giving up on the whole concept, PCCs just didn't seem to make much sense anymore.
That's true, but even with a 10mm passing hot lightweight bullet at 20 feet it STILL doesn't generate rifle-like velocities and it will just punch a hole like any other handgun round will.
Pistol rounds are just limited. There's just not enough room in the case to do anything that useful and the bore is always too big leading to crappy BC and SD. Even the 5.7 just doesn't cut it.
I like PCCs in that they're an OK substitute for a rifle in most cases you'd use one. Shooting accurately within a 150 yards or so. They're pretty much inferior, besides that they can be lighter/compact/ more economical. You kinda throw that out if you run anything other than 9mm though.
I spent a lot of time weighing the merits of 10mm in a PCC but even though you can achieve rifle-like muzzle energies round 1000 ft/lbs with meme cartridges... it's still not a rifle, doesn't have the velocity or ballistics. You can basically make it like a .30 carbine only worse.
One more niche I will point out to defend the honor of PCCs, is you can make a very quiet gun from a PCC. You can get a .45 Hi-Point carbine, they all have threaded muzzles for some bizzare reason and throw on a can that costs twice as much as the carbine does. It would do anything an AR with subsonic .300 Blackout can do but better pretty much.
7.5FK gives us
>6.16 g (95 gr) FKB S95 JHP @ 2,000 ft/s (610 m/s)
From a 6" barrel.
You could cut that bullet weight down and get up to the 2400FPS velocity standard of old school 5.56NATO fragmentation thresholds.
9mm Dillon is another candidate for getting that kind of velocity as well.
But I think .30 cal is a better starting point than .35 cal for this.
Non AP pistol rounds will one day defeat level III steel armor.
At some point, there isn't enough bearing surface on the bullet, because it is so short, that you can't even seat in the case.
Also, penetration is THE most important wounding characteristic if you want a fatal shot. Even the FBI understands this, and they are morons.
You can change the material though. Thunderzap used plastic, the Dagny Dagger used plastic with a metal core, and jacketed Aluminum bullets are a real possibility for super-light rounds
Doesn't this make it an 'armor piercing' bullet? I realized I don't know the definition of the law. But doesn't it forbid like saboted pistol rounds?
Checked.
While they're always trying to change the definition of armor piercing bullet, as it stands now it has to have a core of a specific list of metals, of which Aluminum is not one.
>Also, penetration is THE most important wounding characteristic if you want a fatal shot.
A brass jacketed AL core pistol round moving at over mach 2 isnt going to struggle to penetrate because it's not going to deform at all.
More speed = more pen.
Projectile weight and size also matter but speed is the most important.
Demonstrably false.
Against soft targets momentum tends to scale better with penetration than energy, but against relatively thin armor materials the reverse is often true.
The ideal bullet is a big enough size to penetrate well but fast enough that when it does it shatters and expends all of its force into the target so it leaves a massive cavity. Faster isnt better and either heavier or lighter isnt better. Its all a matter of how heavy it is against how light it is. There is an ideal speed for every weight where it will expend all of its energy into a target with the most effectiveness. The only real issue is picking one of those special situations that is actually practical since most arent. You are limited in so many ways on what makes something actually feasible. If you were trying to make a 9mm hit that special ratio it would basically be a rifle cartridge.
In a pistol there simply isnt enough space to hit any of the golden ratios which is why everyone settles for hollow points. You could do some fancy super necked down wildcat round but they are less than ideal.
>In a pistol there simply isnt enough space to hit any of the golden ratios
Checked, but it appears that Mach two is very achievable with the right cartridge and bullet, and that mach 3 might even be possible on the theoretical extreme.
The issue with getting the higher speeds is a reduction in bullet mass which is a big deal when it comes to power. Sure you could hit the ratio with a lighter bullet but even hitting it with something light might still end up doing less damage than a standard hollowpoint from a normal round in most situations.
speed is squared, mass is linear
twice the speed means you can reduce the weight of the bullet by 75%
Air resistance is proportionate to the cross section of the projectile. For a round projectile A = 1/4 * pi * d^2
halving the diameter would reduce the air resistance by 75%
In practice, no cartridge I'm aware of allows you to gain double the velocity by halving the weight of the projectile within a safe operating pressure. Most cartridges also don't tend to have a projectile available that is 75% the weight of the heaviest unless it's a sabot.
You usually gain 30-40% more velocity by using projectiles half the weight of the heaviest practical bullet, just doing a cursory glance over my manuals.
