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Electric Armor
Ch_Omega and others wrote in about a new type of reactive armor in development. As far as I can tell, what they're talking about is essentially large capacitors on the outside of the vehicle, charged up by the vehicle's electrical system. Anti-tank warheads use a shaped charge to create a jet of molten copper that pierces armor, but in this case, when the jet bridges the capacitor plates, it immediately becomes a conductor for X coulombs of current, which effectively vaporizes and disrupts it enough that it won't pierce the vehicle's armor. (Conventional reactive armor does the same thing with explosives.) Interesting idea, if it works.
Woe betide the poor hapless private who loses his balance and leans on the tank to steady himself. Shazam!
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Wouldn't it be cheaper to have the tank scuff its feet on the carpet?
It seems that plates that can sustain such a large charge/current on the outside of a vehicle might interfere with radio transmissions. I realize that antennae could address this problem, but then the antennae would become a fairly obvious target. Is this a good assumption?
My sword of water beats your armour of electricity.
From reports on the BBC (TV not site) this is a very effective armour, and the power is provided by the tank itself, using its usual power supply. This techinology was developed solely in the UK, with the US army being very interested in it.
Apparently a single tank can withstand multiple (10 or more) hits from a RPG when this system is in use, which hopefully will cut down on the threat!
Well this really is quite a cool piece of technology - the only problem is, as they state later in the article, its a solution to a single problem. This armour will only prevent against RPG's and bullets.. you hit a mine or go against something a little nastier, and it will not be able to protect you.
You would have to be pretty certain of the battle you were about to go into before you delployed vehicles carrying this specific type of armour?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
"RPGs are extraordinarily widespread," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "And if you have any doubt of that, watch Black Hawk Down."
Can i please not take any movie as a reference for stuff like this, otherwise id like to meet Willy Wonker and his fabulous Chocolate factory!!
Basically, the system can protect the weaker areas of a tank (the top or back) or a smaller, more moderately armored vehicle from HEAT attacks.
It's not good on too-lightly armored vehicles as even a dispersed molten copper spray will do some nasty damage. It's not good for the front of a main battle tank because they're all impervious to HEAT rounds anyways.
It also doesn't protect a tank from the most lethal of tank killing objects - the discarding sabot "long-rod" penetrator. Which is essentially a long, pointy rod of some appropriately dense material (depleted uranium being popular) that uses pure kinetic energy to annihilate the other tank.
So it is a useful technology, but some people are getting far too excited about it. It's a solution to a couple of problems - namely that battle tanks can't have heavy armor everywhere and that medium vehicles are sitting ducks for anti-tank rounds.
So, they'll just start making RPGs that don't have an electrically conductive tip. Set the bad guys back a few years, but they'll just find something else to shoot with the existing ammo.
Bummer, nice idea though. Could you get the power up high enough for an arc to destroy just about anything?
Could you arm a refrigerator with this?
I'd love to find a way to keep my roomate from drinking my beer.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Is GM offering it standard or as an option? Those fucking carjackers are in for it now....
I read this article a week or so ago on reuters, except the headline was that the British were developing it, and the the US was interested.
This article headlines the US then goes on about how the British were doing everything It then mentions in a single paragraph that the US has spent over $110 million on it but gives no details.
Interesting.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Anyone remember Independence Day? I bet they stole the technology from downed alien spacecraft they have stashed somewhere in New Mexico or Nevada!
A projectile made of ceramics wouldn't penetrate the outer armor.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
It would be interesting to identify those readers (by identifying accounts that haven't logged in since then) and sending Taco or someone like that to interview the families (assuming they are comfortable with their names being released) and posting those interviews. Alternatively, it could be a traditional /. interview, with everyone asking questions. It would have to be handled delicately (ahem), but it could be quite moving and quite worthwhile.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Since Q(charge, Coulombs)=V(voltage, Volts)*C(capacitance, Farads), and I(current, Amperes)=V/R(resistance, Ohms), you could calculate the current. However, my guess is the military classifies this data.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Prehaps it would be better if countries actually used it's soldiers for defense?
As I'm watching the M*A*S*H marathon on F/X I can't help but to think that it's just silly to keep building up.
Of course we can also look forward to a Dr. Strangelove type of future.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I pitty the poor fool that fires a wire-guided missile at one of these tanks eh?
However, I suspect it would create a good market for graphite-ribbon missiles similar to the type used to take out power generators and substations.
