Color Tipped Bullets - Firearm Blog

Black-Tipped Rounds Armor-piercing (AP)

An armor-piercing (AP) shell is a type of ammunition designed to penetrate armor. From the 1860’s to 1950’s, a major application of armor-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armor carried on many warships. From the 1920’s onwards, armor-piercing weapons were required for anti-tank missions. Furthermore it is used to defeat concrete, ballistic vests, bulletproof glass, and other defenses.

AP bullet

1. Light weight ballistic cap
2. Steel alloy piercing shell
3. Desensitized bursting charge like TNT, Trinitrophenol.
4. Fuse
5. Bourrelet

An armor-piercing shell must withstand the shock of punching through armor plating. Shells designed for this purpose have a greatly strengthened case with a specially hardened and shaped nose, and a much smaller bursting charge. Some smaller-caliber AP shells have an inert filling, or incendiary charge in place of the HE bursting charge. The AP shell is now little used in naval warfare, as modern warships have little or no armor protection, but it remains the preferred round in tank warfare, as it has a greater “first-hit kill” probability than high explosive anti tank (HEAT) round, especially against a target with composite armor, and because of higher muzzle velocity, is also more accurate than a HEAT round.

Armor-piercing cartridges are also available as small arms ammunition, primarily for use as an anti-material round or to defeat body armor.

Blue-Tipped Round Incendiary Rounds

Incendiary projectiles, in particular those for armor penetration, are more effective if they explode after penetrating a surface layer, such that they explode inside the target. Additionally, target with onboard electronics or computers can be damaged by metal fragments when they explode on the surface. Ignition is often delayed by varying means until after impact.

Incendiary Round

Orange/Red Colored Rounds Tracer Ammunition

Trace ammunition (tracers) are bullets or cannon caliber projectiles that are built with a small pyrotechnic charge in their base. Ignited by the burning powder, the pyrotechnic composition burns very brightly, making projectile visible to the naked eye. This enables the shooter to follow the projectile trajectory in order to make aiming corrections.

When used, tracers are usually loaded as every fifth round in machine gun belts, referred to as four-to-one tracer. Platoon and squad leaders will sometimes load their magazines entirely with tracers to mark targets for their soldiers to fire on. Tracers are also sometimes placed two or three rounds from the bottom magazines to alert the shooter that their weapon is almost empty.

Tracer rounds may also ignite flammable substances on contact from a nominal distance.

Red/Orange colored

Green-Tipped Rounds AP Rounds

Same as Black-Tipped but used in longer ranges.

Green colored

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