Two‐body hadronic collisions behave, in the absence of the dominant peripheral components diffraction and particle exchange, in similar ways as concerns energy dependence (s−10±2) and the absence of peaking of d&sgr;/dt in t or u. They may phenomenologically be classed as a third, “non‐peripheral”, component of strong interactions. Some of the experimental information on forward, backward and 90° c.m. scattering are presented. The 90° c.m. K+and &pgr;±p elastic differential cross‐sections decrease as s−8, which is slower than pp (s−10). Superimposed on the very fast energy dependence, there are indications of modulations in d&sgr;/dt for &pgr;±p elastic scattering at large momentum transfers at 5 GeV/c, which we tentatively ascribe to Ericson fluctuations.