One of the most dangerous and pervasive threats facing American and British troops in combat zones is a primitive grenade launcher that only sets your typical terrorist back about $10.
Cool. How much is the shiping and handling? And where do I send my check? I'll take a gross. Just make sure they're delived by July 4th.
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"RPGs are extraordinarily widespread," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "And if you have any doubt of that, watch Black Hawk Down."
I later overheard him mention that
"Phasers are extraordinarily widespread, And if you have any doubt of that, watch Star Trek."
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
A dude I know was ripping up on Enterprise and how 'polarize the hull plating' doesn't mean anything. He insisted that it's just more 'Star Trek technobabble that doesn't mean anything'. This normally wouldn't be amusing except he thinks he knows everything about quantum physics, physics, and mathematics. I'm lookin forward to bursting his bubble. He takes this stuff seriously enough that you might consider what I'm about to do to him to be cruel. >:)
*Loves slapping nitpickers around*
"Derp de derp."
Ah, just like in Scorched Earth. If the enemy tank is shielded, you don't hit it with a nuke. You drop a nuke right next to it.
That's why combat troops have their hair shaved so close. It's so the electrical defense system won't be detected by RPG-carrying (not RPG-playing mind you) terrorists.
In all honesty, however, I would think they should make the "urban warfare version of the tank. Something with an automatic 20mm cannon, one driver, armored, and low (like 3 feet off the ground) then make it for 100,000 dollars and instead of deploying 8 $25M tanks, they can deploy 2,000 of those. Actually, if they want to be really fancy (and the Brits fancy fancy it seems), they can have no driver and be driven by cyber-cafe 18-24 types via the net, as long (of course) as they can guarantee 100ms pings.
Then, all you need, is a maintenance/fueling/weaponry crew.
The other fun thing to do would be to allow the vehicles to become specialized in one other thing, such as mine clearing, or custom robotic arm, or plow, or maybe machine guns, or battlefield lasers, or rescue, etc.
"Piter, too, is dead."
Other than metal, what else are the RPG makers going to use?
Glass. It works well enough for many shaped charges.
Or how about targeting the mobility mechanisms? A stuck tank loses a large degree of its strategic value. (The VC used this in Vietnam.)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
shoots a torpedo through the reactor vent, it should work nicely!
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
The point is that there are a /lot/ of old, but perfectly serviceable RPGs out there, and many of them are in the hands of people who might oppose the people interested in this particular system.
RPGs, AK-47s, Semtex, terrorism and revolution -- these were among the longest-surviving exports of the Soviet state and its East Bloc clientele. Just because the Soviet system has disintegrated doesn't mean that its gifts to the world have also left.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Don't make vague, over-broad statements like this without the ability to point to references to back it up.
"That said, no one is putting much stock in manned tanks for future warfare."
Read me.
Actually, looking at your lack of initiative in that first comment, allow me to quote the key points:
.........
Tanks aren't going anywhere soon. If anything, with the advent of weapons-grade lasers, the airplane will be the weapon system to become obsolete with nothing to hide behind and not enough thrust to carry real armor.
The best defense is simply not to be slow,
You've been watching too many WWII documentaries. Try looking at Gulf War clips instead. Modern tanks with their gas-turbine engines can reach speeds upwards of 60 MPH, and that's with a speed governor to keep the engine from shredding the power train. A 60-ton MBT moving that fast is not something you want to go up against.
All this speculation is fine and dandy, but how bout some reality.
I was a tank crewman in the Army for 10 years. For the last 3 years I was a Master Gunner. Master Gunners are gunnery and ballistics experts. I was also a tank commander (meaning commander of a single tank and its crew) during Desert Storm.
Reality. The M1A1C, the last tank I served on, weights, with full combat load, 68 tons. An artillery shell, unless it is a direct hit, doesn't bother the tank. It may destroy the crews baggage, which is stowed on the outside of the tank. Possibly it may shatter some of the optics, although the gun sights are protected fairly well. A near miss by a high explosive anti-tank (HEAT) round is no more effective than a near miss by a rifle bullet. HEAT is a shaped charge, it has a 2 kilogram warhead that fires its explosive in jet stream directly in front of the round.
