The Future of Tank Armor 

only beer and vodka can destroy it

Truly unstoppable but can only be destroyed by depleted freedomium rounds

Your forgeting Trump-titanium

You mean Trumptanium?

Did someone say FREEDOM?

Why not be both?

My mistake

Yep, that's true, if you use a dc current source, like super capacitors, a generator, by nature, produces AC current. 2 metal plates isolated from each other are nothing more than a simple capacitor, capacitors have a relatively low AC resistance, meaning that this still will act as a short circuit. However, that's not the problem i see with this technology, it is actually a clever use of the properties of conducting metal objects in an electric field. The problem i see is the logistical and the operational ones. As the capacitors needed to provide the current have a pretty high self discharge rate, they will have to be constantly charged, wich obviously costs fuel. Another maybe not so relavent point would be the actual armor composition itself. As tank manufaturers more and more try to keep the armor as modular and as replaceable as possible, this would mean a huge increase in complexity and cost, just to be able to replace smaller parts of the armor. Another concern would be the isolation itself. But what i think,what would drive the nail into the coffin of this concept, is the fact that this is an activ system, that uses fuel even if it isn't needed and it will only protect the crew from one specific type of weapon, simple shaped charges. A tandem warhead could still get around this system, by using the first shaped charge to drill a "pilot whole" and enable the second shaped charge to blow through. There are shaped charge warheads, that use the shaped charge to drill a whole, only, to allow a kind of elongated frag granat to shoot into the crew compartment and potentially kill everything in there.

@@Spookston Well, it wasn't really a mistake, just a bit of a misunderstanding oon the technical side. ;D To the concept of metal foam as a filler, technically, this would be a great idea, practically, not so much. It would certainly be easy to produce crude metal foam piecs in large quantities, however, big homogenous pieces with certain shapes could be to difficult to produce at reasonable cost. I would actually suggest the next best thing, sintered metal. Mor specifically, parts made out of sintered steel wool. You still got high energy dissipation coupled with low weight but you get the advantage of this being a comparatively low cost solution, for the most part because of the energy efficient sintering process. There was also one kind of armor, that you haven't mentioned, that would be fluids. I mean, it isn't exactly a future technology, as tanks like Merkava made excessive use of using fuel tanks as armor, but i am talking about moving fluids or even non newtonian fluids. the ideaa behind both being the disruptionof the projectil path and therefor reduced penetration.

Yep, last part needed is some super capacitors that build up charge slowly over time and you should be able to be fit it to just about any tank with a reasonable powerplant. The supercapacitors might come with some weight and space considerations though.

a reminder that the jet is fluid or liquefied not molten

TheArklyte “we’ll just steal it from the Chinese, we rip off everything they have anyway”

-Yeah WRITE IT DOWN, so we can use it on our ICBMs -but sir - _S H U S H_

@@NotNicot America explodes

We need to invest in multidimensional displacement technology, in order to make the armor of the tank warp in, and out, of existence. The armor/nothing will deflect/do nothing and absorb/do nothing incoming projectiles which will in turn also be displaced out of existence you can't/can hit a tank that doesn't/does exist, *Schrödinger's Tank* !

@@whoelsebutmeofcoursei I love you

Tbh, I think the future is soft kill and hard kill protection systems, along with just anti 30mm autocannon armour...

Maxim But what if the tank is sending out shots from a different universe...

no armor is the best armor taken to a whole new level

This guy knows nouthing

what a poor science realism begin started

Polska jest strong!

Poland stronk!

But how much is the mass production and how good is the quality of the grafin

Pole here. We did not. Some university professor (Włodzimierz Strupiński) invented a novel way of producing it but had no money to start mass production. In order to procure money, the government got involved but the state-owned company tasked with producing it was plagued by mismanagement and lately started selling off their lab equipment to stay afloat.

Nethan2000 , yeah it’s been quite for a couple of years.

well armor will become light as kitchen tool

I mean it's not like any modern armor is meant to stand a second shot to the same place anyway. ERA gets used up, NERA a huge hole teared, ceramics crack and backers bend and break up, even hard kill systems don't prevent enough penetration to leave the armor unscathed... With the stupidly high energy and focus that modern AT weapons have, there's no real material or system that would survive several shots with reasonable weight. Heck it's often not even expected to fully prevent damage from the first hit, at least from another tank's gun

Good think to mention since I was just thinking that. Also what about vibration? Like when your hit will the metal foam vibrate rapidly due to the absorption of a solid uranium rod being shot at it faster than the speed of sound while the armour (compared to RHA) is as light as a feather?

