This is a discussion on 'Star Trek' shields to protect supertanks within the Space & Defense Technology forum, part of the Global Defense & Military category; 'Star Trek' shields to protect supertanks
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday August 19, 2001
The Observer
Scientists are developing super-tanks ...
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday August 19, 2001
The Observer
Scientists are developing super-tanks which would use powerful magnets to melt and destroy incoming missiles and shells.
Each vehicle would be covered in 'smart armour' using electrical fields, instead of thick metal, to give protection against anti-tank weapons. The technology, which is being perfected by defence researchers on both sides of the Atlantic, would transform armoured-vehicle construction.
Current machines, such as Britain's Challenger tank, weigh more than 60 tonnes because they have to carry plating that is more than 2ft thick. Such vehicles require massive amounts of fuel and other supplies, and cause logistical headaches when being transported to conflict zones, say military experts.
But a tank that relied on electromagnetic pulses, instead of plating, to provide a shield against missiles would weigh a modest 20 tonnes. A fleet would form a light but powerful rapid deployment force, and would transform Western nations' ability to take international military action.
Smart-armour research is treated as highly confidential by military officials and manufacturers. A Ministry of Defence spokesman would only confirm that projects aimed at transforming tank construction - part of the Army's Future Land Command project - were taking place. 'Developing technologies that will cut back on armour weight are a key part of that research,' he added.
However, scientists at the US Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, have now revealed details of how smart armour would work.
According to research published in the current issue of New Scientist, each tank would be covered with tiles made of strong plas tic under which a sandwich of different materials would be installed. First there would be a mat of optical fibres, then a thin sheet of standard armour plating, and underneath that would lie a series of metal coils.
When an anti-tank shell explodes on standard armour, the copper cone of its head is projected as a powerful jet of metal that travels at five miles a second. This jet focuses an immense amount of energy on a tiny area and so can slice easily through several feet of dense metal, causing devastation inside a tank.
However, on striking smart armour a shell would produce a very different reaction. Firstly, it would sever optical cables in the mat below the tank's outer plastic cover. This would trigger sensors to activate electrical capacitors inside the tank which would send a mighty electrical current surging through the metal coils at the base of the smart armour.
A massive electromagnetic field would be created inside the armour, as the high-velocity copper jet begins to pass through it. This field would induce electrical currents in the copper.
'If you get enough current into the copper, you can heat it up and start pinching it in certain regions, making it unstable,' states Mike Zoltowski, of the Army Research Laboratory, in the New Scientist article. The thin copper jet would be flattened and broadened out and so would be unable to cut through the thin standard plating at the base of the smart armour.
Essentially, electromagnets would be used to dissipate the energy of an anti-tank missile or shell, like the force shields that protect the fictional Starship Enterprise.
'This kind of development is now seen as urgent by military planners,' Chris Foss, editor of Jane's Armour and Artillery, said. 'For example, some countries are working on "top attack" missiles which fly over the turret of an oncoming tank instead of striking it front on, where it is most strongly shielded. They would drop their payloads on the tank's relatively unprotected turret area.'
To protect against that, designers would be forced to add even more thick armour plating to these other parts of the tank, adding to its weight and fuel consumption and making it more unwieldy. The answer is magnetic pulses, says Zoltowski. 'The benefit is that you wouldn't need 800 millimetres of steel armour.'
Current machines, such as Britain's Challenger tank, weigh more than 60 tonnes because they have to carry plating that is more than 2ft thick.
yeah they lost most of their credibility saying challenger's armor was two feet thick.
yep, in military circles especially - the guardian has no credibility, they have been caught out a few times making things up. there last one was on Libya... a lot of egg on their face.
2 feet thick armour would be a "Red Alert" mammoth tank.
But what i heard about electrical armour is different in some ways. The HEAT jet, as mentioned, is a conductive copper. what i heard is, there will be 1st RHA layer, then a space and then inner RHA layer. The Inner layer will be connected to a large capacitor holding a large amount of charge. the outer layer will be earthed. when the HEAT jet penetrate the first layer and touch the second layer, the circuit is complete and a large amount of charge will travel from capacitor to earth via the copper jet, heat it up and vaporizing it. Am i in the wrong info party here?
________________ Here's how you make a good soldiers. First you train them, then you trust them.
yep, spot on actually. the other addition to this concept is that of magnetorheological armour, ie armour plating that solidify and desolidify on command from a self defence system.
it would be an interesting concept as it starts to bring to reality the basis of "shape shifting" platforms as well.
Do you mean "yep, spot on actually" because i,m wrong or because i,m right.
I heard my friend doing research on the magnetic controlled metal hull. it's not really a solid metal but a large group of nano size rubber ball and nano size ferrous metal fragments. the magnetic field held all the frag together into a single mass. there is 2 parts, the control plating and the nanofragments. the control plating is divided into several different blocks about 2x2 cm wide. behind each block is an EM coil connected to the computer which control the magnetic strengh of each individual block differently. that's about what i know. eventually they met some brick wall in their research and stop there. In the experiment, they made a wall with a hatch using this technique. When the hatch close, the crack between the wall and the hatch close by itself as though there is no hatch.
________________ Here's how you make a good soldiers. First you train them, then you trust them.
Do you mean "yep, spot on actually" because i,m wrong or because i,m right.
