modern armor and defense

it would mess up the body's functions.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

I don't think skin could stop anything larger then a BB at short range, it simply would have too be too thick. Even if it did, you would still have the internal injuries to worry about. So we would need a bullet-proof exo-skeleton. Dosn't seem human anymore to me.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Robocop maybe? But I am not statisified that in the movie, M-16 rounds fired from other cops can penetrate his armor.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Armor ceramics
Ceradyne, Inc. offers the lightest weight armor technology available for NIJ Threat Level III and IV personnel protection and 7.62mm, 12.7mm, and 14.5mm AP combat vehicle protection.

Ceradyne's ceramic armor systems are lightweight layered structures consisting of a ceramic plate or tile supported by fiber reinforced composite backing and enclosed in a ballistic spall cover. On impact, the ceramic fractures the projectile core. A significant portion of the kinetic energy is absorbed by the ceramic, and residual energy is absorbed by the backing.

Many design compositions are available. Material selection is determined by structural, ballistic, weight and cost requirements. Ceradyne can produce armor systems featuring Boron Carbide (B4C), Silicon Carbide (SiC), Titanium Diboride (TiB2), Aluminum Nitride (AlN), or Silicon Nitride (Si3N4) ceramics with composite backing materials constructed of Kevlar®, Spectra®, fiberglass, or Zylon®.

Personnel Armor
Lightweight B4C and SiC based body armor systems for NIJ Threat Level III and IV

Upgrade plates available for stand alone use or optimized for enhanced protection when used in conjunction with existing soft armor

Monolithic multicurve shapes are contoured to fit the body and eliminate vulnerability at tile joints

Helicopter Armor
Ceradyne currently supplies ceramic armor components for the AH-64 Apache, Gazelle, Super Cobra, Super Puma, OH-58 AHIP, Black Hawk, and other military helicopters

Ceradyne components are qualified and approved as original and retrofit equipment for Boeing, Bell, Eurocopter, Westland, Sikorsky and others

Ceradyne’s panels are approved for add-on ballistic protection of floors and air frames

Land Vehicle Armor Systems
Ceradyne offers elastomer encased modular B4C and SiC appliqué armor with outstanding multi-hit characteristics for protection against light and medium armor piercing threats

Ceradyne is supporting the advanced stage of development of armor systems for the U.S. Marine Corps “Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle”(AAAV)

Armor Tiles for Land Vehicles
Hot Pressed B4C, SiC, AlN and TiB2

Sintered SiC and Si3N4

Sizes range from 2” x 2” to 20” x 20” in all thicknesses

Ceradyne, Inc. (NASDAQ NM: CRDN) is a publicly traded company and operates three domestic manufacturing sites located in California, Georgia, and Kentucky in addition to a European sales office in the United Kingdom.

 

The question of aurmour is often one that is asked and i intend to answer it.

Threre are 2 things which are very VERY hard to kill.
One is the M1A2 Abrams
the other is the Challenger 2

Both use special armour of layers of materials 9that if i did know i'd not disclose) and the tanks meatal work...

3 things that can kill it...

Petrol bomb on the air intake

A VERY Big munition droped from an aircraft

A very lucky armour peircing or Depleated uranium round.

What theyve done is to use angles and verry hard subtances (Hardness is actuall defined in enginnering as the ability to withstand surface inpact) so the rounds aimed at it either hit very thick armour or an angular face of the tank and go bouncing off somewhere.

My point is that these things are designed to be big and as such pack lots of firepower and are nigh on impossible to dispose of, just as well when they cost in the region of 30 milion in currency.

My point is, they can afford to carry round all this armour, leg infantry can't as it impaires in many cases movement, agility and indurance, as well as adding another set of chafing to the already over burdened grunt. Also the chances of the vests stopping anything other than a low calibre round is minimal. untill the more advanced aurmour is in play the best way forward for regular infantry is to simply hit hard and first.

The only place where i can justify heavy aurmour is in beach assaults and Counter terrorist raids on known strong holds, for general and drawn out war situations, aurmour is just extra baggage.

 

Yeah, you Brits and your Chobham armor is some insanely durable stuff.

 

Shame they can't fit it to the tracks

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

As regards personal armour...
With the apparent availability/popularity of cheap soviet era RPGS it seems that US forces have lost a number of men to attacks by these devices used in an anti-personal role.
Any of these fancy new nanotube/ Diamond vests likely to cope with anything like that sort of blast and impact?
Dee Cee

 

Almost any type of bomb will take out a tank. The top turret armor is very thin.

