Old news but good idea
The ubiquitous RPG 7 may be reaching its use-by-date.
THE British Army’s next class of armoured vehicles will be protected by a “force-field” of electrified armour that will vaporise rocket-propelled grenades.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence has signalled that the electric armour, invented at the ministry’s scientific research centre, will transform armoured warfare, enabling vehicles to be more lightly protected and more easily moved around the world.
Army News has the story as well as the Australian
The British electric armour is made up of several layers, the first of which is an earthed bullet-proof outer skin. The second skin is live, although insulated, and has several thousand volts of electricity flowing through it, powered by the vehicle’s battery. The third skin is the normal vehicle hull. When an RPG7 grenade hits a tank with standard armour, its conical warhead fires a jet of hot copper into the target at about 1600km/h. This can penetrate more than 30cm of conventional solid steel armour. On the electric armour, the grenade penetrates the insulation on the live second skin, creating a sudden surge in electricity that vaporises the copper stream in the same way that a surge burns out a fuse wire. The effect is to leave the inner hull intact and the crew safe, with the vehicle capable of taking repeated hits.It’s not exactly current news though, I note UK DSTL released this article in July 2002.
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As an old “grunt”, I never cease to be amazed at the constant “to and fro” between armour and anti tank weapons.
Invent an new missile, then invent a new armour plate. Invent a penetrating warhead, invent “reactive” armour, now we have electric armour. Glad to see that the scientists are still hard at it, and I bet the Diggers are even happier!
I was most interested to see photos of LAV’s in Baghdad enclosed in a metal cage to act as a standoff armour against RPG’s. Kev would recall the chain link standoff protection against VC RPG’s back in the Vietnam war. Cheap and effective.
The Soviet designed RPG has been one of the insurgents’ weapons of choice for about 40 years and finally looks like being countered with some effective measures. Good work.