do tanks actually have explosives attached to the outside of their armour? Wouldnt this help in damaging the tanks rather than saving them?
In: 13069
You are probably referring to reactive armour => *”Explosive Reactive Amour” packages*. This special type of armour, often in the form of explosive packages on the outside of the actual tank armour, helps against certain types of anti-amour / armour – piercing ammunition.
Basically an AP shell comes in, ERA explodes, explosive shockwaves heavily diminishes the impact of the AP shell, tank is scarred but survives.
As the explosive blast is deflected to the outside, not the inside, the actual damage to the hard armour behind it is comparatively limited, compared to the chance to actually stop an AP shell going through the armour and vaporizing your crew.
SYL
Yes, they do have explosives strapped to the exterior! It’s called. Explosive reactive armor. Anti-tank weapons most often employ what is called a shaped charge, which is an explosive device that is shaped in a way to focus the blast energy. Think of it like using a magnifying glass to burn paper, focusing the energy in one small area increases the penetrative power of the Anti-tank weapon. To counteract shaped charges, explosive reactive armor is deployed. The explosive reactive armor detonated when hit, and the shock wave disrupts the focused energy of the shaped charge. While yes this obviously causes some minimal damage to the exterior of the tank, it provides far greater protection than not having it. Also, it allows the tanks to be lighter, move faster, and this be harder to hit
[removed]
[removed]
Yes they do, ERA, which stands for Explosive Reactive Armor.
The explosion isn’t enough to damage the vehicle itself, and most importantly, the explosion sends two plates of metal flying towards and away from the tank.
The one going away from the tank shatters the projectile if it’s a kinetic weapon (uses raw mass and energy from flying). The one going down constantly puts itself in front of the projectile or jet, incase of a chemical warhead (Uses an explosion to make a penetrator), as it erodes, as that allows it to absorb a significant portion of the penetrative power before it reached the tank’s actual armor.
[Here’s a lovely simulation showing it in action!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzZaI_eppQw)
Yes, its called Explosive Reactive Armor and uses shaped charges to direct the blast (a shaped charge is a hunk of C4 in a very specific shape that directs the blast because of the explosive characteristics. more than that is way beyond ELI5).
Think of it like playing doge ball. You are holding a ball. Someone else has thrown a ball at you. You can try and block the incoming ball with the ball you are holding which may knock the ball out of your hands and still hit you, or you can throw the ball you are holding at the incoming ball to deflect it so it doesn’t hit you.
ERA uses the shaped charge to throw an outer armor plate at the incoming “Ball” of the anti tank round. Because it is designed to do that, it is very very very unlikely to damage the tank underneath.
The armor is made up of a layer of armor plate, then a specially shaped layer of explosives, then an external armor plate. When it detonates, the exterior metal plate is thrown into the incoming projectile, the explosive causes lots of air turbulence to further disrupt the flight of the incoming projectile, and the armor plate backing everything is intact so that the tank still has a decent amount of armor at that spot.
Ammunition makes a focused boom, which makes armour break and kills everyone inside.
Explosions on the outside of armour make a spread out boom, which doesn’t break armour, but does try to deflect the focused boom. Tank crew still alive and tank operational.
You like baseball? You know how the pitcher throws the ball and the batter swings the bat to hit it? Think of the ball as an incoming missile, if the missile hits the batter, then batter is going to have a bad day. If the batter holds the bat still and blocks the ball, the ball doesn’t do as much damage but the batter can still feel the hit, and the ball doesn’t really go that far. When the batter swings the bat and hits the ball, the batter doesn’t feel nearly anything and the ball goes flying away. You counter the energy of the missile with well timed explosions to do a similar thing, so the energy of the missile doesn’t get absorbed into the tank and gets blown away into a different direction.
I think you can think of this as an airbag – yes it does some damage to your car but it also helps to prevent you from hitting the car. You in this case are a anti-tank weapon and you are on your way to slam into a tank; the explosive is the airbag that tries to prevent that from happening.
Latest Answers