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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.
Wouldn't it be cheaper to have the tank scuff its feet on the carpet?
No, you'd somehow have to peirce the outer plate to get a discharge... I wonder if this will have any side effects on electronics, though? Also, would anyone inside be able to hear after a round hit? Even if it didn't penetrate, it would be like being trapped in a gong... which is still better than being dead, though.
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!
"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.
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 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.
The advantage of this system is weight, and the fact that it can cycle fairly rapidly to repel multiple attacks. The disadvatage is that it requires a lot of power to charge. In theory, once charged, the caps shouldn't require more energy.
It's not perfect, but to stop a single random weapon, it's a very good idea.
--Mike--
You have to do more than pierce the outer plate. Basically, the outer plate is charged, and the inner surface is grounded. The cap only discharges when something bridges the plates. 'course, if something doesn't bridge the plates, then it didn't penetrate and you're safe anyway.
Tank crews tend to retain their hearing after being in a tank that's impacted by enemy fire; an APC crew shouldn't have a significantly worse experience, assuming they're not dead or otherwise shredded by spalling.
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--
Well, there are a lot of areas where peacekeepers would probably love to have this sort of tech. Figure on urban areas in the Third World where small arms, RPGs and their ilk, and maybe mortars / other small support are common, but where your average warlord is unlikely to get his hands on a bona-fide tank or helicopter gunship. In that case, your biggest worries probably are stuff like... ...improvised explosives (and they need to be pretty powerful; the Israelis have lost, what, only 2-3 Merkavas during this intifada, if memory serves despite throwing them into urban zones that /should/ be nightmarish for tanks, in theory) ...mines (for which you might want an engineering AFV and engineer troops) ...RPGS (cheap and common... and if numbers are vastly on their side, they may not need to do much more than immobilize) ...ambushes / betrayals (Sure, I'll lead you to him, just dismount here...)
but you're unlikely to be dealing with, say, a warlord who's managed to get an armored force but has hidden it for all the while.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Yes, antennae are targets, but I've never see an armored vehicle with out them ( and I servered 6 years in a armored division. ) In fact, US tankers are trained to shoot at the target with the most antennae as that is most likely a command vehicle or otherwise crucial to the cooridnation of the enemy.
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -- Homer Simpson
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.
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?
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 the thing is, sabot rounds can only be fired by large, hypervelocity tank cannon. These days, that is a much rarer threat than small, man-portable HEAT weapons like RPGs which are in abundance. The foes Western powers are most likely to face have precious few tanks, but a hell of a lot of RPGs. This system will potentially allow much lighter vehicles to enjoy the same protection against HEAT weapons that only the heaviest of tanks today have. This could make lightweight tanks viable, which is important as the weight of current MBTs prohibits their being able to be quickly deployed to a crisis.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
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.
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.