Aside from aircraft, there are two killers of tanks on the battlefield. The main gun of another tank, firing sabot. Sabot (more officially armor piercing fin stabilized discarding sabot long rod penetrator) is a 2 kilogram, 40 mm in diameter, dart of depleted uranium or tungsten alloy steel. It strikes the armor of the tank at a speed in excess of 5000 feet per second (~1520 meters per second). Basic physics tells you that this is a huge amount of energy released in a 40 mm circle. However, if the penetrator is not made of DU or tungsten steel it will shatter rather than penetrate. The other main killer is heavy anti-tank guided missiles, which fire shaped charges from over top of the tank. These missiles fire two charges, one right after the other, in order to defeat reactive armor.
The M1 tank doesn't use reactive armor, it uses laminate armor. Laminate armor is made up of layers of steel and ceramic, and is much more effective than an equivalent thickness of steel alloy. With the M1A1 Heavy (the variant used in Desert Storm) even the main gun of another M1 had difficulty penetrating the M1's armor at 1000 meters (point blank range for a tank engagement) and the M1A1C and M1A2 have armor improved over the Heavy variant.
Shaped charges and artillery have proved extremely ineffective against the M1, which is why the quest for rail gun technology, providing an even more effective kinetic energy penetrator than the current chemical energy main gun.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
If you take Maxwell Products BCAP0010A03 as a sample of what can be done. It's a 2600 FARAD, 2.5 volt capacitor. You could array this in a 55 parallel by 5 series bank of 275 caps, yielding a capacitance of 28,600 farads at 12.5 volts (14 volts peak), the maximum current (within commercial ratings) would be 33,000 amps, which would deliver 412,500 watts. Optimizing the capacitors for discharge rate should be fairly simple for someone with a military budget. But even this simple calculation shows a way to store 2x10^6 watt seconds in less than 144kg using known technology. This is the equivalent power to running a conventional microwave oven for over an hour!
--Mike--
You can't change the laws of physics.
--Mike--
The best defense is simply not to be slow, or in the future, manned at all.
That's a load, as any soldier will tell you. There is no substitute for a soldier on the ground, although the air force has been trying to pretend that there is. However, bombs, smart bombs, drone aircraft, etc have yet to cause the enemy to surrender. Tanks and infantry, although possibly not recognizable by current standards, will be around for the foreseeable future. Until you design a system that can not only make accurate decisions rapidly in a high stress environment, but that can also take initiative and react to unforeseen circumstances you will have to have men on the battlefield. And, if you design such a machine it will be, in all but name, a man anyhow.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
There seem to be a few misconceptions about how tanks fare on the battlefield and how HEAT warheads work.
First off, a HEAT round detonates several feet away from the surface of a tank. The detonation shoots a stream of molten metal, which impacts the tank and attempts to cut through. Reactive armor helps to defeat this by disrupting the stream of molten metal so that it more or less splatters harmlessly against the tank. The idea is not to MELT or BURN through armor, but to cut it. The jet is moving at immense speeds (Driven by explosives). The bigger the warhead, ie, a TOW vs a LAW, the longer and more powerful the jet is.
Anyway, reactive armor is mainly designed to defeat smaller arms and missiles. It has no effect against Sabot rounds. I've seen a couple of comments about how one would have to know what kind of weapons the enemy has. This is not true. Basically, reactive armor sits on top of standard armor. It's usually fairly lightweight, though bulky.
Electrical reactive armor has the benefit of being easier to replace and make, as well as being a bit less dangerous for the crews to service. The reactive system will fail after one hit, but only in the location of the hit. Even if the tank were to be hit in the same spot twice, there is still a lot of armor to cut through. Reactive armor is basically a cheap, light layer of extra protection from HEAT-type rounds.
As far as the effectiveness of the tank on the modern battlefield, one has only to point to the Gulf War. Regardless of the "Air hype", tanks were responsible for most of the enemy vehicle kills. Tanks will remain a part of the battlefield for quite some time, although they are working on some tanks with fewer crew and lower profiles which also incorporate some stealth technology. Finally, tanks are much cheaper and easier to maintain than aircraft, as well as packing incredible firepower. In many cases, ballistic weapons are superior to guided missiles, as well as beaing a lot less expensive. Regardless of it's "low-tech" design, a Sabot round is by far the most cost-effective anti-armor firepower in use today.
Certainly tanks alone will be easy prey for aircraft, but most nations have a bewildering array of Surface to Air Missiles, which make aircraft a lot less effective. Tanks might get better, and incorporate new technology, but I doubt you will see the demise of the tank anytime in the near future.
