Ammunitions (small arms bullets, cannon projectiles, and rocket warheads)

[dy031101]

Each has their advantages and disadvantages of course, but as the Mauser round is a small 85 grain bullet travelling at 1400 fps (compared to the .45s 230 grain, 850 FPS), one would assume that it would be a moreso penetrative round rather than a wounding round.

Hornady produces a hollowpoint bullet for the calibre, although only for handloading instead of being in complete cartridges (so unlike previously suspected I wouldn't necessarily have had to look at Tokarev for bullet donors).

Nevertheless I am kinda suspecting the same thing as you do.

I don't suppose a full-metal jacket bullet is automatically "armor-piercing", is it?

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Would "irregulars" from "a party to the conflict" be protected by the conventions (i.e. no expanding bullets against them)?

By some of the quotes like this:

For many years the British Empire used expanding ammunition in colonial conflicts but didn't in WWI and WWII for the above reasons.

they don't seem to be, but just to be sure......

[icchan]

FMJ is considered ball ammunition, simple jacketed lead.  Not an AP round by any basis, even if it will go through a lot of lighter armor.  An AP load is typically a steel or tungsten cored ball round, sometimes with a fine hollowpoint tip for improved ballistic stability - but even things like a superheavy bonded-core hunting bullet that will do 40+ inches of bear don't count as armor piercing, simply because it's a solid lead core and relatively soft.  Bullet deformation loses a huge amount of energy, which could have gone to going through the target instead of applying force to reshape the bullet.  That's why you're back to the much much harder metals that resist the rapid deformation.

And of course there's explosive AP rounds, though those are more a case of blasting fragments through armor rather than being a 180,000rpm drill bit...

[Maverick]

I think the definition of 'irregular forces' also depends on whether the conflict in which they are a party is a defined 'war' or not.  Vietnam being a case in point.  The US used CS chemical agents against the Viet Cong in their tunnel systems but the general consensus was that it was a 'conflict' rather than a 'declared war' and therefore didn't contravene the conventions that outlaw the use of chemical agents on the battlefield.

If those restrictions still apply (I assume they do, given that they are internationally agreed conventions), it would mean that non-conventional ammunition would constitute an offence by being carried by the users of it, regardless of who they were specifically targetting (ie: conventional or irregular forces) providing that the action was a declared war.  In the event that it wasn't declared (ie: a conflict), those rules would be less enforceable, although the moral implications would still be there (ie: the contravention of international rules of war).

Regards,

Mav