Here’s another question for our resident Tankers, sorta-kinda on-topic I suppose:
During the late unpleasantness, there’s been many stories of captured Russian armor turning out to feature faux ERA, for lack of a better way to put it. Examples are:
Now, I know nothing about this stuff, except a basic understanding of what ERA is, and how it works.
In y’alls opinion, is the stuff in the videos/pics we’ve seen actually ERA with the spicy stuffing omitted/substituted with fakery, or is it simply an attempt at spaced armor and not supposed to be ERA at all? What’s up with the spikey foam in the second pic, does that serve a theoretical purpose?
Anything that detonates a HEAT round away from the actual armour would count as spaced… now how effective a small metal box would be, is a whole different conversation. and I think it would be totally useless against kinetic rounds
True, but you have to be careful. Optimum stand-off distance for a shaped charge is ‘3-6 x cone diamteter’. Bar armour doesn’t detonate the RPG warhead. The circuit from the fuse in the nose to the detonator at the base of the round is completed by an inner ogive and bar armour ‘crushes’ that ogive to create a short and the round can’t detonate. However not all warheads (and not all RPG-7 warheads either) work like that and depending on the vehicle and warheads you can in fact make it more lethal by optimising the standoff.
Pic 1. Maybe, maybe not. The tiles on the roof are a different shape to the numbered ERA ‘casettes’. They look like they could be ‘passive’ ERA or simply to give a bit of extra standoff from top attack munitions?
You would be surprised at some of the layers in composite armour (including rubber, and I shite you not ‘polystyrene foam’). Composite armour works primarily by introducing longitudinal and lateral stress on a penetrator (or heat jet) to break it up.
What I find interesting is the different design philosophies between Western/NATO and former Soviet tanks.
For example, the West tended to optimise their armour to counter kinetic energy penetrators because that was their main anti-armour round. But the Soviets actually used their HEAT rounds as the primary anti-armour round (it actually had less dispersion and better RHA penetration than their APFSDS rounds) and optimised their armour for shaped charges.
These days, modular armour packages mean you can swap to what you need depending on the threat.
I remember reading an interesting article about vehicles in iraq being absolutely wrecked by RPG’s that in theory should of been impervious to them because of this very thing…i forget the details but I’m sure it involved either british Mastiff or American strykers (or lav-25) that had the bar armour welded on in the wrong place or too close to the skin and it caused much greater damage than none being fitted would of
Like our choice to stay with the rifled main gun because it improves the performance of the hesh round… now that would be interesting to see how a hesh works against modern multi-layer armour … would the different layers inhibit the shockwave
Im guessing not as well, Challenger 3 hasnt got a rifled barrel. Supposedly for ammunition commonality but I’m fairly sure that it cant be just that. A doctrine change from hesh to sabot for the uk to be more inline with nato as well as the chance to use a more potent penetrator
Probably true … I think they were clinging to the hesh, because there are not many battle field obstacles that can stand up about 10kg of high explosives being shot at them
But it makes it more difficult to stabilise a APFSDS or HEAT round. They both hate spin, but for different reasons.
And don’t get me started on a two piece ammo system (three if you count the cartridge that also needs to be loaded in order to set off the charge bag/s)…
and I think it would be totally useless against kinetic rounds
