Original Item: Only One Available. Armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS), long dart penetrator, or simply dart ammunition, is a type of kinetic energy penetrator ammunition used to attack modern vehicle armor. As an armament for main battle tanks, it succeeds Armor-Piercing Discarding Sabot (APDS) ammunition, which is still used in small or medium caliber weapon systems.

This round is completely inert and in direct compliance per the current BATF standards governing the ownership of inert ordnance. This is just the round and there are no explosives present, nor can this be converted to be used as an explosive device.

Not Available For Export

The 105×617mm (4.1 inch) also known as 105 × 617 R is a common, NATO-standard, tank gun cartridge used in 105mm guns such as those derived from the Royal Ordnance L7.

The 105×617mmR cartridge was originally developed from the 84 mm (3.3 in) caliber Ordnance QF 20-pounder 84 × 618R cartridge as part of the development of the L7 105 mm rifled gun.

First serial production APFSDS of the United States. Developed from the 152mm XM578E1 projectile, with increased core length and mass, as well as projectile body length. XM735E2 Standardized as M735 around 1976.

This sabot is in good condition with all original markings present. Unfortunately, the tip at the top of the dart appears to have been cut off and then put back together using an insert in both pieces.

Comes ready for display!

Sabot Design
Typical velocities of APFSDS rounds vary between manufacturers and muzzle length/types. As a typical example, the American General Dynamics KEW-A1 has a muzzle velocity of 1,740 m/s (5,700 ft/s). This compares to 914 m/s (3,000 ft/s) for a typical rifle (small arms) round. APFSDS rounds generally operate in the range of 1,400 to 1,800 m/s (4,593 to 5,906 ft/s). Above a certain minimum impact velocity necessary to overcome target material strength parameters significantly, penetrator length is more important than impact velocity; as exemplified by the fact that the base model M829 flies nearly 200 m/s (656 ft/s) faster than the newer model M829A3, but is only about one half the length, wholly inadequate for defeating state-of-the-art armor arrays.

Complicating matters, when foreign deployment of military forces or export sales markets are considered, a sabot designed specifically to launch a DU penetrator cannot simply be used to launch a substitute WHA penetrator, even of exactly the same manufactured geometry. The two materials behave differently under high pressure, high launch acceleration forces, such that entirely different sabot material geometries, (thicker or thinner in some places, if even possible), are required to maintain in-bore structural integrity.

Often the greater engineering challenge is designing an efficient sabot to successfully launch extremely long penetrators, now approaching 80 cm (31 in) in length. The sabot, necessary to fill the bore of the cannon when firing a long, slender flight projectile, is parasitic weight that subtracts from the potential muzzle velocity of the entire projectile. Maintaining the in-bore structural integrity of such a long flight projectile under accelerations of tens of thousands of g's is not a trivial undertaking, and has brought the design of sabots from employing in the early 1980s readily available low cost, high strength aerospace-grade aluminums, such as 6061 and 6066-T6, to high strength and more expensive 7075-T6 aluminum, maraging steel, and experimental ultra-high strength 7090-T6 aluminum, to the current state-of-the-art and incredibly expensive graphite fiber reinforced plastics, in order to further reduce the parasitic sabot mass, that could be nearly half the launch mass of the entire projectile.

The discarding sabot petals travel at such a high muzzle velocity that, on separation, they may continue for many hundreds of feet at speeds that can be lethal to troops and damaging to light vehicles. For this reason, tank gunners have to be aware of danger to nearby troops.

The saboted flechette was the counterpart of APFSDS in rifle ammunition. A rifle for firing flechettes, the Special Purpose Individual Weapon, was under development for the US Army, but the project was abandoned.