A jogger out for an afternoon run in Pennsylvania happened upon a surprise: a tank-killing "sabot" round likely from a M1 Abrams tank. The anti-tank round was turned over to local police, who are attempting to locate the owner.

The munition turned up along the Susquehanna River in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The jogger flagged down police, who took custody of the object. The Pennsylvania State Police Bomb Squad responded to the incident with a bomb-sniffing dog, but nothing else was found.

The object was identified as a 120-millimeter armor piercing discarding sabot (APDS) round used by the M1 Abram's M256 main gun , and from the looks of it, this is specifically the M865 APDS training round . APDS rounds resemble giant darts and are fired from tank barrels at tremendous velocities. In the case of the M865, the round exits a tank barrel at 5,510 feet per second—faster than a mile per second. APDS rounds do not use explosives, instead utilizing a combination of dense metals such as tungsten or depleted uranium and raw kinetic energy to punch through enemy armor.

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But what is the giant dart wrapped in? That's a sabot, French for shoe. An APDS dart round is seated into a traditional gun/howitzer casing along with the propellant. When the tank gun fires, the metal dart travels through the barrel encased in a corset-like metal device, known as the sabot, that keeps it properly aligned. The sabot falls away as the dart exits the barrel and heads downrange toward its target.

The M865 round that was found along the riverbank had apparently been fired. As Guns.com points out, the sabot has been reattached and is held in place with a hose clamp. The armor-piercing tank round's tip is also bent, indicating it struck something at high speed. It was probably someone's souvenir from military service and illegally dumped when it was no longer wanted.

Source: Guns.com

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