Okay, you may have seen my previous posts about the soldiers in the movie having one-man portable SABOT guns. It turns out I was right.

I talked to my dad about it, who is a lieutenant Colonel in the army, and it breaks down like this:

 

1. SABOT rounds are tipped with depleted uranium and are primarily used as tank ammo.

 

2. Helicopters can be fitted with SABOT guns, but this rarely happens since they usually use missiles.

 

3. There is NO SUCH THING as a hand-held SABOT gun. Period. Because it isn't even possible to make one, and this is why:

 

SABOT is classified as a "kinetic energy penetrator", as opposed to a "chemical energy penetrator" (which are missiles and bombs and things that explode). Which means that in order for a SABOT round to be doing what it's supposed to do, it has to be moving very, very fast. We're talking a mile a second kind of speed. With all that kinetic energy and friction, the casing (which is made of Tungston Carbide) becomes Pyrophoric, which means that when it hits an enemy tank, the superheated tip of it with flake away as it strikes, embedding itself in the surrounding material and releasing radiation that melts through everything immediately around it. A SABOT round does not explode, it simply melts a hole through what it hits. And it is simply not possible to make a hand-held gun that is capable of getting the SABOT round to go nearly as fast as it needs to go to be effective. They're shot out of 10-ton tanks for a reason.

 

On top of that, the term SABOT does not even refer to the DU penetrator, or the ammo at all. SABOT is simply the french word for "shoe", and the word sabotage is from when angry french shoe workers would throw their wooden shoes into the machine to break it so they wouldn't have to work. In this case, the term SABOT refers to the 3 metal "shoes" that fit around the base of the ammo round and hold it in place, since the ammo round is actually smaller in diameter than the inside of the tank barrel. This allows the round to have the extra force of a bigger gun still applied to a smaller "bullet", making it travel much faster and farther when shot. The 3 "shoes", are not attached to the round and simply fly off of it as soon as it leaves the tank barrel. You can go onto a tank practice range and pick them up off the ground all over the place.

 

Anyway, this proves that the movie does not fully understand the workings of the army equipment that they supposedly used in it. But hey, it's a movie, go figure. It would be nice if they were accurate, but what do you expect?

well, there's no such thing as a hand-held gatling gun either, but it didn't stop Jesse Ventura from carrying one in Predator 'n stuff like that :tftongue

They could have used some form of hand-held High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) rounds. According to this wiki page, "Where HEAT is used as the warhead for guided missiles, rifle grenades and spigot mortars, warhead size is not a limiting factor, as these are not contained within the firing weapon's barrel."

 

Another theory is that the hand-held "sabot" weapons they picked up was from Sector Seven - not standard military issue, so possibly it was some new weapon that S7 was secretly developing from more reverse engineering from NBE-1. It's a plausible theory and a LOT less ridiculous than Spiderman 2's plot device of creating nuclear fission from an atom of freaking Tritium (which is just impossible).

well, there's no such thing as a hand-held gatling gun either, but it didn't stop Jesse Ventura from carrying one in Predator 'n stuff like that :tftongue

 

 

There can be, but it's just far too impractical and kind of dangerous. What this guy is talking about sounds truly impossible.

i think when we get the dvd and freeze frame it you'll see that the machine guns were firing tiny wooden shoes at the robots

 

:tflaugh

 

That's cool research. I hate going with my Green Beret dad to the movies sometimes because he points out stuff like that allll the time. But Michael had a whole lot of military involvement in this movie- you can't expect they'll get every detail straight, or that they would even want to (for sake of story).

It's fiction. It's Transformers. I really gotta ask, who cares?

If this is a major issue with the movie for anyone, you gotta kinda ask yourself why that is. Cause if that's a major issue, then it seems the movie must have been handled well enough to force this kind of detail to bother someone (as in they can't find a lot to actually hate on).

 

But I do appreciate the effort into finding out the real-world details.

I'm going to let hand held "SABOT cannons" slide with my suspension of disbelief the same way I do for that ENTIRE anti-matter fiasco in Roll For It.

:tflaugh

 

That's cool research. I hate going with my Green Beret dad to the movies sometimes because he points out stuff like that allll the time.

 

I know you you feel. When my dad and I watch anything (be it a television show or a movie) is there's anything involving a psychiatric facility and treatment of patients, he'll point out the stuff that's either accurate or not (they apparently don't use straight jackets anymore...who knew?)

 

But I also agree with DM, who cares.

 

But then again, Goki has a very valid point of stating that it could have also have been developed by S7 with more reverse engineering from Megatron.

 

But in the end, it's still a cool bit of info you just shared with us there. Thanks :thumb

well, there's no such thing as a hand-held gatling gun either, but it didn't stop Jesse Ventura from carrying one in Predator 'n stuff like that :tftongue

There can be, but it's just far too impractical and kind of dangerous.

 

Two things that work against it:

1. it's pretty heavy - an M134 minigun weighs 65 lbs without battery and ammunition. A 1500 round ammo drum (enough for 30s of firing) weighs 130 lbs. Plus the batteries to power it - it needs 24-28V - so two car batteries .

2. the recoil - about 300 lbs of kick at peak