military@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker) (01/14/90)
From: uunet!sagpd1!jharkins (Jim Harkins) There is one thing I don't understand about reactive armour. Why doesn't someone come up with a round for a standard machine gun that is optimized for setting off the reactive plates? Seems to me that you could set up a few gunners and just have them rake the tanks, then the tank killers can finish them off with their standard HEAT rounds or whatever. Even if they had to come up with a custom machine gun, .75 caliber or whatever, it still seems this would be the way to go. Machine guns are relatively low-tech, cheap, easy to use, and light compared to tank killers. jim "Only dead fish go with the flow"
terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker) (01/15/90)
From: terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker) >There is one thing I don't understand about reactive armour. Why doesn't >someone come up with a round for a standard machine gun that is optimized >for setting off the reactive plates? Seems to me that you could set up >a few gunners and just have them rake the tanks, then the tank killers >can finish them off with their standard HEAT rounds or whatever. > Reactive armor is designed to be inert to kinetic penetrators, so you'd have to have some kind of explosive shell. Although there have been proposals and even designs for MG explosive bullets, I doubt there is sufficient explosive mass. Incendiary rounds may generate sufficient heat, but I imagine it would be easy to use explosives that are relatively immune to that. The major problem is range. The current primary use of HEAT is by ATGMs. You are asking those operators to close to MG range (effectively 1000m) to scrub off the reactive armor. This denies them their primary advantage; the 4-6 km range of the missiles. If you have to get that close in the first place why not use a gun (105mm +)? -- Terry Rooker terryr@cse.ogi.edu
yaniv%shum.huji.ac.il@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (ran el-Yaniv) (09/27/90)
From: ran el-Yaniv <yaniv%shum.huji.ac.il@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> One may assume that Israel supplies the US with reactive armour. t is for certain that the USMC has purchased RPG-plates for the funny looking landing vehicles (AAV7A1 [Astonishigly Agly Vehicle, Mark 7 :-) ]), so why not reactive. +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ :eMail: yaniv@shum.huji.ac.il Linguists do it cunningly: :Snail: P.O.B. 23114, Jerusalem, Israel Gramaticians do it correctly: +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
UKH8%DKAUNI2.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Guenther Augustin) (02/08/91)
From: "Guenther Augustin" <UKH8%DKAUNI2.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> A good reason for using several smaller components of reactive armour instead of a large one would be the following: After a first hit the corresponding location is vulnerable. The larger the component is, the larger the vulnerable area gets. (No idea about how easy it would be to hit that area again or what measures are being taken after a hit ... )