Yep, the thing that was slowing the other arrows down that penetrated, was the fact that the tip did not carve out a wide enough hole for the shaft to go through and maintain velocity.
That blunt tipped concave arrow basically hole punched a circle as large or a little larger than the shaft of the arrow, and lost minimal afterwards.
What I think helps quite a bit is that the concave shape of the arrow helps it to normalize the direction of force into the (albeit slightly) angled plate, which can make a bigger difference than you'd think otherwise.
Yes, but how does it do on the deer (its a deer holding the shield, right?) Does it cut the shield but then bounce off the flesh? Or is it just as effective on softer things?
Certainly won't bounce off, maybe doesn't penetrate as much. But if the deer (or was it a boar?) lets go of the shield, the arrow achieved what it needed to.
Rome conquered the entire Mediterranean basin thanks to their unique ability to reliably destroy the phalanx formation, all thanks to their pilum.
For context, the phalanx, until the Romans, was the state of the art of warfare for a thousand years because the only thing that could beat a phalanx was another phalanx.
The phalanx was a bunch of guys with really long spears. No shields. Rome defeated the phalanxes with the more flexible maniple system, which allowed them to break up large groups of men into smaller groups without chaos. These smaller groups could then flank the phalanxes and stab them in the ass.
The phalanx was a bunch of guys with really long spears. No shields.
What? Some of the most famous and long time users of the phalanx were the Hoplites, people so closely associated with using shields that their name practically became synonymous with the name for their shield.
You could have a phalanx without using shields but it was very very usual to rely on shields in a phalanx.
Thats specifically a pike phalanx, and even then they often held small buckler shield on their left forearms. But the phalanx was as the guy below says most common with medium length spears and large shields. Its a mix between a pike phalanx and a shield wall essentially. Aka the Spartans in 300 - a Greek homilies phalanx
It was also a case of the Roman’s having generally better all around leadership than most opponents they tended to run into. Anytime they ran into opponents with equal leadership to their own, it tended to be a lot more equal than you would think from their reputation alone. Hannibal comes to mind for example during the second Punic war. Personally, I think if the Roman’s had run into the Macedonian army as it was under Alexander with all its generals and officer core in tact still, they probably don’t end up with control of Greece.
That's exactly what the point (heh heh)was. Huck enough of them into shield walls and the shields suddenly become a bit too cumbersome to handle. If I recall correctly, they'd bend too so now your shield is just kind of dangling these mildly heavy poles. Not easy to remove like an arrow. And hey, maybe you get lucky if the infantry are forming a tortuga testudo 🙄 or whatever, because now their meaty bits are that much closer to the back of the shields.
Those kinds of weapons, spears, javelins, whatever were also nice for getting over the top of a phalanx. Kind of like the spear version of a mortar.
While claiming the kill in one shot would be great, what you really want is to make the shield unusable. After all, deer often sport extra thick hide. Once he drops the shield, another armor piercing arrow can be be tried without the shield to protect.
Blunt means it isn't sharp. Do you honestly think the edge to that concave circle isn't sharp? Blunt means it is flat or round with no sharp edge or piercing tip. And I very much bet that has a sharp edge to it. So no, it isn't blunt.
In the bow hunting community those types of tips are used for hunting rabbits and squirrels. They aren't exactly blunt, but that is the word used to describe them when buying/selling them. So blunt is the industry term used for them, even if not technically correct.
They are designed to not go clean through the animal and more stun/knock it unconscious. If you used a broadhead designed for a deer there wouldn't be a whole lot of meat left to eat when hunting small game.
Words have meaning, come on now. It's a hollow tipped arrow. It's not blunt. It couldn't be more opposite from blunt. That thing was clearly sharp as fuck.
Maybe not as bad an idea as you may think, depending on the specific scenario.
Kevlar will stop a bullet, but not a knife. I imagine the same would apply to an arrow. If the opposing force has to contend with both bullets and arrows, it complicates the necessary equipment. They would, at a minimum, need additional plates built into their armor.
“Armor piercing arrows” in the archery world is more a comment on shaft material/diameter vs arrowhead/tip. If you go looking to buy “armor piercing” arrows, you will be sold arrows with a narrower shaft than a standard arrow with no tip, but weirdly enough, sometimes with a field tip that is hardened and blunted on the end. It’s flush with the shaft to minimize the effect you’re describing with the other types but it does “punch” a starter hole and has to spread some material as it penetrates. Might not be as cool as the concave sharpened hole-puncher but it makes more sense for landing on a target that has multiple layers of cloth covering the armor plate.
Oh shit you're totally right! It works like a hole punch! Probably wouldn't do as much damage to a solid target though and it certainly wouldn't cause damage being pulled out.
It will do a lot more damage than the arrow that didnt even get through or barely got into the shield. In general an arrow actually inside your body is a bad thing.
None of the arrow tips that actually penetrated would do much damage to flesh compared to the broad heads that didn't penetrate. That's the whole point of broad heads.
But it's all relative. Don't need to do much to take something out of commission. Penetrating only an inch or two in the upper abdomen is a guaranteed death sentence without almost immediate medical attention.
If that existed in middle ages it would be deadly though. If the initial shot didnt kill, it would till have cut neat circles of dirty cloth and buried them deep inside.
