UK IFV Warrior, new infomation.

[kevin]

JaM...

Why do you say SLAT armor would stop 70% of RPG's? I'm just wondering what your source is, or is it a judgement call on your part?

I'm not real knowledgable on this subject, but I wonder what we can learn from the fact that SLAT is not applied to tanks or soft vehicles? (HMMVWs and trucks) I think it 'trips' a HEAT warhead, so that the blast disapates enough not to penetrate an IFV, but it not enough to protect a truck. But, it must not provide enough additional protection to tanks to be cost effective. Given those 2 assumptions, it should be easy to look at SP armor values, and then determine what additional protection SLAT offers.

I am also interested by the fact that the SLAT armor is not sloped. I'd think that even a 30% slope in the grills would provide much more protection benefit, than the benefit one would loose from decreased vision. Anyone want to speculate?

[Backis]

Regarding the slat armour, this is how I have understood the matter.

The main intention with the armour is probably not just to increase standoff distance as the methods I mentioned in my earlier post. Most modern HEAT rounds retain coherence of their penetrator stream long enough to penetrate most AFV through both sides from a flanking shot, thereby pretty evidently proving that a few decimeters more standoff will make no difference for initial penetration.

My take on the slats as used today are that they are mainly intended to "disrupt" the warhead before they detonate. This is mainly effective against the older type or HEAT rounds such as those used by Iraq (main HEAT threat being the PG-7 and perhaps some PG-7V). This type of protection is effective since the piezoelectric fuze only covers the tip of the forward cone of the round. If this misses the slat the remainder of the warhead will strike them and break up, severely degrading its effectiveness. If the fuze strikes the slat the round will work and probably retain almost full effect regardless of the standoff distance.

However, modern HEAT rounds are usually fuzed over their entire front(f e the AT-4 is) and will detonate when striking the slat, negating any advantage other than the increased standoff (which I hold as rather insignificant).

Add to this that the rounds used in Iraq are mostly really old and crappy examples, having been stored a decade and half longer than they were ever intended to. Some AAR's report a quarter to a third failing to detonate at all, how well those that DO detonate actually work one can only speculate.

[PlasmaKrab]

This is broadly what we have discussed above in this thread.

Many older warheads, plus probably some tandem HEATs, will have a fine enough fuze well that can slip between two bars, which will lead the warhead to be crushed against the bars without detonating.

About standoff, the question is: from what weapon up can the penetrator be considered untouched by one foot thick of cold air? That is, neglecting the incidence angle. Air won't spend and slow the penetrator jet down as steel would, but the metal will cool down anywauy. If the amount of energy spent is significant or not I must still calculate...

Additionally the bars in these systems seem to be thick enough, in the penetration direction, to deflect and maybe disrupt a penetrator coming at an angle.

Standoff plus a thin steel of hardened sheet seem effective enough against RPGs, since Tsahal has fielded a different kind of plated perforated spaced armor on their M113 "Zelda".