Originally posted by slim10:
Perforated armour works by creating inconsistent stresses in the
projectile causing it to fragment. Its meant to work against APFSDS
as well.
Well at least we can agree on that.
I would however agree to say that no armour, no matter how
sloped, will stop a APFSDS round completely and ultimately will
still depend on how much armour it carries.
Your original reference to Chobham = no need angled deflection
confused me. The main defeat mechanism of a ceramic faced
composite is interface defeat, which doesn't depend on angles ...
but yet, both Chally and Abrams design features lots of
slope. Surely there is a reason for that?
Sloping and the defeat mechanisms associated with it are quite
different. There are a few defeat mechanisms associated with
sloped armour.
Sloping and deflection mechanism is what we normally call
richochet. We can certainly agree that against modern
long-rod APFSDS, it's not going to work.
Sloping and LOS thickness, in most cases is still valid and works
along the line of "how much armour it carries"
Sloping and asymmetric defeat is still valid even against long rod
APFSDS penetrators. This is a defeat mechanism common to most
composite armours.
The thinking in the 70s and 80s was that long rod penetrators
will make slope armour irrelevant. However, there is a revival of
sloped armour in turret design as can be seen in L2A6.
I don't know what you are referencing to, but sloped armour was
still prevalent in the designs incepted in the 70s and
80s.
The use of sloped add-on armour for the L2A6 is not because of a
revival in sloped armour. The base slab sided perforated
steel base armour is still there. The add-on armour is most
probably some composite/laminate where the primary mechanism is
asymmetric defeat of the rod ... hence the slope.
The C2 and Abrams will still present a relatively flat face
depending on the angle which the shooter approaches the tank. The
L2A6 turret uses the same angled merkava design (all mks) that
presents an angle no matter which way a ground level target
approaches.
Eyeballing the Chally 2 and Abrams doesn't give me much of a
vertical surface (from the frontal aspect) ... unless I have a
significant height advantage over them. I'm not sure if we're
confusing slope with flat/curved surfaces ... ?
The armour package of the Merkava may have been upgraded but the
same basic flat top turret design is still there. This despite the
Mk III and IVs being rumoured to incorporate Chobham armour as
well.
By "flat top" I take it you mean the disc/UFO shaped
turret? All western bustle turrets have a flat top ;)
The Disc shaped turret is a "recent" developement. The
Merk started off with spaced armour and a wedged shaped turret that
was heavily sloped in the frontal aspect only. The spaced
armour evolved into additional bolt-on composites and the shape of
this only evolved into a disc starting from the Mk 3D onwards
(~Y2000?) to the current Merk 4.From what I understand, the Merk
composites are not Chobham (Ceramic) based. Photos of damaged
panels from the shootout in Lebanon seems to indicate it is a
Steel/Rubber sandwich.