For more info, check out: http://www.tank-net.org/
" The U.S. government spends more money to research more efficient ways to kill people and gain forceful control over them than any other area."
Guess what: money doesn't solve everything. While money can at least be used to invest in new technology, our State Department won't be any more effective if we quadruple their salaries or give them all their own private jets.
The least socially sophisticated way of resolving problems with other people is killing them.
No, that's the second least sophisticated. The least sophisticated is sitting around and moaning about the problem instead of actually trying to come up with a solution or acting upon said solution. Murderers at least show some sort of initiative.
"The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries, directly killing about 3,000,000 people in the last 33 years."
Like I just said, sitting around and moaning about the problem...
Of course, armchair diplomacy is always easier than the real thing because you never have to leave your chair.
The U.S. government has bombed 14 countries, directly killing about 3,000,000 people in the last 33 years.
Do you have any credible backing for this number? Do you have any comparable number of how many lives we've saved in our wars? For example, Ho Chi Minh's thufs killed more Vietnamese in the first three years of `peace' after the Vietnam war than had died in the entire previous twenty-five years of war. At least that many lives would have been saved had we stuck it out and won the war.
And as for `non-violent' solutions, may I ask you to explain what solution you think would resolve our current situation, where a multi-national group armed and sheltered by hostile national powers is working to gain access to weapons of mass destruction to use against us?
As several people with experience on tanks have noted, a battle tank's armor by and large can shrug off RPGs. The main use for this technology is with lighter vehicles such as APCs and Bradleys, which most definitely can NOT take an RPG hit and keep moving
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Well, there are a lot of areas where peacekeepers would probably love to have this sort of tech.
Doesn't sound like much of a peace, really.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
And as for `non-violent' solutions, may I ask you to explain what solution you think would resolve our current situation, where a multi-national group armed and sheltered by hostile national powers is working to gain access to weapons of mass destruction to use against us?
Don't waste your effort, neocon. The people with whom you're arguing don't believe in evil. To them, Al Qaeda is attempting to exterminate millions of Americans because of a failure to implement the Kyoto treaty.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Sounds like these tanks could benefit from a quick reacting Phalanx gatling gun to serve as anti-missile defense, though I have no idea what the optimal flight times of Dragons and TOWs are. Enagagment times might just be too fast to be practical. I'd say with all the power these capacitors provide you could create some electromagnetic buffer to help defelct shells on impact, but any non-ferrous weapon would negate that. I guess slopped laminate composites will have to do unti the startrek defense shield comes online. And hovertanks. Gotta have hovertanks.
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Limiting your opponents's mobility is probably 80% of the battle. Something tells me this armour doesn't do a damn thing for the tracks. Granted, it's a smaller target to hit, but once he can't move, he's history sooner or later.
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Anyone remember this article? It was about using piezoelectric microfibers in tennis rackets - when an electric current runs through the fibers, they become taut, giving an extra push to the ball. I always wondered if something like that could be used in military purposes (maybe personal armor, if not tank armor). If not, they might make a heck of a pair of boxing gloves!
This kinda sorta sounds like what Archer does to the Enterprise everytime he goes into battle (yes, I know it's just fictional entertainnment, calm your ass down). Remember all the /.ers scoffing at the "bring the armor plating online" script line for the first episode this season?
Soldiers are worth a helluva lot more. One mark of morality is spending money to save lives, not spending lives to save money...
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
did you read the article, it says that the system can stop up to 10 hits without failing.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
But what does it SOUND like in the cabin of an M1 when it gets hit by an anti-tank round. That's what I want to know.
It's been awhile since I read David Drake, honestly. Hammer's Slammers and all that. No reason why you couldn't make some sort of feed mechanism for the shotgun shells (50mm ^__^), I guess. Yeah, giving away your position is kinda a bad thing, though I'm sure you could key it off some IR system to look for the launch flash like in some aircraft sensors. Maybe.
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But seriously, I'm glad somebody is thinking ahead. Of course you're right. Any yahoo with an RPG can pop-up and ruin your day, but the people that really have to worry about them are Blackhawks (sic) and light armour. Oh sure, they're a nuisance to the heavier stuff, but not the right tool for the job. As far as the non-ferrous shell goes, I meant for deflecting shells via EM charged armour, not the system of the story. Sci-fi stuff, I know.
