Why don’t rifle bullets detonate explosive reactive armor?

Question

Why don’t rifle bullets detonate explosive reactive armor?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

For an actual ELI5:

For the same reason that a balloon doesn’t pop when you shoot it with a spitball or a mouse trap doesn’t go off when you drop a feather on it.

There isn’t enough energy or force and it was designed that way.

Slightly less ELI5:

ERA is designed to be resistant to things that would otherwise not penetrate its base armor. For context, body armor plates that are designed to stop 7.62mm rifle rounds are rated to be resistant to them at essentially point blank range. Modern tank sabot rounds have their penetration value measured at a KILOMETER AWAY.