M1A2 Use steel encased depleted uranium.
M1A1 use the Chobham
M1A1H have additional depleted uranium

Sabot rounds are pretty nasty and will easily smoke a t-72 (but then so will a HEAT round). DU rounds from airplanes enter throught thin top armor.

DeeCee right, tracks and engines are a weak point, but you cant protect everything.
Im sure you could strap on some DU armor on someone but I would think the blunt trama would liquidfly all your internal organs.

 

That would be about it. While the armor will stop the bullet or whatever, there is still kinetic energy being transfered to the target. You'll at least be thrown like a rag doll and have severe bruises wherever. I got a suit of armor in a book I'm writing, and while it's pretty much indestructible, and manages to protect the wearer from large caliber bullets and grenades and stuff, the guys don't run around in it for more than a few hours, and generally they are still knocked out of action if they get hit by something big, even if they aren't in danger of dying.

How's this, instead of stopping the bullet, you let it through. Nanites fill in the hole, and take over the functions of desplaced cells while they put everything back togather. They also augment muscles and bone and such, can stop chemical and biological weapons, repair radiation damamge pretty much turning the person into a superman. Incredible strenth, speed, combined with not being able to be killed would make you one bad mother.

 

On the topic of RPGs, the British have something to say about those.

 

Very interesting!
Now if we could mount a smaller verison of the Isrealie anti-missle laser on top to care of Sabot rounds and anti-tank missles we'd be in business!

 

but try putting that system onto personal aurmour, walking round as a human powerstation? no thanks!

 

A smaller version to zap mosquitos would be cool....

 

Excellent point. I think most people think Teflon and other lubricants commonly used in the manufaturing of bullets actually help penetrate bullet resistant vests. I know I did at one time. Thank you very much liberal-knee-jerk-media.

The next advance in armor will be the most affordable one, not necessarily the best. As usual.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

As we say in the Army, everything issued to you was made by the lowest bidder

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Considering how important the skin pores are to respiration, and how there are so many nerve endings that sense various changing conditions of the environment, not to mention the role of perspiration in body heat regulation, mutating the human skin would be quite a bad idea. Also imagine the added strain on the human skeleton and muscular system. If the skin were that tough, how would you grow/expand, or grow more muscle, et cetera?

I think the main thing armor has to deal with is stopping matter from penetrating it. So therefore, it all boils down to how well the armor neutralizes the incoming projectile's momentum and force. The armor needs to be able to spread out the 'oomph' of the projectile so that it doesn't have enough 'oomph' concentrated in one spot to penetrate.

People will continue developing better weapons to deliver more and more force/momentum to one concentrated spot to penetrate better. People will continue developing better armor to absorb and neutralize more and more impact. One set of armor will not protect you if you don't ... er ... stay ahead of the curve.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

I'm surprised no one has suggested wacky ideas like science-fiction-ey energy shields.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

I asked every one to focus on armor and not force fields.

 

Waaaa, I want to know what Chobham is and how it works. But I dont want to join BAe or whoever makes it and get security clearance and swear not to tell anyone blah blah blah.

ON the armour note, I have heard from someone whos famliy is in the army (Uk) that american soldiers in Iraq are very hard to kill, can ayone explain what theyre wearing, roughly? I mean has personal armour, with ceramic plates and carbon fibre gone as far as it can just now, until they get proper nanotech working, or is there still room for improvement, given the limits imposed by infantries duties.

 

here is some stuff i read about think you will find it usefull
humm... carbon ring armor.... .01 mm of this is equel to 2 inches of steel armor bogles the mind combine that with state changing gels and you got some very nice armor... that is the future of armor my friend makes so many things posible not even funny.... then we got stuff called starlight that has next to no heat transfer showed a test of it took a egg and covered one side with starlight and took a plasma cutter to it on the starlight side for 45 min did all it did was darken the starlight then they broke the egg and showed it was not cooked then thay took a egg and put a under the torch and it exploded instanly cool stuff put starlight over the carbon ring armor and you got HE round resistance you cant shake a stick at... then there is aro gels that are light as air and can wistand 3000 degrees C you combine all these parts together in one suite of armor and you got a unstopable killing force...

its a good read..

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Armor: There are several approaches to this. Keep in mind that we aren't building a walking tank, but something which will protect a soldier from small arms, heavy machine guns and perhaps light machine cannon. Such a piece of equipment would, indeed, be a one-person armored fighting vehicle (AFV). For further information on armor protection, see the JOHT article Material World Part 2: Gimmie Shelter.

