5 ms·

>Today, it is a specialty commodity with few commercial applications—mostly for rocket hobbyists—but it’s still used in more than 300 munitions, from cruise mis

>Today, it is a specialty commodity with few commercial applications—mostly for rocket hobbyists—but it’s still used in more than 300 munitions, from cruise missiles, to bullets for M16 rifles, to the vital 155mm shells. I don't know about the others, but M16 rifle rounds don't use black powder, they use modern smokeless powder. By modern, I mean invented in 1884. I would be surprised if any of those other things mentioned use black powder. The author seems to think black powder is all gunpowder but it isn't. Black powder is reserved for old guns that can't handle modern powder that were made before the late 1800s, early 1900s. There is a classification of hunting rifle called muzzle loaders that also use it, but they are niche. It's also used in fireworks, that's why they are so smokey. When you see a movie where they depict an old battle where there are huge plumes of smoke coming out of the rifles or muskets, that's black powder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_powder Here's what black powder looks like when used in a firearm. https://www.saobserver.net/community/in-photos-monashee-mountain-men-black-powder-shoot/ https://www.saobserver.net/community/in-photos-monashee-moun...

berkle4455 4y ago
Now if St Marks Powder in Tallahassee blew up, we’d have an actual problem.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
I assume they're talking about trace amounts being used in primers and detonators.
- Clubber 4y ago
  I thought that might be it, but primers use lead styphnate. https://www.virtusammo.com/primers-101-how-are-ammunition-primers-are-made/#:~:text=A%20primer%20is%20constructed%20of,the%20anvil%2C%20is%20set%20in https://www.virtusammo.com/primers-101-how-are-ammunition-pr....
  - Chrontius 4y ago
    Lead-free primers are a thing. The US military prefers to minimize lead wherever reasonably feasible, because the VA is expensive, and when they have to pay to clean up their ranges during routine maintenance, extremely high amounts of lead dramatically increases the price of this scheduled maintenance. Their primary objective is still to close with and destroy the enemy, so if they still need to use lead or uranium to get the job done, the mission comes first. But if they can save money by using lead-free training ammo, that's more money they can spend on training the troops and ammo for them to practice with. And more money to issue everybody a bazooka of some flavor or another, as Ukraine is demonstrating is a really useful idea right about now. Remember: Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
fwlr 4y ago
Yes, the author is confused. This factory produces black-powder, which is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. All modern ammunition uses smokeless powder, which is stabilized nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. (This confusion likely is due to the term gunpowder, which when used as a technical term only refers to black-powder. Unfortunately it is also used colloquially to mean any kind of explosive powder put into cartridges that are detonated to launch projectiles from guns. In this sense of gunpowder, almost all of it is smokeless powder, and thus its colloquial meaning is almost completely at odds with its technical meaning.) To my knowledge, the US military does not rely on blackpowder in any meaningful way. Even if my knowledge is incomplete and they do depend on it in some odd way (e.g. I suppose they might have a pre-existing inventory of weapons designed to use black powder primers, where it is cheaper to keep sourcing black powder rather than retrofit the weapons to use smokeless powder primers) there are several corporations manufacturing large quantities of 1:1 black powder substitutes.
- Chrontius 4y ago
  Black powder is used in booster charges. In artillery fuzes, there can be up to four different types of explosive in the explosive train which ignites the main charge, according to my half-assed Googling and Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_train In addition, black powder in particular is used in recoilless rifles, perhaps the most famous example being the RPG-7. http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2016/01/31__04_23_48/main_preview.jpgfb011b2d-4197-444c-b6bc-c9e0b042a353Original.jpg http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2016/01/31__04_23_48... In this image, the olive-drab component is the warhead-and-rocket assembly, and the forest-green component is a full fucking pound of black powder which launches the rocket to a minimum safe range before the ignition of the main propulsion motor. I'm presently unsure about the propellants used in other recoilless systems, but I can presume that there exist designs other than the RPG-7 which are currently being provided in bulk to Ukraine, while simultaneously utilizing some amount of black powder in the propulsion system, while some further subset of those will prove difficult to redesign to use more modern double- or triple-base smokeless propellants due to the much higher operating pressure of these propellants, especially in the context of thin-walled light-weight launchers.
Canada 4y ago
The article suggests that the blackpower is used to make cartridge primers. I'm not sure if that is true or not.

berkle4455 4y ago

Now if St Marks Powder in Tallahassee blew up, we’d have an actual problem.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

I assume they're talking about trace amounts being used in primers and detonators.

Clubber 4y ago
I thought that might be it, but primers use lead styphnate. https://www.virtusammo.com/primers-101-how-are-ammunition-primers-are-made/#:~:text=A%20primer%20is%20constructed%20of,the%20anvil%2C%20is%20set%20in https://www.virtusammo.com/primers-101-how-are-ammunition-pr....
- Chrontius 4y ago
  Lead-free primers are a thing. The US military prefers to minimize lead wherever reasonably feasible, because the VA is expensive, and when they have to pay to clean up their ranges during routine maintenance, extremely high amounts of lead dramatically increases the price of this scheduled maintenance. Their primary objective is still to close with and destroy the enemy, so if they still need to use lead or uranium to get the job done, the mission comes first. But if they can save money by using lead-free training ammo, that's more money they can spend on training the troops and ammo for them to practice with. And more money to issue everybody a bazooka of some flavor or another, as Ukraine is demonstrating is a really useful idea right about now. Remember: Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

fwlr 4y ago

Yes, the author is confused. This factory produces black-powder, which is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. All modern ammunition uses smokeless powder, which is stabilized nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. (This confusion likely is due to the term gunpowder, which when used as a technical term only refers to black-powder. Unfortunately it is also used colloquially to mean any kind of explosive powder put into cartridges that are detonated to launch projectiles from guns. In this sense of gunpowder, almost all of it is smokeless powder, and thus its colloquial meaning is almost completely at odds with its technical meaning.) To my knowledge, the US military does not rely on blackpowder in any meaningful way. Even if my knowledge is incomplete and they do depend on it in some odd way (e.g. I suppose they might have a pre-existing inventory of weapons designed to use black powder primers, where it is cheaper to keep sourcing black powder rather than retrofit the weapons to use smokeless powder primers) there are several corporations manufacturing large quantities of 1:1 black powder substitutes.

Chrontius 4y ago
Black powder is used in booster charges. In artillery fuzes, there can be up to four different types of explosive in the explosive train which ignites the main charge, according to my half-assed Googling and Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_train In addition, black powder in particular is used in recoilless rifles, perhaps the most famous example being the RPG-7. http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2016/01/31__04_23_48/main_preview.jpgfb011b2d-4197-444c-b6bc-c9e0b042a353Original.jpg http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2016/01/31__04_23_48... In this image, the olive-drab component is the warhead-and-rocket assembly, and the forest-green component is a full fucking pound of black powder which launches the rocket to a minimum safe range before the ignition of the main propulsion motor. I'm presently unsure about the propellants used in other recoilless systems, but I can presume that there exist designs other than the RPG-7 which are currently being provided in bulk to Ukraine, while simultaneously utilizing some amount of black powder in the propulsion system, while some further subset of those will prove difficult to redesign to use more modern double- or triple-base smokeless propellants due to the much higher operating pressure of these propellants, especially in the context of thin-walled light-weight launchers.

Canada 4y ago

The article suggests that the blackpower is used to make cartridge primers. I'm not sure if that is true or not.