Especially the americans who have stoped their previous BS about ERA, and turned to this kind of option:
Army officials tout success of reactive armor
Effectiveness against RPGs slows push for active defenses
By Kris Osborn - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Apr 14, 2007 19:03:33 EDT
Army officials credit their effort to install reactive armor on more armored vehicles with cutting the number of casualties from rocket-propelled grenades in Iraq. They also said the armor, which triggers a small explosion to fend off a larger one, has reduced the Army’s immediate need for active protection systems, which are intended to shoot down incoming weapons.
“The reactive armor and slat armor protection systems currently deployed contribute to the effectiveness of our current combat systems to defeat the RPG threat without the use of an active protection system,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the acquisition and systems management deputy to the assistant Army secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, told lawmakers in September.
Since U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, 148 U.S. soldiers have been killed by RPGs, including 10 who died inside armored vehicles, Sorenson told the lawmakers.
Casualty figures compiled by Defense News paint a similar picture, showing 122 RPG-related deaths: 84 from March 2003 through December 2004 and 38 since.
Senior Army leaders decided in late 2004 to start sending more reactive armor to forces in Iraq, Sorensen said April 13.
In 2004, they decided to put reactive armor tiles on all of the service’s Abrams tanks, Bradley armored personnel carriers and Stryker fighting vehicles, he said.
“We had a number of reactive armor tiles that had been built, so we had to go back and buy them and put them on,” Sorensen said.
Today, all of the roughly 1,000 Bradley vehicles in Iraq have received the armor, he said. General Dynamics has made reactive armor for the Bradley since 1995; over the years, its orders have totaled $500 million for 1,450 sets.
GD also is making 500 sets of tank-armor tiles under a 2006 $59 million contract with Picatinny Arsenal, N.J. The first 100 tank sets have been delivered to the Anniston Depot, Ala., and will soon be shipped to Iraq.
The first set of Stryker reactive armor tiles has been completed, said Sorenson.
New armor, new countertactics
Reactive armor works by attaching small packs of explosives to a vehicle’s outer shell. The explosives detonate when hit by incoming fire, blowing the round away from the vehicle.
“We specifically craft the armor to the vehicle,” said Jerry DiGiacoma, who manages the reactive armor program for GD Armament and Technical Products. “Even the shapes of the tiles are customized to the configuration of the vehicle to protect it in vulnerable areas.”
Each tile protects only against a single hit. An enemy good or lucky enough to hit the same spot twice may find it vulnerable. So insurgent teams have attempted to defeat the armor by firing multiple RPGs at once, industry sources say.
But U.S. forces have learned to break up such groups with M-16 rifles and turret-mounted .50-caliber machine guns, the industry source said. Sorensen said these countertactics have also cut RPG casualties.
“Soldiers have become more adept at identifying threats. What I hear from commanders is that most of these engagements are at short range,” said Sorenson.
But that’s hardly the end of enemy attempts to hit the same spot twice. Some insurgent attacks have featured the tandem-charge RPG-29, which fires a small charge followed by a larger one.
Some improvised explosive devices are now being built with multiple explosively formed penetrators that can fire several slugs of molten metal at a single aim point.
“A multi-slug causes a lot of problems,” said Vernon Joynt, lead scientist for Force Protection, the South Carolina-based vehicle maker known for the improvised-explosive-device-stopping Buffalo and Cougar. “It shoots all the slugs like a machine gun in line. Problems arise with certain kinds of ceramics. They defeat the threat but do not remain in place. They are brittle. If you have one slug hitting them it will defeat the slug but shatter in the process, so if you have a multi-slug the rest [of the slugs] will come flying through like through a tunnel.”
GD says reactive armor can stop multi-slug projectiles.
“The reactive armor on the Bradley defeats all known threats,” said John Suttle, a spokesman with GD Armament and Technical Products.
APS slowdown
Sorensen said the success of reactive armor has eased the urgent need to buy active protection systems that identify, track, and shoot down incoming rounds. But such systems will eventually be needed, he said, and will be installed on the eight Future Combat Systems vehicles planned for deployment by 2015.
In 2012, the service plans to deploy Raytheon’s radar-driven Quick Kill as part of the second group of technologies developed under the FCS program. Early versions of the launcher controls and interceptor munitions have been tested, Army officials say.
“APS is quite literally a bubble of protection. It includes a number of launchers that have the APS munitions and are tied into a sensor that picks up the incoming round,” said Allan Resnick, who directs requirements integration at the Capabilities Integration Center of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.
The Army’s decision to buy Quick Kill was questioned by Raytheon competitors, who wondered why the Army chose an under-development system instead of the on-sale Israeli Trophy. Army officials say they looked at eight systems and chose the best option.
“We have done the analysis on this six ways to Sunday,” said Sorenson.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/04/defense_reactive_armor_070413/
