AFTE Store - Revisitation of the “Standard Bullet” & the Genesis of the Ballistic Coefficient

The so-called “standard bullet” served as a basis for the development and definition of the G1 “ballistic coefficient” (BC) that can be found in the publications of most bullet manufacturers for each of their products. Although the concept and application of the BC dates back to the pioneer days of exterior ballistics, it is still widely used in virtually all inexpensive, contemporary exterior ballistic programs for PCs despite the fact that no modern bullet comes close to having the same size, shape or proportions of the 1 pound, 1-inch diameter “standard bullet”. The first part of this article provides an introduction to the background and use of common G1 BC values (hereafter referred to as simply BC) for some modern bullets and how they relate to the “standard bullet”. This is followed by the exterior ballistic results for a scaled down, proportionally correct reduced standard bullet (RSB) derived from multiple Doppler radar tracking of this RSB. This latter exercise was a true experiment since it was totally unclear how the exterior ballistic performance of the RSB would compare to the classic, theoretical performance of the G1 “standard bullet”.