They basically can shoot (not only throwing!) entire frozen chicken cadavers into engines with zero damage.
The only way they managed break the entire engine was to place little explosives on the turbine wings. Even that didn't cause a fatal disintegration of the jet engine.
Somewhere on YT there's a super entertaining video from a test facility.
Now back to your uninformed comment. I do certification testing of jet engines, and we most certainly DO NOT test jet engines against the ingestion of airborne electronics.
I have personally loaded and fired the five barrel bird gun at General Electric’s Peebles Test operation many times over the years. We use a range of birds and bird simulators, but none of them are ever chickens, and none of them are frozen.
There is not any requirement for zero engine damage. Little sparrows will do no damage. Ducks and geese cause extensive damage every single time. Extensive engine damage is permitted so long that the engine shuts down without causing catastrophic damage to the airframe. The specific damage that must be prevented, per 14 cfr 33.75, is below. Any other damage is acceptable.
(i) Non-containment of high-energy debris;
(ii) Concentration of toxic products in the engine bleed air intended for the cabin sufficient to incapacitate crew or passengers;
(iii) Significant thrust in the opposite direction to that commanded by the pilot;
(iv) Uncontrolled fire;
(v) Failure of the engine mount system leading to inadvertent engine separation;
(vi) Release of the propeller by the engine, if applicable; and
(vii) Complete inability to shut the engine down.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
Couple follow on questions. What are the test conditions like? Is the test basically a static air test with a fixed engine and a 500 mph duck / goose carcass striking an operating engine? Or do they put it in a wind tunnel to simulate high speed wind forces also?
Also, what's the method of actually firing and accelerating a duck / goose carcass up to airline speeds for impact. Did this a bit for NASA impact testing, and we tended to use peel away sabot rounds to throw bricks at objects.
Also, borders a bit on a Monty Python joke, yet is there a regulation duck / goose? They can vary pretty wildly in size / weight. 5lb, 10lb, 20lb? Are they firing all the way up airline cruise speeds (500-600 mph? or just take off / landing runway issues?
Finally, being in the industry, any idea on what's been going on with the engines peeling off airplane wings, like that Louisville, Kentucky cargo plane? That seems like a rather drastic failure mode, since apparently there were cracks in the mounting and people just weren't checking?
Note that there are operators running balloons several orders bigger still, like Aerostar. They're essentially flying mid size satellites