Soft armor - such as is used in ballistic vests - has the advantage that it is lighter for the same level of protection, in part because it yields with impact, catching the projectile like a net. However, for protection of the level and type needed for an AFV soft armors aren't really suitable. There are situations where you don't want your armor to flex. A rigid structure also better resists impacts by objects with sharp edges and points (such as shell fragments and flechettes, not to mention ice picks) and the shocks of explosions.

Currently, the best we can do for a true "hard shell" suit of armor would be a laminate of some sort. Perhaps titanium and graphite/epoxy composites, with maybe some boron fibers included. Faceplates would also be multi-layered, with an outer surface made from something like the ceramic glass used in Visions (TM) cookware, backed by polycarbonate. Polarizing material and anti-fogging heating elements would be incorporated as additional layers. As mentioned below, the faceplate should also have some display capability built in.

In the near future we can expect to be able to use things now known to exist but available only in laboratory quantities. This includes monocrystalline iron filaments, which have an incredibly high tensile strength (as mentioned in a previous JOHT). These could be a component in any of several different types of composites. At a rough estimate, a one centimeter thickness of such a composite would be approximately equivalent to about 4 cm of RHA (Rolled Homogenous Armor, a military standard of comparison). Since it would have a lower density than RHA, the benefit in terms of weight saved would be even greater than this 4-to-1 ratio.

Something in the works which is better than perfect iron whiskers would be perfect diamond whiskers, embedded in an advanced epoxy bonding agent. This would produce a lightweight, inexpensive composite with strength and resilience even greater than that provided by monocrystalline iron. One centimeter of this would be approximately equal to about 10 centimeters of RHA, and with a density about one-third that of the homogenous metal armor it would be far lighter for the same protection level.

Theoretically, making diamond whiskers should be fairly simple and easy. One suggested method is to extrude graphite fibers under conditions of heat and pressure which cause the carbon to assume the same atomic bonding that is found in diamonds. The most successful current technique is using vapor phase deposition of carbon atoms to create diamond-coated wire. (This coating isn't perfect, monocrystalline diamond, but tests have shown it to have nearly the same strength.) This process could also be used to diamond coat the outside layer of the faceplate. (Talk about scratch-resistant!)

Another near-term material is made from tubes of carbon atoms ("Buckytubes"). These are nearly as strong as diamond, are less brittle, and conduct electricity fairly well. They also have some other interesting properties. For instance, being hollow tubes they can have something wrapped inside them. Buckytubes are already being made in large laboratory quantities. At least one company is selling them to experimenters and the public. If the right process is found, they may be much easier (and cheaper) to produce than diamond whiskers or diamond-coated wires. Buckytube composite armor would offer a protection level per centimeter of thickness a little under that of the diamond whisker composite described above, but at about half the weight.

Beyond even these is a theoretical material, ring carbon. This would be at least an order of magnitude stronger than perfect diamond whiskers and both more chemically stable and harder. Suit armor made from interlocking, benzene-like rings of carbon atoms would protect the wearer from anything short of a heavy anti-tank weapon, with very little weight. Even then, more danger would come from the transmitted shock of impact than from penetration. A centimeter of this would be equal to roughly 100 thousand centimeters of RHA. Assuming such an armor could be made, it would survive without a scratch impacts which would not only pulp the wearer but powder the equipment inside. It would be best used as a reinforcement for a more conventional composite armor. A few grams spread through the outer layer of the composite would greatly increase the protection of the armor (meaning the armor could be made thinner and lighter and still stronger).

An important factor in armor effectiveness is geometry. Armor works better when it is angled, because of two factors. The first is purely geometric; a flat plate at an angle to the line of attack presents an effective thickness much greater than that of the plate itself, because the path of penetration passes diagonally through the cross-section. Secondly, the shallower the angle of impact the greater the chance that a projectile (or the fluid jet from a shaped charge) will simply bounce off. Shells designed to penetrate armor have long had a cap under the ballistic nose for the purpose of "digging in" when hitting at an angle, to increase armor penetration. However, even these only slightly reduce the chance of a bounce.

 

Here a some likely canidates for future body armor
Zylon: looked at as an even stronger polymer then Kevlar.

M5: USA military developed fiber, strong as Zylon, sometime referred to as “Ultra-Fiber”

Amorphous metals: metal alloyed that do not have a crystalline structure can be shaped like plastic and can be woven into fibers, tensile strength are several times stronger them the best titanium alloyed (well that not really to as many Amorphous metals have titanium).

Yes the dreams of the future is carbon nano-fibers and synthetic diamond by the sheet.

We could someday engineer people with bones made out of biologically grown metal alloys and flesh with fibers stronger then spiders silk.