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Really, I don't think they'd be switching if the advantages didn't outweigh the disadvantages, and I consider being disabled by an AK47 a serious disadvantage. Unless the designers all of a suddn planted their heads up their ass, I'm sure this has been considered. Like TamMan says, Hummers are highly AK47 resistant from top to bottom. Plus, wheels have got to do wonders for manuuverablity and gas milage ;)
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nms
Instead of armouring you refrigerator, why not buy the beer in specially layered electronic armour? This way, both your frig and beer are protected from shaped-charge attacks... The downside is that the beer cans have two huge capacitors hanging of the side and their's a chance of zapping yourself if you spill any.
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I've always wanted to make a tazoe from that concept.. Electrify a fine mist or solid stream of water and shock the hijibees out of somebody ^__^
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Ok, there's some misconceptions here about what a shaped charge warhead does and how it works. Basically there is a very precisely shaped cone of a ductile metal (copper is the usual choice). This is surrounded with explosives which have a high VOD (Velocity Of Detonation). The detonator is at the apex of the cone (away from the target). When fired, the blast wavefront propagates towards the open of the cone symmetrically. It moves so fast and with such a large amount of force, that the metal cone flows like a liquid (but does NOT melt), and is inverted into a long thin jet. This jet is moving on the order of 30,000 - 50,000 ft./sec. This velocity is what give the jet its penetrating power. It is not melted or turned into a plasma, and it does not burn through the target, it simply pushes aside or shatters the target material out of the way. Do a search on the "Munroe Effect". The standoff from the target allows the jet to enlongate and penetrate deeper (thus the long nose on the TOW II).
Shaped charges have been cut into slices and fired into water. Pieces of the jet were recovered with the cuts intact...thus no melting.
The smaller project sounds like a loser to me. The larger the weapons system, the more components it requires, and the more employees it keeps busy, the better. The ideal system would have parts built in each and every Congressional district.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
amps is how much force they have to use to get where they are going...
Not a flame, but a correction. Amps is simply how many of those electrons are going.
Think of a coloumb as a gallon of water, and a wire as a riverbed. Voltage is the slope of the riverbed, and amperage is how much water is moving through it.
This model breaks down when you try to add components like inductors (they resist a change in current) to the mix, but it's good for a layman.
Good reply by a tank gunner. Thanks.
You mean like this: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54611, 00.html? It was a link on the end of the original article to another article on wired.
Autonomy of the units is very important, as you don't want your enemy hacking your system and taking remote control of your battle-bots and wreaking havoc on your lines. Also, you don't want them to be able to capture the devices and re-deploy them against you.
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A lot of respondents here have said that a shaped charge projects a jet of molten copper. Years ago, when I used to subscribe to sci.military, I made that mistake. Many of the correspondents there didn't hesitate to quickly set me straight, and explain that the shaped charge projects a plasma jet.
Here is an article from Lawrence Livermore Labs with some excellent pictures of the jets in action.
Here is another article.
And here are some animations.
1 meg avi
770K avi
10 meg avi
This newspaper article gets the scale wrong. It says the jet travels at around 1000 miles per hour, ie not much more than the speed of sound, whereas the Lawrence Livermore article I linked to above says the jet travels at 10,000 kilometers per second. Michael Smith, the telegraph's defence correspondent, was off by a factor of just 57,000,000.
I've heard that EFP's (Explosively-Formed Penetrators) do use copper... I have yet to figure out how that works. Copper doesn't seem dense enough to me, although I'm sure ductility is a major factor.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Coulombs of current sounds unwieldy because it is plain wrong. The Coulomb is the SI unit of charge. The Amp is the unit of current which is basically charge per second.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I read the article, and I responded to the folks talking about this armor and tanks. Read the original posts I responded to.
Reading ... it's a useful thing.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
I imagine one of these is hot enough and fast enough (5100 Mi/H) to minimize the effectiveness of electric armour.
Does anyone know how conductive Superheated Delpleted Uranium is ?
From our Army:
The newest class of weapons under development are an offshoot of thinking during the Reagan Administration. Initially intended for operation in space, the rail gun is a relatively simple concept based upon principles many beginning science classes could understand.
The rail gun uses a high precision milled armature, perhaps coated with teflon (or a liquid teflon like fluid) as a guide to a extremely hard metal projectile. The projectile is typically housed in a "sabot" like structure that splits apart and sheds itself from the projectile after exiting the "barrel" of the rail gun.
