A statistical method for the evaluation of projectile dispersion

As part of a research program, an extensive study on the dispersion characteristics of eight different 7.62 × 51 mm ammunition types was conducted. The paper presents the main steps in the experimental and analytical process carried out to evaluate, namely to measure and compare, the dispersion characteristics of the ammunitions; namely, (1) identify the number of rounds to fire in the trials, (2) establish a test plan and the setup for the precision trials, (3) fire the rounds, following an established protocol for the experiments, (4) collect the impact points, and measure the performance through statistical measures, (5) perform a statistical analysis of dispersion applied to the results obtained in the trials, and (6) conclude on the ammunition characteristics. In particular, the paper proposes a statistical method to evaluate the precision of ammunitions fired with precision (Mann) barrels. The practical method relies on comparison of confidence intervals and hypothesis testing on the standard deviation of samples, namely the impact points. An algorithm is proposed to compare the variances of two or more populations of ammunitions.