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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.
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....
Oompa Loompa, doompadee doo,
I've got a tougher armor for you.
Oompa Loompa, doompadee dee,
If you are wise run away from me.
What do you get when you shoot at a TANK?
All flattened like a Palestinian CAMP!
Why bother hitting when you will get FRIED
What do you think they next.. will.. try?
(with another megaton)
Oompa Loompa Doompadee dib,
If you are hardened then you will live
You will be in happiness too
Like the Oompa Loompa doopity do!
First, nothing begins if not opening
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--
Actually, tanks like the Challenger (British Army) and the M1 Abrams can withstand RPG hits now, 10 more hits would not be a major issue. My M1A1 Heavy was hit by an RPG during Desert Storm. I didn't even notice until we were recovering and rearming after that mission. This sort of armor would be a tremendous boon for infantry fighting vehicles, which are very vulnerable to RPG rounds and shaped charge HEAT type tank rounds.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
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?
1st rate armies dont us RPG's, the Russians sell them cheap but even they dont use them!
Bullshit. The RPG-7 is long in the tooth, but it and its successors like the RPG-18 are still perfectly capable infantry weapons, and are certainly effective against bunkers and the like even if you're nuts to fire one against an M1A2 in the frontal arc. They fulfill a role similar the the 84mm Carl Gustav, which rest assured is used by 1st-rate armies. Like the USMC, ferinstance.
Nobodt expects an RPG to knock out a tank
Again, bullshit. Ask the Russians how many tanks they lost to RPGs in Chechnya; the number's a good deal higher than they'd have liked. The Chechyns would form anti-tank teams of three or four men, each with an MG gunner, a sniper, and a RPG gunner or two. They'd gang up, 5 teams to a tank, and they'd launch from basement or upper-floor windows. The MG was there to suppress the infantry accompanying the tank, the sniper was there to either just pop the TC or make the tank button up, and then the RPG gunners would start taking shots at the top, rear, or sides of the tank.
They killed quite a few T-80s, last I heard.
They are really only used against APC's which I believe serve no purpose to begin with
Bullshit for a third time. If APCs and IFVs serve no purpose, I can't help but wonder why they're such a large part of modern armored forces and doctrine.
In order to be man portable (one soldier can carry the entire system himself) the weapon cannot carry effective tandem warheads. And the whole reason that the TOW II was designed (tandem warhead, top down attack) is that the TOW IB, which had the largest warhead of its generation of ATGM's, was not able to effectively penetrate the laminate style armor used on Challenger, the M1, and the Leopard II. An RPG hit to the rear or flank of the tank might get a mobility kill, although even that is questionable. The RPG hit my tank took was on the turret flank, no penetration, some minor damage to the sponson box on that side of the tank (tool stowage).
The new top down attack ATGM's like TOW II, Milan, etc. are quite effective against tanks, until the tank crew starts putting effective fire on the missile crew, since they have to hold their sites on the tank for as long as 15 seconds. A main gun round and several hundred machine gun rounds will just screw up your whole day.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.