The rail gun uses a highly charged electromagnetic armature to provide initial thrust to the projectile by repelling it away and then accelerating the projectile in its sabot at intervals along the rail. Each pulse adds more than sufficient energy to accelerate the projectile and sabot. The target velocity is near 2500 kilometers per second or approximately 5100 MPH.
At this speed the projectile superheats.
The projectile delivers a shock wave and a heat wave, destroying the interior or armor protected vehicles or buildings.
Make Love Not War !
Actually, I was thinking of the HEAT round fired by the M1, whose explosive charge is 2 KG. If that round is not effective then it should be obvious to all that no possible man portable missile/rocket will be effective.
I specifically mentioned heavy missiles like TOW, although TOW II is much more effective because of it's dual warhead top down attack.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
It really works well. Imagine a shopping cart, hurtling through the lot after being pushed by some sourball-sucking pre-teen sinner. It makes contact with the old Conti and WHAM pile of dust. It was worth the extra tacked on by the dealer but it makes waxing a moot point.
Driving in the rain is like driving through Vegas but you get used to it.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
The M1A1C and M1A2 armor is highly classified. But not because of some super secret surface coating. The surface coating, and this isn't classified, is designed to easily shed battlefield chemical weapons, like Sarin gas. The coating can actually withstand Sarin for up to 24 hours.
What's underneath that is so secret that if a tank crew breaches their armor and sees what's under the surface they are immediately quarantined until they can be debriefed by Army Intelligence types. They have to sign stringent non-disclosure agreements and could spend many long years in Leavenworth for disclosing what they saw.
There is no way that a surface coating would be effective against the primary tank killer, the long rod penetrator, since it is a kinetic energy weapon. That's pretty basic physics.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
There are exceptions to every rule, of course. But, remember, that was a unique circumstance. Those soldiers were in the western desert of Iraq, had been subjected to prolonged bombing and were isolated from the rest of the Iraqi Army. However, the air force and its smart bombs did not win that war. They made it easier for the ground pounder, but the guy on the ground won the war. Iraq wouldn't have said "uncle" just from the bombing, otherwise they would have done so without the ground war.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
So they slap capacitive plates on the outside? So the other guy just puts a penetrating cap on the round to punch through the plates and detonate the shaped charge against the now exposed armor.
The best tactic is still to blow the tracks off. Invest in anti-tank mines or improve methods of hitting them. Tanks are pretty useless when they aren't mobile so they have to show those tracks eventually.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"RPGs are extraordinarily widespread," said John Pike,
I'm sorry, I keep reading that as Role Playing Games. What does it stand for again?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I actually saw an interior tank armor breach once. You wouldn't believe what is in there! Due to the NDA I signed, I can't tell you straight out what it was that I saw, but I can hint at it, the material used is actually quite common.
Here is another hint: this car is completly impervious to attack using the same armor.
.....
If there's a potential difference across a resistor, current will flow. The ratio of potential difference to resistance is what determines maximum current. True, if no current is available, then no flow will occur. But if any current is available, up to the max determined by the voltage and resistance, it will flow.
Christ, I like that quote. That neatly sums up the entire 'why violence is likely required when you have more than one social entity in a situation' argument in one little sentence.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Did you see a line in Afganistan?
All we have to worry about now is Afganistan-like countries then? We will never have to fight another war? We will never again fight a force that is nearly our technological equal? If it's got encryption then it's safe because no one can break encryption right? So a jammed device can tell us where it's being jammed from? You've made no assumptions about my position on things?
A line does not constitute a trench. There were lines in Afganistan, I know this because there were maps and the maps marked positions and the positions denotated areas of control and the US held areas of control. To wreak havoc behind someone's line means you have crossed into their area of control without a supporting force. The line is a conceptual mark on a map.
In Babylon Five they had a "battle of the line" I suppose this meant there was a line they were trying to hold. Did you see a line in space?
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This new reactive armor will not alleviate the problem. Tanks carry as much armor as they do to defeat kinetic energy weapons, not shaped charge weapons. As it stands today the M1 tank is extremely difficult for ground forces to kill, even with a direct hit by a tank main gun or a heavy anti-tank missile, assuming of course that the crew is well trained. The development of rail gun, or other other advanced kinetic energy weapons, will obsolete the current armor of tanks.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
As only any good sci-fi fan would do.
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Rather: " Quantity grows into Quality " he said...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Here's a pattern: Stupidity tends to repeat itself. Let me reiterate...
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