Kinetic Impact Weapons

>higher velocity throughout its flight path. It's also more likely to maintain its initial, aerodynamically favorable orientation. Bullets fired vertically tend to fall nose-up or sideways, which creates a lot of drag.

From your article. So it seems like the velocity you are working with are unstabilized ones.

>what the holy fuck is gravity and why does it accelerate objects?!?

Correct.

But even so. Let's say the Lazy Dog could reach a terminal velocity of 500 mph.

Per the Slate article, a .5 ounce bullet traveling at 204 mph is unlikely to kill you.

A .5 ounce Lazy Dog traveling at 500 mph is going to be more likely to kill you, sure, but it still doesn't seem like it would be an effective weapon.

In the wiki for Kinetic Bombardment there's a paragraph about the Lazy Dog. One part states:

>Bodies had been penetrated longitudinally from shoulder to lower abdomen.[citation needed]

Citation needed is right. Unless I'm missing something it just doesn't seem like a .5 ounce projectile @ 500 mph could go through a human body from shoulder to abdomen.

There is a big difference in energy between the two.

200 mph comes out to around 50 joules.
while 500 will be around 325 joules.

Doesn't seem like a huge difference in speed, but there is a huge difference in energy at impact.

Thank you for that. That's definitely one of the things I was missing in understanding this.

Ok, so a Lazy Dog could have 325 joules.

Wikipedia states:
>Shape 5, an improved basic Lazy Dog slug, had the force of a .50 caliber bullet and could penetrate 24 inches (61 cm) of packed sand.

Well, being as a .50 BMG has around 18,000 joules of energy this seems patently false...

what about the possibility of the plane coming in at a angle for a dive bomb from a higher altitude?
is it possible the extra speed from dropping altitude could propel the planes faster thus making the lazy dogs drop at a faster rate while taking into effect the mass and air resistance of the lazy dog? wouldn't you need more space to decelerate from air drag to reach normal terminal velocity?

The VietnamGear website says

>Each micro-missile was fin-stabilized and capable of attaining a terminal velocity of 700 feet per second, which produced penetrating power equivalent to between a 45-calibre slug and a 30-calibre carbine.

700 fps = 477 mph.

Regular issue .45 ACP has 540 J. I guess that's in the ballpark of 325 J for the Lazy Dog if you allow for a big enough ball park.

But the .45 ACP was said to be inadequate as a SMG round by the time of the Vietnam War.

So again, it just doesn't make sense to me why the Lazy Dog saw decades of development and use if the performance was LESS than a .45 ACP.

But either way, I was wrong on the terminal velocity front. These things could attain ~500 mph terminal velocity speeds and that's something I doubted.

Dive bombing? If the plane dived at 300 mph it the bombs could make it to 500 mph like that.

The 500 mph instance could come from the combined velocity. A rudimentary example would be a 3,4,5 triangle. The plane traveling at 400 mph in the x direction drops a projectile that picks up a 300 mph speed in the y direction. one quick solve later and you have lazy dogs flying at ~500 mph. If 300 seems too fast for a terminal velocity, im sure the "skyraiders" could exceed 400 mph

>So again, it just doesn't make sense to me why the Lazy Dog saw decades of development and use if the performance was LESS than a .45 ACP.
because it's fucking cheap as shit

you don't need to get up close, you can fly a plane over an area and drop dirt-cheap munitions and it's about as effective as if you'd had someone spraying every square foot of jungle with a machine gun

45 ACP will still kill a person if you shoot them enough, its not like the bullet is unable to do damage. The 45ACP was being retired because 5.56 and 7.62 were adopted as standard nato rounds.

But if you could drop like 10000 of them on a concentration of enemy infantry at normal bullet speeds that will still kill and maim and that is the objective in war, not efficiency.

Mass has nothing to do will free fall, only aerodynamic profile.
Also, no kindergartners allowed

terminal velocity occurs when the weight of the object is equal to the resistance from air of the object. Both mass and aerodynamics play a role.

As for OP's question, I would guess the canister itself falls faster than the small projectiles, and when opened the flechettes have enough momentum to keep going for a while.

Yea that doesn't seem to add up. The 325 seems pretty accurate when comparing to stuff like a 9mm. But its no way its comparable to a .50. The falling velocity must be a lot more than 500mph for it to be true. Its probably still a potential leathal round though.

So Lazy Dogs are basically bullets sent from the sky. cool idea.
Only thing that worked with veitnam is Nukes.