trackend
Chief Master Sergeant
Interesting info Matt thanks.
Of course the DU armour on the Abby helps it a bit as well
Of course the DU armour on the Abby helps it a bit as well
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The Abrams is protected by a type of composite armor (derived from the British Chobham armour) formed by multiple layers of steel and ceramics. It may also be fitted with reactive armor if needed; however, this modification has never actually been done. Fuel and ammunition are in armored compartments to protect the crew and reduce the risk of cooking off if the tank is damaged. Protection against spalling is provided by a kevlar liner. Beginning in 1988, M1A1 tanks received improved armor packages that incorporated depleted uranium reinforcing rods in their armor at the front of the turret and the front of the hull. Armor thus reinforced offers significantly better resistance towards all types of anti-tank weaponry, but at the expense of adding considerable weight to the tank. The first M1A1 tanks to receive this upgrade were tanks stationed in Germany, since they were the first line of defense against the Soviet Union. US tankers participated in Operation Desert Storm received an emergency program to upgrade their tanks with depleted uranium armor immediately before the onset of the campaign. The newer M1A2 tanks uniformly incorporate depleted uranium armor, and the majority of the M1A1 tanks in active service have been upgraded to this standard as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams#Armor
Reactive armor or explosive reactive armour (ERA), is a type of armour used primarily on tanks to lessen the damage from explosions caused from missile warheads, exploding shells, grenades, or dropped bombs.
Essentially all anti-tank munitions work by piercing the armor and killing the crew inside. Reactive armor's protective mechanism involves producing an explosion or other such reaction when it is impacted by a weapon, actively "pushing back" against it. This is particularly effective against shaped charge warheads, in which the warhead directs a focused jet of molten metal against the armor; reactive armor's reaction disrupts the jet before it reaches the armor's surface.
The effect was discovered in 1967–68 by a German researcher, Manfred Held, working in Israel. He and his team were using the large quantities of wrecked tanks from the Six Day War to test shells. They accidentally discovered that tanks that still contained live ordinance could disrupt a shaped charge by the explosion of the shells, the basis of ERA. The concept was patented in 1970.
Modern ERA such as the Russian Kontakt-5 is made up of "bricks" or "tiles" of explosive sandwiched between two metal plates. The plates are arranged in such a way as to move sideways rapidly when the explosive detonates. According to the designers, this will force an incoming KE-penetrator or shaped charge jet to cut through more armour than the thickness of the plating itself, since "new" plating is constantly fed into the penetrating body. A KE-penetrator will also be subjected to powerful sideways forces, which might be large enough to cut the rod into two or more pieces. This would significantly reduce the penetrating capabilities of the penetrator, since the penetrating force will be dissipated over a larger volume of armour.
Reactive armour has found great favor in the former Soviet Union since the 1980s, and almost every tank in eastern military inventory today has either been manufactured to use reactive armour or had reactive armour tiles added to it, even the very old T-55 and T-62 tanks from forty and fifty years ago, used today by reserve units.
ERA tiles are used as add-on armour to the most vulnerable portions of an armoured vehicle or tank, typically the front of the hull and the front and sides of the turret. They require fairly heavy armour on the vehicle itself, since the exploding ERA would otherwise damage the vehicle and injure or kill the personnel inside. Usually, ERA is not mounted on the sides or rear of a vehicle, since the underlying armour is not as heavy on those parts. Exploding ERA also poses a danger to friendly troops in close proximity to the vehicle. Though it was once quite common for a dozen or so infantrymen to ride on the outside of a tank's hull, this is not done with ERA plated vehicles—for obvious reasons.
Recent research has produced the idea of Electric Reactive Armour, where the armour is made up of two electrically charged plates separated by an insulator. When an incoming body penetrates the two plates and closes the circuit, a high current and voltage will flow through the penetrator, and tend to vaporize it, and significantly reduce the resulting penetration. It is not public knowledge whether this is supposed to function against both KE-penetrators and shaped charge jets, or only shaped charge jets. This technology has not been introduced on any operational platform.
Reactive armour can be defeated with multiple hits in the same place, which is employed in tandem-charge weapons, which use two shaped charge explosions in rapid succession. Lacking these weapons, it is quite hard to emulate this effect as it requires either precision artillery, luck, or close-quarter use of shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive_armor
The temperature of the jet is only about 500 C.Not so impressive,is it?High explosive anti-tank, more commonly known as HEAT, rounds are made of an explosive shaped charge that uses the Neumann effect (a development of the Munroe effect) to create a very high velocity jet of metal in a state of superplasticity that can punch through solid armor.
The jet moves at hypersonic speeds (up to 25 times the speed of sound) in solid material and therefore erodes exclusively in the contact area of jet and armor material. Spacing is critical, as the jet disintegrates and disperses after a relatively short distance, usually well under 2 metres.