“Since a regulation size football weighs 14 ounces, it was considered feasible to make a shaped charge grenade within this weight limitation. In addition, most US troops are familiar with throwing footballs,” according to the Army’s test report for the weapon.
So Army researchers simply hollowed out a Nerf football — yes, the foam balls you threw as a child — and placed explosives inside.
Footballs fly through the air because there is an even distribution of weight surrounding the hollow inside of the ball. But 14 ounces of explosives tended to make the trajectory of the Nerf grenade “unpredictable,” according to the test report.
I don’t see the vortex technology on it. Can’t get 100yd pass without it.
I got tagged in the eye with one of those. Somebody threw it to a pack of us from a ways off, I was in back, and it went right through everybody’s hands into my eye. I felt it smoosh into my orbital before bouncing off.
Had a pretty bad black eye for a week.
It’s Nerf or Nothin’!
Actually… Yeah, that’s a really good point.
I had a nerf football as a kid that had fins on the back end - no matter how badly you threw it, the fins would help straighten it out and make it fly a bit better. Something like that would have probably fixed a lot of the “unpredictability” issues with this.
Plus the sound is amazing.
Punt it for maximum distance.
Have they tried again? I feel like we could do better with our modern understanding of aerodynamics
What’s the point though? People are familiar with throwing baseballs too, and those take a lot less room to carry around. Hand grenades are already baseball(ish).
“See that tank? NERF!” throws ball; blows up tank “Now it’s nothin’!”
Shoulda kept at it. Way more potential than a soccer (Futbol) ball.
Just put a small nuke inside, then the trajectory doesn’t matter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
They did that too
That’s exactly what I was thinking of.
Relevant Liberty Prime
This looks like a ball from Blood Bowl!
One thing you really want with a throw explosive is an unpredictable trajectory. It keeps things interesting.