I heard my friend doing research on the magnetic controlled metal hull. it's not really a solid metal but a large group of nano size rubber ball and nano size ferrous metal fragments. the magnetic field held all the frag together into a single mass. there is 2 parts, the control plating and the nanofragments. the control plating is divided into several different blocks about 2x2 cm wide. behind each block is an EM coil connected to the computer which control the magnetic strengh of each individual block differently. that's about what i know. eventually they met some brick wall in their research and stop there. In the experiment, they made a wall with a hatch using this technique. When the hatch close, the crack between the wall and the hatch close by itself as though there is no hatch.
"yep" as in you were right..
interesting technology you describe, do you know whether it was pressure tested in water? did it work under water?
I would think that there are a few choke points:
weight of the absolute mass
power consumption
water proofing issues
redundancy issues, eg is the fail safe default an active open block or an inactive closed block?
it would be very interesting to use with ceramic armour and potentially with aircraft (if it could be weight reduced)
Power is depend on the wide of the plating. the wider the area the more power it use.
On the early design they required constant power to maintain the wall, less the wall collapses and turn into a powder in the floor. there is also a problem of thickness unconsistencies where a certain part of the wall suddenly become thicker or thinner then the rest because of the uncontrolable flow of the nanofragments. the improve design, the nanofragments was glued together, the EM were use only to hardening it.
U can simplify the control by using single block for the whole vehicle and only using variaous blocks on certain area like a hatch where u need to cover the gap. Redundancy issues? that comes to Electronics control part.
Weight is depend on the materials use. as long as it ferous, it's okay. the wall eventually become thinner when being hardened.
the water proofing, that is where the nano rubber ball came into place. we don,t have enough funding to test it on waters, but we test it on a pressure chamber. it can withstand up to 10 atmosphere and remain airproof. again, it's a question about how much power u apply.
One more thing. In the test, when the Magnetic field were applied, the wall attracted a metal screw driver from a bench 2 meters away and stick to the wall. So your vehicle might pick up any ferrous metal several meters away and u have tons of metals sticking to your vehicles hull. But look on the bright side, it is an additional armour
Interesting, so what is the proposed use for the technology?
Is your funding just for proof of concept interim development or are you building for a specific need?
The thing I'd be concerned about is that it will be generating a substantial field (obviously) which means that any platform that uses a magnetic anomaly detector is going to be picking it up very quickly. At a military level that means that you are holding up a "please hit me" sign.
Don't take it out into the ocean, you could end up with a Harpoon or Penguin in your lap..
The thing I'd be concerned about is that it will be generating a substantial field (obviously) which means that any platform that uses a magnetic anomaly detector is going to be picking it up very quickly. At a military level that means that you are holding up a "please hit me" sign.
Don't take it out into the ocean, you could end up with a Harpoon or Penguin in your lap..
That's where the research "brick wall" stand.
I guess it is necesities. My country is in it's way to stand on it's own feet for defence equipment development, seeing how one could easily being "sanction" today for the least of reason. Don't want vaunted migs stay grounded for lack of spares. currently, there is some team working on the design of Ultra-quiet SSK. The hull will be local design, but the internal equipments and engine will have to be from outside source. It'll be years ahead to design the engine and electronics locally.
The thing I'd be concerned about is that it will be generating a substantial field (obviously) which means that any platform that uses a magnetic anomaly detector is going to be picking it up very quickly. At a military level that means that you are holding up a "please hit me" sign.
Don't take it out into the ocean, you could end up with a Harpoon or Penguin in your lap..
That's where the research "brick wall" stand.
I guess it is necesities. My country is in it's way to stand on it's own feet for defence equipment development, seeing how one could easily being "sanction" today for the least of reason. Don't want vaunted migs stay grounded for lack of spares. currently, there is some team working on the design of Ultra-quiet SSK. The hull will be local design, but the internal equipments and engine will have to be from outside source. It'll be years ahead to design the engine and electronics locally.
One of the projects I was involved in was "stealthing" a sub. The issue of the engine is not so difficult. The electronics is more so. The main thing is having a vessel that is built to fit into the countries naval doctrine and a capacity to protect its SLOC's
I would think that smaller littoral sub is a better fit for your needs. I'd rather have 6 small ones than 3 big ones.
It would be interesting to see how this system would fair against kinetic energy penetrators. I don't think an Electromagnetic field would work at all against Tungsten or Depleted Uranium penetrators would it? I seem to recall magnet fields only affecting steel/iron from my high school physics... Seriously though. I have heard or rather read that the US and probably others are working towards directed electronic counter measures against guided missiles/projectiles, for their armoured vehicles. These I guess focus on radar/infra-red or laser guided munitions as I don't think they'd stop tank gun rounds or wire-guided munitions. This type of system would be an addition to "normal" armour, though not a replacement. I doubt that designers would be placing all of their "eggs" in one basket though. What if the tank had a power failure?
Thats why there is a healthy degree of skepticism about chinas laser defence system on their new tanks.
we already know how much power is required to lock onto a target for a weapons system, that is vastly different from using a laser as a weapons system - especially on a vehicle of that size. This is even more so when you look at the dimensions of the platform, start making volumetic deductions on engine space, crew space, fuel space, autoloaders, weapons, ordinance etc...
the room left, to house a laser weapon (as opposed to a designator) PLUS its power supply, tends to make the existence of one highly dubious.
the other addition to this concept is that of magnetorheological armour, ie armour plating that solidify and desolidify on command from a self defence system.
