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

Scott Siebold wrote:

[On HEAT jets]

>It is not a liquid or a solid but a plasma ( states of matter are
solid, 
>liquid, gas, plasma and
>superconductor now(more?)). It is an ionized gas which is first cousin
to 
>a blow torch and "burns" through.

Sorry Scott, but this is complete bullshit. If you believe this, I'm
afraid 
that you have been thoroughly fooled by someone :-( The HEAT jet is
solid 
metal under so high a pressure that it "almost behaves like" a fluid; it
is 
nowhere near hot enough to form a hot plasma and there's no electrical 
charge which could ionize it at lower temperatures.

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

>that there is. 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.

David's and Jon's descriptions are right on the mark here. HESH/HEP is
not 
a "shaped charge" warhead - that particular term refers to the "inverse 
cone" type of shape which focusses the blast - but it could quite 
accurately be called a "deformed charge" warhead <g>

Metallic KE rounds would be vulnerable to this type of electric armour
as 
well *if* the voltage is high enough... but achieving that extreme
voltage 
may be a tad tricky :-/

***
KH wrote:

>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.

Correct. What Scott meant was a "Chemical *Energy* round" ("CE round"
for 
short): one which uses chemical energy (ie., high explosives) rather
than 
the rounds own kinetic energy to damage the target.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."