Energy tends to stay pretty consistent at the upper pressure limits across different bullet weights because of this.
>75% of the weight of its heaviest projectile
*25%
What about the liberty defense at 50gr at 2000 fps?
Obviously you'd want a solid. And sure, you may need +p pressures but 2000 fps is not a 40% improvement and 50gr is not 25% the weight.
The problem is the barrel length. A lighter bullet gets accelerated faster by the same pressure (force) than a heavier. Meaning it spends less time in the barrel, so the force has less time to accelerate it.
F = ma
a = dv / dt
>unless it's a sabot.
exactly
Some anon a while back had a thread where he was trying to disassemble a liberty cd 9mm cartridge. It apparently had one hell of a crimp. I'm assuming with lighter and lighter projectiles, a heavier and heavier crimp may be needed to slow the bullet leaving the casing by some fractional amount of time, allowing pressure to build behind it. A balancing act for sure between increasing velocity and eventually finding the weakest link in the mini-pipe-bomb chain (likely the primer in a fully supported chamber). Those nickel stainless shellshock cases are the only cases I would use to experiment with crimp v velocity testing.
Did a quick google search and holy shit,
>factory loads
So much of this bullshit about light bullets is coming from people who have only ever seen factory ammo. Then they're surprised when some factory loads their meme bullets a little hotter than others, Lmao.
A non deforming pistol round at higher than mach two is going to blow straight through whatever you hit, and dump an enourmous amount of energy along the way.
See THV ammo.
Would be interesting to see a copper sabot and extended aluminum alloy cored vbr paralight round. Given the same dimension, the sabot would still be 25gn and the core would be to around 20-25gn from 60gn. Puts it in the liberty schp range. Could also do it with a monel alloy/nickel-copper welding rod.
Rough calcs
>6.3x18mm aluminum core
>23.3gn mass
>25gn copper sabot
Call it 50gn projectile. Sectional density of the core would be 0.058 per vcalc. Sectional density of the projectile overall is .057. With the steel core of 60gn the sectional density is 0.137 for the penetrator and .097 for the total projectile.
Aluminum THVs wpuld be low enough mass they could have a small lead slug placed inside their hollow bases without crossing the >25% total projectile weight rule and still being very light for caliber. Pewter alloys are hard, although I'm not sure they'd be safe to leave exposed, as they might not yield to the rifling in the bore, leading to extremely high pressures. For AP, going as small a diameter for a penetrator, and extending its length as much as possible seems key to focusing what little energy it might have at range into the smallest area possible, maximing its chance of penetration. 2mm tungaten carbide rod might be the way to go. DM91 has a fairly small diameter penetrator core and works well due to its ~3mm diameter, despite relatively modest velocoties.
>you will never in a timeline where the Colt scamp was adopted and had 50 years of development
Why live
>The proprietary .22 SCAMP (5.56x29mm centerfire) cartridge was loaded with pointed jacketed bullet weighting 40 grains (2.5 gram), with muzzle velocity about 2100 fps (640 m/s).
Not bad when it comes to a PDW cartridge in that time period.
A little bit more velocity would be better. Pre-EPR and modern OTM specialty cartridges you needed more pep to start getting proper fragmentation.
Although, if they made the jacket thinner on that, as it was just a pistol cartridge. They could get fragmentation at lower velocities with conventional design work otherwise.
What about explosive pistol ammunition? Sure you won't pierce body armor but is that really necessary if you destroy every unarmored aspect of the target?
>Very fast bullets?
how the frick is this still up LOL
Then there's 6.5cbj, which this illustrated cutaway of shows a two piece sabot with what is likely a metal base plate, rather than the single piece injection molded sabot they have published photos of. There was a south african projectile I stumbled across some time ago that incorporated a nondiscarding polymer sabot and hardened steel penetrator by making the penetrator have a thin, full sabot diameter flat bottom to take the pressure of the gasses when fired, but that would suffer the same issues of decreased sectional density
38 SUPER NOW
124 grain at 1,400 + fps?
no problem
>Are lighter, faster projectiles the future of defensive handgun ammo?
No it's just the same 9mm we've been using for decades. Defensive loads are pretty much a solved problem. Just look at the lackluster performance of .30 Super Carry.
Maybe when soft body armor becomes common on criminals something like .30 Uber Carry will be developed to defeat it, but until then I don't see any major deficiencies in 9mm or other popular defensive calibers/loads.
>Maybe when soft body armor becomes common on criminals
It's common on the worst kind of criminals.