Re: New 'electrical active' Armour to defeat hand held anti-tank rounds

Scott Siebold schrieb:
> >
> It is not a liquid or a solid but a plasma ( states of
> matter are solid, liquid, gas, plasma and
> superconductor now(more?)). 

Err... not quite. A superconductor is not a 'state of matter' in the
same sense as the others. A superconductor is a solid that happens to
have no resistance to electricity. Just as solids can vary in colour,
density, heat conductivity etc. Materials of different color are not
defined as different 'states of matter' in the strict definition of
that term. 

Only in very loose wording could you say that superconductivity is a
state of matter - but then so would be metallic conductivity,
semiconductors and insulators. 

As Oerjan and the web forum contribution I quoted earlier noted, a HEAT
jet is not a plasma.

> It is an ionized gas which is first cousin to a blow torch and
"burns"
> through. 

This is a good explanation of a plasma, but apparently, it's not what a
HEAT warhead does.

> Before you start striping off armor this is not the only
> chemical round that there is. 

Another definition problem. A 'Chemical round' is generally taken to be
loaded with a chemical weapon, e.g.nerve gas. In a looser sense, all
explosives (except nukes) are 'chemical weapons' in that the explosion
is a chemical reaction. But nobody refers to them that way. A HEAT
warhead is just an especially sophisticated type of explosive warhead,
not a 'Chemical Weapon' in the strict sense.

> The British used a shaped charge (fire a BB gun at a window and
> you'll see the effect) called a APSH (APSH - armor piercing squash
head) 
> which passed the inertia but did not penetrate. 

My understanding of an APSH was that it is a 'normal' grenade with thin
walls so that the explosive material is squashed flat against the
armour. When it then explodes, not only the inertia, but also the
energy of the explosion is efficiently transferred to the armour.

Greetings