4 IAA Journal Issue 498, July/Aug.

14
Probably no country has had a larger number of different
types of 20mm ammunition in service than the United States.
20mm guns appeared just before WW II primarily for aircraft
or anti-aircraft use, most of them originating in Europe from
Hispano-Suiza and Oerlikon, and several were pressed into
service by US military components causing considerable lo-
gistic diffculty and confusion to users in the feld. It wasnt
until the 1950s that the M50 series, the so-called Vulcan
rounds, were adopted and these are most common today. By
the 1960s there were at least fve different case types that
had been used in various service applications at one time
or another. In some cases there were both percussion and
electric primers used in the same case type thereby causing
further interchangeability complications. It was a logistic
nightmare. It should come as no surprise then that yet an-
other little-known 20mm variant was developed in the late
1970s, albeit for export purposes, known as the AR 20. The
AR 20 was a developmental project carried out by Ares Inc.
that lasted only a few short years before quietly fading away
without ever being felded.
ARES Inc. is a small company founded by Eugene
Stoner specializing in R&D work in the area of small arms
and advanced gun weapon systems. During the late 1970s
ARES, in cooperation with PDA Inc., undertook a project to
develop a 20mm air defense weapon system using improved
20mm ammunition referred to as 20mm AR. Funding for the
The ARES 20mm, by Jim Frigiola
Left: The percussion-primed 20mm AR
TP-T round on left, shown with an electrical-
ly-primed M246 HEIT-SD round, is readily
identifed by its longer projectile and nylon
rotating band
Right: Shown here is the 20 AR HEIT-SD
projectile with elongated fuze on left and
an M50-series HEI projectile with M505
fuze on right.
Below: Ammunition for the prototype ARES
20mm automatic cannon was handled in
10-round strips
5 IAA Journal Issue 498, July/Aug. 14
Above: This table from an
ARES technical report com-
pares the 20mm ARES HEIT-
SD and TP-T projectiles with
the older M246 HEIT-SD
Right: The proposed APDS-T
projectile is compared to other
standard 20mm API and APDS
projectiles in this table from an
ARES report.
6 IAA Journal Issue 498, July/Aug. 14
Little is known about the high-
rate ARES 20mm self-powered
automatic cannon, designed by
Eugene Stoner, shown here.
AR 20 was provided by an oil-producing
Middle Eastern country. Due to unfavor-
able political events the fow of funding
was prematurely cut off before completion
of the development program. Neither the
ARES gun nor the 20mm AR improved
ammunition was ever felded or produced
in any quantity.
The little-known ARES 20mm AR
round used standard 20x103mm (Vul-
can) M103 brass cases with an elongated
low-drag projectile. Unlike the standard
service US 20mm M50-series aircraft
ammunition which is electrically primed
the 20mm AR was percussion primed. In
addition the projectiles had a nylon rotat-
ing band. Due to a greater overall length
of about 0.6 inches and its non-electric
priming the 20mm AR cannot be consid-
ered as M50-series ammunition.
7 IAA Journal Issue 498, July/Aug. 14
The ARES 20mm system was an
improved air defense system using sin-
gle-barrel, self-powered, high-rate auto-
matic cannons. The primary round of the
associated ammunition family was a High
Explosive Incendiary Tracer with Self De-
struction (HEIT-SD). Available technical
data compares this round to the standard
M246 HEIT-SD as used in the Vulcan Air
Defense System (VADS).
Projectile weight was 91 grams and
muzzle velocity was 3585 ft/sec. The
ARES round offered improved ballistic
performance having 195 ft/sec higher
muzzle velocity than the M246, shorter
time of fight and improved fuze function
sensitivity while operating at lower peak
chamber pressure. The low-drag projectile
gave substantially higher retained velocity
down range. These features resulted in
extended range and higher hit probability
in the air defense role. The nose fuze for
this round had a delay function and was
based on an elongated M505-type fuze
without a nose cap.
Target Practice (TP) and Target Prac-
tice-Tracer (TP-T) rounds were loaded
and used for gun development and testing
purposes. In addition, the ammunition
family was to include Incendiary Tracer
(I-T) and Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot
with Tracer (APDS-T) variants although it
is unclear whether either of these two
types was ever fabricated.
Technical information and some
photos for this article were provided
by Mr. Herb Roder of ARES Inc.