The Best Weapons the Empire Can Buy

Of course, it's totally a co-incidence they happen to be made of nuclear waste, too:

For decades, depleted uranium (DU) has been the material of choice for anti-tank projectiles — despite a series of controversies about its potential health hazards. But for the near future, at least, the U.S. military will keep on using DU. Alternatives based on tungsten haven’t panned out. Now, the Army is upgrading to a new 120mm Advanced Kinetic Energy round, and about the only thing we know for sure is that it will be made of DU. The generation after that … may be an improved version of DU called Stakalloy.

Kinetic rounds are slim metal darts fired from tanks like the MAA1 Abrams at very high velocity. The preference for DU is not based, as some conspiracy theorists would have it, on a diabolical scheme to dump nuclear waste in developing countries. It’s because in addition to its high hardness and density, it has a property called adiabatic shear banding. Essentially, DU is crumbly rather than squishy. During the process of high-speed penetration through metal armor, fragments flake off a DU projectile. This means that a DU projectile is “self-sharpening” (compared to tungsten, which tends to deform in a blunted, mushroom shape.) It also means that DU produces a pyrophoric effect, filling the vehicle hit with a lethal fireball of tiny burning particles. That too makes it more effective...

From the earliest days of uranium processing, natural uranium was known as Tube Alloy (from “Tube Alloys”, a codename for the Manhattan Project), while enriched uranium was Oralloy (”Oak Ridge Alloy”) and the depleted remnant was known as Staballoy.

Staballoys containing DU with a small admixture of titanium (from 0.75 percent to 3.5 percent) have been the basis of anti-tank rounds for decades. However, now researchers are experimenting with a new version, known as Stakalloy, which combines uranium with niobium and vanadium. This is said to have improved hardness and ballistic properties compared to traditional uranium-titanium Staballoys.

In 2007, the Army requested the processing of “U-V-X Alloy Ingots,” described in the solicitation as Stakalloy. The document noted that “previous development work over the last few years at Aerojet for the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has produced new alloys with interesting properties and test prototypes for ballistic evaluation at ARL.” The idea was to find the best method of turning the ingots into “full-scale kinetic-energy penetrators.” (A two-stage quench process is suggested to prevent cracking.)

A detailed description of the new Stakalloy can be found in the patent for it...

As I read it, that's a round of 95% pure uranium.

Somehow it doesn't sound like a real healthy thing to be alive on a battlefield after thousands- maybe millions- of rounds of these munitions have been fired, burned, and turned to hot uranium oxide dust.