Armor, part II

[targon]

BTW, this foam will be surely vaporized by shock wave, as pore collapse produces _lots_ of heat unlike ordinary shock wave. It's like fuel ignition inside diesel cylinders. This heat generation is pure 100% victory, as heat equivalent for projectile energy is humble (average high-powered bullet can heat ~1kg of water by 1 C under atmospheric conditions)

[Straybow]

Armor does not equal defense

Hmmmm, in English your "cumulative" warhead (must lose something in translation) is called a "shaped charge" warhead. The effect depends on the axial conical cavity shape of the explosive charge. (AFAIK the Nato warheads use copper for the metal film.)

About the use of rubber in armor: possibly part of the formula for Chobham armor, which is very effective at damping the shock wave/spalling effect.

As I opined in the previous Armor thread (closed due to argumentativeness by certain posters [not me ]), armor is the *last* line of defense, and defining the defensive value of a unit by its armor isn't a good model. Military units follow the maxim, "The best defense is a good offense." Shoot the other guy before he can shoot you. Force the other guy to spend his time running instead of shooting.

I also posted about new ballistic armor that uses unwoven fibers (laid down straight instead) to carry the energy away as a longitudinally transmitted shock wave (roughly perpendicular to the attacking vector). Woven Kevlar can only stop a 44 magnum pistol bullet or a .22 rimfire rifle bullet. This new kind of ballistic cloth (5-10 mm thick pad of cross-directional layers) can stop almost any small arms round. I saw footage of testing with a 12-guage shotgun (firing slugs) and a 7.62 mm rifle that would barely have bruised the skin of a living target.

Any foot soldier would love to have armor that stops rifle/MG bullets and shrapnel. Any tanker would like armor proof against shaped charge and kinetic warheads. However, anyone would rather get the drop on his enemy than have to depend on body armor to stop the enemy's fire. That means stealth, passive detection, and aiming systems. That means secure command, control, and communications at the squad level, and so on.

[Jeremy Buloch]

There is an alternative if this nanite armor doesn't work.
I have previously discussed an alloy called "Nanometal"
This armor and various other alloys and/or shielding is located in this thread: http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=64685
By the way Blake I like your idea on the armor.


Oh and yes the unit would need stealth, Maneuverability, etc. But if the other unit(s) is faster or has better targeting computers. Then the defensive unit would need good armor, would it not?
-J.B.-

[targon]

Thanks, it's if fact "shaped charge", but NATO seems to really love depleted uranium and uses it whenever they can, both projectile and armor.
Concerning kevlar fiber armour: yes, this thing really works, but against non-advanced bullets only. There is thingie called "resonance piercing" if I've translated correctly. _Multiple_ projectiles (like very specilal "buckshot") may create special pattern shockwave that in fact concentrates inside armor medium and creates great pressures at some depth. It's even simpler for "energy" weapons. Using special patterns (circular etc.) it's possible to punch a hole (1st in bulletproof, next in soldier) with reasonable low velocity projectiles or beam energy.
BTW, reasonable strong shockwave will simply ignore that strands as it'll simply collapse vest's internal structure and jump from thread to thread (kinda lurker).
IMO, armor is't last line of defence, but if it's passed, any unit is 95% sure dead or "wounded" and needs extensive repairs/cure. Other layers may include stealth, evasive manoeuvres, jammers, decoys, point defence. Or it may simply kill its enemy before it may strike back.

[targon]

Concerning Neutronium armor, I think it's unlikely to ever be done, as neutronium is really nasty thing to handle.
1st of all, HOW you may handle it? neutrons simply ignore forces that bind ordinary matter together and pi-mesons may too. So you must punch a lot of charged particles into neutronium and they may simply run out of it.
OK, you place neutronium around you favorite tank. But neutronium must have really big surface forces so it will crush that tank into football sized junk piece. And you can't stop it from doing it by any matterial means, neutronium is simply too strong stuff.
But actual neutronium is't something like atom core, IMO. It's like _very_ hot gas bounded by neutron star gravity force. Will it survive Earth conditions or simply explode in single burst? or may be dissipate slowly... it's like "plasma armor"
At last, you are able to somehow stop neutronium both from crushing your tank and from decomposition. OK. Enemy fires energy weapon, beam strucks neutronium and generates _REALLY_ big shock wave. It's so heavy so energy density will be enormous, and pressure too. Heavy "vaporized" neutronium cloud strike deeper layers and cuts it like butter (in fact, much better).
So I think that neutronium armor must be either _pure_ fantasy, not "sci-" or _VERY_ high tech gadget, something between Types II and III.
On other hand, neutronium may be used for "unstopable" projectile weapon, or crossbreed of projectile and energy weapons...

