Active Armour blowing up own troops

[Cpl Steiner]

Hi,

I believe some vehicles in the game will be kitted out with "Active Armour", which is designed to detonate when hit by certain types of HEAT round and disrupt the plasma jet of these weapons to improve vehicle survivability.

One of the disadvantages of this sort of armour is that it can result in friendly casualties if there are friendly infantry near the vehicle when the armour explodes. I am wondering if this will be simulated in the game? Will we be best advised to keep friendly infantry well away from such vehicles in a firefight?

[Sergei]

I don't think that reactive armour is the primary concern for you if you're standing around a tank in a firefight. It's very small, it has no shrapnel, it has a very limited cone, and most of the energy is spent countering the HEAT. The biggest threat would be if the ERA doesn't defeat the warhead and the vehicle is summoned to AFV heaven in a violent, explody kind of way.

The other threat is that you might end up having a 'missed' HEAT round through your head. Also when, say, a 120mm HEAT hits a target or ground near you, even though it is based on directed jet, it is a considerable blast and will send a few fragments of the shell in the air.

In addition to that, an infantry man can make himself invisible quite easily - by ducking - but an AFV cannot, which means that an AFV will draw considerably more fire to itself than Joe Pedestrian. And in a combat, every rifleman will instinctively keep his other eye fixed on the nearest enemy AFV (all infantrymen everywhere in the world have two fears always on their minds: one is to be captured alive by enemy female partisans, the other is to be crushed by tank tracks into a mass of bloody pulp and fractured bones), meaning they will notice any movement around it first unless there are also female partisans in sight.

So, for an infantry man who isn't needing a quick amputation of his four limbs and the outsourcing of intestines, it is generally advisable to stay clear of any vehicles under fire.

[ March 11, 2007, 11:33 PM: Message edited by: Sergei ]

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I'd have to agree with Sergei. In such a situation infantry have bigger things to worry about.

[MikeyD]

What would have reactive armor in the game, just Bradleys? Does Syrian field any Russian reactive armor? I believe Bradley mounts a new design (should I say 2nd generation?) lower-explosive-force reactive armor. I recall seeing a brief clip of a Bradley with side box still smoking. It looked as though not all of the outer face of the box had been blown away by the force of the detonation. You definitely wouldn't want to be close to a 1st genration Israeli Blazer reactive armor box when it cooked-off.

[Tarquelne]

one is to be captured alive by enemy female partisans,

There's a DARPA project looking into the feasibility of flooding much of the world with cheap pulp fiction with the sexual prowess of G.I.s as the theme and the fun (good fun) that can be expected from a captured soldier as a recurring motif.

Yeah, sounds silly, but one should never quickly dismiss DARPA.

[Michael Dorosh]

If BFC can model Nahverteidigungswaffe and incidental effects on infantry, I am reasonably sure the effects of reactive armour on infantry - enemy or friendly - has not escaped their notice.

In short - have a little faith, guys.

[Sergei]

Since you were saying 'active' instead of 'reactive', maybe you mean Russian Arena?

Wikipedia says:

The Arena Active Protection System (APS) is an active countermeasure system developed at Russia's Kolomna-based Engineering Design Bureau to protect armoured fighting vehicles from shaped-charge projectiles. It uses a millimeter-wavelength doppler radar to detect incoming warheads, then fires a defensive projectile, timed to detonate immediately above the target and spray it with a stream of splinters thereby defeating the threat.

The dangerous zone is relatively small, 20-30 meters around the tank, allowing for infantry to operate nearby. When the system is triggered, a warning signal is activated, to warn nearby personnel to keep distance or take cover. Although it should be noted that a HEAT projectile hitting any target create shrapnel flying from the impact zone.

Arena was designed partly in response to vulnerabilities of the Russian tanks, discovered during fighting in Chechnya in the 1990s. It is intended to help protect a tank from light anti-tank weapons and ATGMs, including some of those with top attack warheads.

The cost of the system on a single armoured vehicle is approximately $300,000. It was first employed on the T-80UM1 Main Battle Tank.

Arena's less-sophisticated precursor is the Drozd APS.

The article on Drozd used in Afghanistan is not very praising.

But I don't think that Syrians have Arena. Has Russia exported it?

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by Sergei:

Since you were saying 'active' instead of 'reactive', maybe you mean Russian Arena?

Sorry to disappoint but no, just good old fashioned reactive armour.

[flamingknives]

I might be wrong, but I would hazard that an exploding ERA tile isn't going to add too much to the existing explosion of a HEAT shell hitting a tank.

[dixon_el]

I don't think you think you to worry about the effects of an exploding reactive panel, I think the incoming round will take care of the problem long before it becomes an issue.