Liquid Body Armor

[SpecialBlend2786]

That's pretty darn cool!

How would temperature affect the performance of the armor though?

[USMCARR]

Pyro- That would be so cool. Rolling around on the battlefield in giant hamster balls. How would we fire our rifles though?

Tyger- Glazer? Haven't heard of it yet, what is it? Anything that can help save my life I want to know about, lol.

Bulldog- The steel inserts for the flack jackets will stop an AK-47 (7.62mm) and AK-74 (an AK-47 that fires 5.56, same as the M-16 we use) at least once. The main problem is, not all of the troops (especially Marines from my experience) get them, and like you said, they are pretty damn heavy. But like I said, if it can save my life, I want to know more about it .

[Tyger]

Hrmph... I can't find it... I was hoping to get a link over to it, but I may have the wrong thing in mind. Some years ago, someone made tank armor that was basically explosive plates. When impacted with missiles or whatever, it would explode outward, in an attempt to meet "Force on force", energy on energy. The missile's force was met, and instead of being allowed to move forward, it would be dissapated. If that makes sense.

But I can't find it as Glazer armor. Annoying. Hrmph. Ahh well...

-Tyger

[FalconGuy016]

That is extremely awesome, it seems so versitle. I really want some to test it out lol

[USMCARR]

Aaaaahhhh... I know what you mean. I'm pretty sure it's in use on the light armored vehicles, and maybe the tanks, but I think the main battle tanks have some kind of depleted uranium armor or something. That's what makes the M1 Abrams almost impossible to take out with anything other than another Abrams (unfortunately the iraqis seem to have found a weak spot on it though, I think they disabled a few of them). I don't think they'll use it for infantry though. The idea is good, but having a small explosion occur on your body would probobly mess you up worse than the shot itself (although that's debatable with smaller rounds at higher velocities.) Thanks for clarifying what you meant.

[Steelrat]

Tyger, the armor you are thinking of is called "reactive" armor. The israelis use it, as did we, at least for a while. If you look at pictures of M60s from Gulf War 1, you can see them all decked out in reactive armor blocks. Reactive armor works against HE rounds, such as HEAT (High Explosive Anti Tank) or possibly HESH (High Explosive Squash Head), by countering their blast, and in the case of HEAT, disrupting the penetrating "jet" that HEAT rounds create. M1s dont use it because they dont need it. Id imagine the Bradleys dont use it because its either a pain in the butt or they dont want exlosived directed outwards towards the dismounted troops.

The neatest thing I saw recently was a system that sees incoming RPG and other AT missle rounds and shoot an explosive charge at them, destroying them in flight. Awesome.

USMC-Not trying to nit-pick, but the 74s shoot a 5.45mm round that is not compatible with the NATO 5.56. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, and the soviets dumped their heavier 7.62 round for something more like the 5.56. There goes all the "bigger is better" arguments for rifle rounds. 7.62 soviet was never even close to 7.62 NATO, anyways. MUCH less powerful round.

I wish they could create something that could stop .50 rounds (or more probably, 12.7mm). The problem at that size range becomes force dissapation. You could probably stop the round with something like a ceramic or metal plate, but the force would smash in the internals.

The most interesting thing to consider about armor is that it generally works by force dissapation. The ballistic nylon/kevlar/spectra/whatever weave dissapates the force of the projectile, slowing it down and spreading the force of the impact over a much larger area than just the surface of the bullet. Thats why a knife gets through it. It just penetrates the weave. Small darts, called flechettes, are also very good at penetrating body armor. I personally think they need to mount solid plates on a shock absorbing system that is isolated from the body, but something like that requires some sort of exoskeleton, which is quite a leap from what we have now. But the new "interceptor" armor is a huge leap from the kevlar vests. Those wouldnt stop any sort of rounds, just frag.

[Steelrat]

The weak spots on the M1 are the back engine area, bottom armor, and the top armor. From looking at the damaged M1s, It looks like they might have taken a top shot to the engine compartment, especially since they appeared to have been hit while under an overpass. Its kind of surprising that the top armor hasnt been reinforced, as the latest generation of AT missles are actually designed to attack the top armor of the tank, not the heavier side armor. The Israelis up-armored the top armor of the latest generation of their Merkava tanks, one of the best and most unknown tanks out there.

I love the DU armor on the M1s. Apparently, in last Gulf War (I think) an M1 was engaged by three T-72s. The M1 took 2 HEAT rounds to the front, which didnt do jack, and a APFS round to the front, which left a gouge. The M1 killed all the 72s. But remeber, the heaviest armor is on the turret glacis, then the front hull, then the lower part of the front hull. The rest of the tank can probably handle man-pack AT missles, but not MBT rounds.

[PyRo]

[QUOTE=USMCARR]Pyro- That would be so cool. Rolling around on the battlefield in giant hamster balls. How would we fire our rifles though?
[QUOTE]
You have little flaps that you can open to shoot out of
That would be pretty funny, just see about 500 hampster balls going through the desert at the iraqi army. I don't think they would know what to do.

[SpecialBlend2786]

You have little flaps that you can open to shoot out of
That would be pretty funny, just see about 500 hampster balls going through the desert at the iraqi army. I don't think they would know what to do.

What if you get stuck in the sand

[PyRo]

Hmm, you can have someone driving in a humvee to push stuck people out

[SpecialBlend2786]

I say that all the Humvee's should have standard issue Hamster Ball attachments with little slots for the wheels

Off road capability + bulletproofness + drop dead sexy looks

[USMCARR]

That's right... I forgot the soviets always made most of their rounds slightly smaller than NATO. The Bradleys do not use reactive armor, I don't really know why though. I say instead of the hampster balls we just train poodles to chase people, strap them with explosives, and air drop them into enemy territory. Airborn Death Poodles. If that doesn't scare them, they have no fear. Actually, anybody hear of what the Israelis have done now? They trained guard pigs. The Muslims can't go to heaven (or whatever their word for it is) if they touch a pig or something along those lines. So the Israelis have decided to train pigs to attack people. Keeping with the same idea for a minute (not a normal thing for me), before WWII we sent Gen. Black Jack Pershing to the Phillipines to take control of US forces there. They had a big problem with Muslim terrorists. When they caught like 5 or 6 of them, he had the American troops slaughter a pig, and then smear the guts all over the Muslim guys. They didn't have a problem with Muslim extremists for a long time after that. But God forbid we do something politically incorrect now, even if it saves American lives.

[USMCARR]

I realize I just contradicted myself 'cause the first time I said the Bradleys do use reactive armor and the second time I said they didn't. I checked some pictures (found a bunch of them) and they don't have it. At least the ones I saw.