Non Explosive Reactive Armour (NERA)

[GimpGump]

Hi there

I'm sure you know Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA) well enough, so I will not go on about the principal of how it works.

Quite some time ago when reading about new light and medium armoured vehicles i came across NERA. Essentially it does the same as ERA, it deflects some of the kinetic energy of a KE penetrator and the effects of a HEAT round.

But as it says in the name, it does not explode. So far I've heard of rubber (not a joke) and EMP going through the out most layer of the armour and in some way offering protection.

Does anyone here know more than I do? (Doesn't take much, does it?:crazy)

thx

[Waylander]

NERA for example works like the following principle.

You have some plates of metal with rubber inbetweeen them.
When for example a penetrator hits the armor the metal plates move into different directions. Thus some of the energy of the penetrator is absorbed and the forces of the metal plates may put so much stress onto the penetrator that it is blunted or breaks.

[Tavarisch]

From what I know, NERA is lighter and much safer than ERA, and from reading the Wiki article on the M-84AS (essentially an M-84 upgraded to the max, it almost looks like a T-90 even M-84AS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-84AS) ), from what I can understand is NERA gives less protection in comparison to ERA. However, it states that it does give better protection against tandem HEAT warheads, apparently in theory because the layer in between the metal plates are not explosive.

[Rythm]

NERA protects much better against KE than ERA can. That is the big advantage.

[Feanor]

Hey Tavarisch that's some pretty interesting stuff on the M-84AS. It seems similar to the T-72 mods, that bring them up (almost) to the T-90 standard. Am I right? It's something retrofittable, and basically grafted on to the existing M-84, as opposed to a new model based on the M-84A? Also as far as I can tell it uses K-5. Is that in addition to the NERA? Or do we have alternating NERA and K-5 on different parts of the tank?

[eckherl]

NERA for example works like the following principle.

You have some plates of metal with rubber inbetweeen them.
When for example a penetrator hits the armor the metal plates move into different directions. Thus some of the energy of the penetrator is absorbed and the forces of the metal plates may put so much stress onto the penetrator that it is blunted or breaks.


You do realize that it may only be more effective against small and medium caliber KE projectiles, only thing really good performance wise with this set up is that a vehicle can take multiple hits from shaped charged projectiles, ERA doesn`t offer this, including new ERA packages. Which brings up another interesting point, is bigger era bricks better than smaller bricks.

[eckherl]

NERA protects much better against KE than ERA can. That is the big advantage.

That is not the projectile that it was initially designed to defeat nor will it over newer *ERA* packages coming out of Ukraine and Russia. This is not to say though that the U.S doesn`t offer a good viable solution to a more advanced design, you may here a little more in regards to that comment with the U.S and Germany teaming up to work on some smaller tracked vehicle weapons platforms, first vehicle of course will be a SPH.

[Tavarisch]

Hey Tavarisch that's some pretty interesting stuff on the M-84AS. It seems similar to the T-72 mods, that bring them up (almost) to the T-90 standard. Am I right? It's something retrofittable, and basically grafted on to the existing M-84, as opposed to a new model based on the M-84A? Also as far as I can tell it uses K-5. Is that in addition to the NERA? Or do we have alternating NERA and K-5 on different parts of the tank?

Yep, pretty much an upgraded M-84 (which is essentially a copy of the T-72) brought up to an almost T-90 standard.

From a glance of the picture on display in that article, you'd have to assume the plates to be K-5. I don't know what kind of NERA is used and what the array is like, so I'm not exactly sure. In the panel to the right side of the page, it states that yes K-5 is used. Perhaps the NERA is used in vital areas where ERA cannot be placed (like the engine areas or near the suspension I think) whereas K-5 is used for the turret and hull glacis areas.

From what I understand, the T-90 is more armored with thicker composites but the M-84AS is faster. Both have SHTORA and both have pretty much the same firepower.