[Leland]

Yup, I agree that neutronium sounds more like a high tech projectile or weapon (much like antimatter discussed in another thread) than armor.

[Straybow]

targon, multiple-projectiles must hit simultaneously for the effect you've described. I've no doubt that test-bench results are good, but I expect field conditions would eliminate simultaneity and negate the effect. For the other case I suppose that "reasonably strong shockwave" is high enough to put the projectile out of the small arms category, which makes the matter moot. Make the projectile big enough and you can kill a man with momentum impulse.

Jeremy, tactics far outweighs passive factors such as armor and weapon effectiveness. Even then, production can outweigh either.

In the "Great Patriotic War" (as targon would call it) the Germans were slow to upgrade the Pzkw III design and had no advance intelligence on the T-34. The T-34's 85mm gun made short work of Pzkw III and early IV armor, and was itself nearly proof against the short 75mm gun.

At first it was a bloodbath, with ~4 Panzers killed for each T-34 killed. Then German squad training and radios enabled them to hide behind terrain and use spotters to surprise T-34s at close range (~100m). It still took a handful of Panzers to kill a T-34, bombarding its sides and rear until a shot penetrated. The kill ratio swung to the Panzer's favor.

The Pzkw IV [D variant, IIRC] soon sported a long 75mm gun and more armor, achieving parity with the T-34. Pzkw V and VI were superior in both departments. The kill ratio of the Panzers climbed higher, yet the sheer number of T-34s kept victory at out of reach (over 30,000 produced).

[Thanks to the History channel show for details I'd forgotten or never known.]

[Straybow]

Neutronium would be considered a different state of matter, just as plasma is a state of matter defined separately from gas or liquid. Plasma is a "fluid" whereas neutronium is a solid. Nuclei stripped of electrons are somehow linked via the Strong Nuclear force instead of electron orbitals and Weak force. The electrons then skate over the surfaces of the neuclear layer.

The problem, as you stated, is the gigantic density. A single layer could be heavier than the most implausible thickness of conventional armor. While the layer itself would be of surpassing strength it must still be bonded by lesser forces to normal matter, which then becomes its weakness. An attack would be more likely to disrupt that bond, sending an impossibly thin (ie: sharp) superdense material flying about. Slice and dice…

[targon]

Among other things, German tanks were impaired by their "unstoppable advance" tactics, with mighty armor columns slicing enemy defence with overhelming concentration of firepower. They were _excellent_ armoured at front but weak form sides and especialy rear (as no living thing
simply can't be here). But T-37 managed to break...

[targon]

Shielding

Recently, I've found some weak possibility of space ship shielding. I know this stuff for a while, but this way of "utilization" was somewhat obscure for me.
Just create thick layer of plasma (not especialy hot or dense) around ship and maintain it somehow (this is most tricky part). Then beam of charged particles hits that plasma, some interesing things occur... hard to explain without dozen pages of math... there is thingie called "beam instability" preventing beams of charged particles (esp. electrons) from traversing plasma for free. Under some conditions light beams are also affected.
Pros: plasma block low-freq (lower than plasma freq) waves, fun for communications. Also forgot about stealth, that plasma will radiate at some waves like mad.
This it still very faint possibility, I need some time to blow away some dust frome my old Plasma Physics copybooks. And some time to estimate this situation.

[targon]

Originally posted by Straybow
I've no doubt that test-bench results are good, but I expect field conditions would eliminate simultaneity and negate the effect.

In fact, this thing works in places other than test-bench. That's why "ball" warheads are so effective (even against kevlar). And unsimultaneity fears are completely irrelevant for "energy" beams. That kind of weapons may really benifit form beam patterns other than classic TEM_00, I may show you math if you have any doubts.

[Kuciwalker]

playability vs. scientific accuracy

hmmm...

I know my choice (though not for neutronium... that's just stupid).

[Jeremy Buloch]

Do we really need everything in StP exactly scientific?
All other Scifi related games and/or stories have unrealistic things in them. So therefore we dont need to have a working Idea. Just try to make it make sense then slap it together pretending it actually works. We aren't trying to develop it just make a game. The development work would go alot smoother.
well thats my recent view on this.
-J.B.-

[Kuciwalker]

It's science fiction.

[targon]

JB,
You see, StP can't be strictly scientific anyway, providing it will related to some kind of interstellar flight via FTL. Inrodusing FTL means we really broke some nature laws and may carry on. But why we need to break laws that can be actualy preserved? And, among other things, any theory may confilict with known laws and still be valuable (as some leap in the future, like universe inflation theory) but it can't be _internaly_ discrepant.