With the Soviet creation of the Kontakt-5 Explosive Reactive Armor, the M829A3 was the US immediate response, developed in part to take on this new ERA type. It completed type classification standard in March 2003. Very little is publicly known about the round, perhaps due to export restrictions. The M829A3 uses a more efficient propellant, boosting its muzzle velocity. The M829A3 round has a total mass of 22.3 kg and length of 892 mm. It uses 8.1 kg of RPD-380 stick propellant, accelerating the 10 kg sabot and depleted-uranium rod penetrator assembly, and a muzzle velocity of 1,555 m/s. From patents submitted by Orbital ATK, the penetrator is composed of two sections, an approximately 100-millimeter-long steel tip and the rest composed of a 630-millimeter depleted uranium rod with aluminum fins and a tracer base. The penetrator diameter was also increased from 22 mm to 25 mm, improving penetrator strength by 67% significantly increasing its resistance to ERA bursting plates as used in Russian ERA. The steel tip is used to defeat the ERA by detonating it early, causing the resulting ERA bursting plate to only partially affect the main DU rod which is used to complete the penetration through armor. The resulting muzzle energy is 12.1 MJ The penetration as per the Lanz Odermatt calculator is about a total penetration of 680-millimeters up to possibly 720-millimetres of RHA to account for any discrepancies in measurement. The M829A3 is only used for training with a switched plastic sabot round. The sabot is of composite material. This variant is unofficially referred to by Abrams tank crews as the "super sabot". Although the M829A3 fired from the 44-caliber M256 gun has a lower muzzle velocity than 120 mm shells fired from the Rheinmetall 55-caliber gun barrel or Russian 2A46 125 mm gun ammunition, it uses a larger penetrator with increased mass to increase imparted kinetic energy.

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