O-108 Bullet Impact Results Database

One of the stimuli specified in NATO STANAG 4439 on Insensitive Munitions (IM) requirements, and in the national IM policies of France, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States is small arms attack or bullet impact.

While most of national and international policies request all-up-round (AUR) tests to validate the response of a munition to this threat and in general to IM threats, a methodology using a combination of small-scale testing, modelling and expert analysis has emerged in recent years as a best practice.

To assist the community in developing this methodology, MSIAC staff has assembled information related to bullet impact testing in a single database. The purpose of this paper is to present the MSIAC Bullet Impact Results Database (BIRD) version 1.0.

• The information available in BIRD is of twofold:
• Information Related to Systems Threat Test Reaction Level. As shown in the following Table, more than 100 open publications (proceedings of symposia, unclassified reports, magazine, scientific review) have been used for a total of 2161 bullet impact results, most of them being dedicated to 7.62mm and 12.7mm bullets.
• Information Related to Generic Testing Units (GTU). In this worksheet, twenty-four (24) GTU have been dimensionally characterised and, when available, drawings or pictures have been provided.  

This database, which is easy to use and update, can serve to compare or predict the bullet impact response of systems, sub-components or energetic materials. It has been designed also to be able to provide statistics in order to increase the confidence in the test results.