Chinese researchers claim to be able to disable US tanks with fast-moving ball (opens in new tab)

It's like a modern cannonball. They say a 20kg "solid sphere" traveling at 4x the speed of sound could disable a tank by exerting forces on bolts that connect the pieces together, but otherwise leaving the tank with the appearance of being mostly unharmed.

> They found that a solid sphere, weighing 20kg [...] at about four times the speed of sound [...] 25 megajoules.

For comparison, the projectile from a US M829 tank round [0] involves a spike with a mass of 4.6kg traveling at an (initial) speed of mach 4.59, or around 5.70 megajoules. The propellant and all the other stuff which stays behind brings that up to 18.6kg.

I assume this cannonball's dramatically higher projectile-mass is needed in order to make up for accuracy, so that a glancing hit still rattles everything enough to make a difference.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M829

Chinese researchers can claim this, but realistically, the US is one of the only countries that has repeatedly deployed its current tanks in a war context. If you don't have experience with tanks in a war, you'll very quickly learn what matters.

It's made out of LK99?