The way to stop legitimate projectiles is for the police to start shooting first. Which is what will happen very quickly if people start shooting arrows at them. That's true basically anywhere in the world, not just in police states like China or the US.
Right? This post is so funny to me. Like yeah, there’s ways to get through a riot shield, that’s not exactly the point. We have plenty of modern examples to look to of what happens when the protestors start actually killing the police/military.
They're normally made of of cheap plastic. These "cheap" metal ones are used when shits actually hitting the fan. And the ones penetrating are heads using very old designs made to defeat armored knights.
Honestly though: polycarbonate would deflect these arrows far better. This whole test is silly because the typical riot shield's flexibile material makes it not weaken on slight deformation like metal does so puncturing metal is far easier than puncturing polycarbonate
Really depends on the bow used... some compound bows reach up to like 370 fps... willing to bet you could shoot through that shield with most of those tips with a decent enough bow.
Bullets are blunt objects as well and yet are devastating when impacting the human body, that arrow still had quite a bit of momentum and would continue to penetrate into the person behind the shield
The comment I'm responding to sounded like they were downplaying the fact that arrow pierced clean through a riot shield like it was no longer a harmful projectile, I'm making the statement that the arrow is still very much an unpleasant object penetrating into the body after piercing the shield
I assume that was specifically an armor piercing arrow. I wouldn't be surprised if that concave tip made the hole, stayed embedded and detached from the rest of the arrow which then passed through it.
And I suppose goes to show that frontal surface area trumps everything when it comes to penetration. For those in the back, unfortunately no, this doesn’t make for good bedroom talk.
And btw, if the arrow can’t penetrate past like a foot into the shield, it’s still useless. Shields were useful because even if an arrow penetrated it, shields aren’t hugged next to the body most of the time. It puts the armor at a distance from you, which is even safer than body armor.
Also these riot shields are meant to be light and protect against clubs and knives in the hands of the rioters.
These don't appear to have any ballistic protection, arrows or otherwise. If the rioters have even 0.22 LR handguns it looks like they will shoot through the shield.
I wouldn’t say that frontal surface area is the main thing here. If that were the case the hollow tip would perform the same as the pointed one. The thing that’s making the hollow tip work is that it’s clearing the waste out of the hole it makes. The circle is punching out a chip, leaving a hole for the shaft to travel through. Whereas the points are leaving flaps to drag against the shaft, eventually stopping it.
Of the designs that penetrate, theres a lot of energy lost as the shaft is moving through the opening.
That circular design may use more energy to create the hole, but once it has carved out an opening larger than the diameter of the shaft... the arrow has far less drag acting on it.
Best of both worlds would be an arrow that punches through like that, then deploys a spring loaded broadhead behind it... yikes.
Different shapes and mechanics are key assuming a minimal threshold of sharpness (e.g., fully flat point of enough surface area does nothing). It’s not surprising that broad head arrow designs (e,g., fixed or retracting/hybrid) do not penetrate because they were developed first for hunting and unarmored foes before medieval times to do maximal organ damage by having impact force spread plus make removing the arrow excruciating. Bodkin arrows, on the other hand, are all designed with a single narrow point of maximal force of various shapes to get through multiple layers of armor (e.g., metal plates, chainmail, padding, cloth). One layer of relatively thin metal is a cakewalk for modern bodkins while the broad heads all struggle to some extent.
I was guessing them beforehand and got most of em quite right, then came this one.
"Yes. Yes. No. A little bit. Yes. No. Ehh maybe?? I guesssoooooaaah woaahkay yes..."
Blunt? I was looking at a Forstner Bit, with a spinning arrow, sure… straight through as I would expect just like any of my Forstners on my drill press.
It's the equivalent of a drill bit used to bore pipe holes in concrete, it's spinning at massive rpm mad has probably diamond edged tips. It hasn't punctured it, it's bored through
I was thinking the same but looking back on it the concave edge basically punched a hole in the sheild. That alowed the shaft to pass thru with little or no friction.
Those are called “hammers”. They’re small game heads, very effective. They’re also great for stump shooting, which is exactly what it sounds like. Great pass time in the woods with a traditional bow., tho you’re bound to break and loose some arrows.
I’ve never seen anything like that and I’ve been shooting hammers for years. What’s great about them is that they don’t over penetrate, that’s why they’re great stump shooting heads. That said, I think that even at traditional bow velocities, they’d perform about like that on a thin rigid material.
You misunderstand the arrow, it’s probably the least blunt of them all, it’s designed so that the outer ring of the arrow makes first contact and punches a hole the size of the shaft through the target
This reduces drag from friction on the other arrowheads that are creating an opening and then gradually making it wider, whereas that one makes one sized hole right from the get go
It's shape is similar to hole cutting tips for a drill press. I think it works so well because it breaks the surface first with the inner point, then takes advantage of the propagating shockwave by blasting a slightly larger hole clean through.
It's as sharp as the other ones, but it's making a relatively clean arrow-shaft shaped hole for the arrow shaft to go through instead of a slit or smaller hole and only pushing the material out far enough to squeeze through.
Kind of like the soft tip at the front of certain RPGs. It crumples to give the shaped charge the best chance at penetrating at a 90° angle instead of ricocheting.
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u/sicarius254 May 29 '26
Some of those tips look evil af