It’s the same as ceramic in that sense though

True. EM armor functions like a giant capacitor. It gets charged and stays charged until hit.

It needs a large amount of electricity to redistribute the charge to make it effective again. I think is what he meant. Yes when a bridge is made the effectiveness is lost. So you must be able to charge the armour more or somehow Syphon the charge to make it effective again.

Although this is true you have to take into account the inevitable discharge overtime that occurs whenever you stock electricity and the electricity needed for a recharge aswell.

pand_vidoo jbc the leakage current would be little to nothing. Modern capacitors have leakage currents in the milli to micro amp range. Given that em armor needs high power-density not necessarily high energy density recharge time would be pretty quick.

Kiyo Senpai You do not charge the armor itself. You would use capacitors to provide the charge, and you would keep the armor in sections like you do with era that way if one panel is hit you do not loose armor effectiveness over the entire tank.

Eh high voltage high smoltage.

hand will be shocked

@@nichsulol4844 what

You dont need to fully vaporize the jet though. It's tip is really hot (close to boiling) and thin, and the molten needle doesnt have anything close to a homogenous speed or a resistance besides inertia... You only have to cause a little bit of boiling/ablation mostly at the point, and the jet will lose cohesion, dispersing much more quickly through the armor behind. That is not to say you dont need a very strong capacitor, but we are talking of kilojoules rather than megajoules as vaporizing it would demmand, that's within reach of modern capacitors for quite a light weight (for a tank anyway). The difficult part is now to make it reliable, *safe*, sturdy, affordable, and able to dish out the power output required (dozens to hundreds of megawatts), again safely and preventing misfires. I agree the dielectric is probably the weakest point of that technology too, specially on the safety end, but I guess it could be turned off except when a threat is expected, which should make it at least safer than ERA, facing a similar issue. They probably are quite bulky too, but spaced armor is too and still used...

@@antaresmc4407 Interesting thought about the kinetics of shaped charge jets, I will admit I don't know a whole lot about the physics other than just "behaves like a liquid because of plastic deformation and not melting." Regardless of that, even if energy demands are more modest than I make out I'm still inclined to believe explosive pulsed power is a better option than capacitors in almost any situation where triggering is needed. I've since learned about so many different types of it that exist, too.

@@ronan452 well, a liquid is basicly a solid with 0 yield strength, which doesnt really technically exist anyway, so when the stress is just way higher than the YS, you can just call it a liquid... SC liners are often actually molten though (it depends afaik), as one of the limiting factors is the waste heat absorbed by it. About power source, Im not very familliar with those, but you dont only need high power and current, you need high energy, while voltage doesnt really matter. A few napkin calculations suggest you'd need 10kJ ± a magnitude... Idk if the tech is scalable enough, and you'd get such ridiculous power that itd be hard to make the circuit not burn itself down. Plus you'd need incredible precision, a tenth milisec early and a lightning grade arch sets your circuit ablaze not hitting the projectile, one late and the jet overshoots enough to short circuit where it shouldnt, the enemy could just make a round with an inaccurate fuse, while suboptimal it'd cut costs and work... Also tandem charges would defeat the system. Lastly, idk how much they cost but sounds expensive and you dont need it be particularly small... A capacitor armor has the advantage that it cant be fooled and needs no extra device besides power (sensors always being weak spots and explosives damage multipliers, not to mention the generator would itself be basicly a HEAT round inside the tank... Lastly, if the dielectric is soft it can double as NERA, which is nice I guess

@@antaresmc4407 similiar to phase shift armor from gundam seed series

Aged like fine wine with WT forum leaks

madkabal Does the Abrams have a backup sight in case the main gunners optic gets knocked out? If so, where is the backup sight located?

@@hazardous458 the Gunner has two backup sights, a "Daysight", a none Thermal sight that still allows the gunner to use the laser, if its working. A"GAS" sight (Gunners aux sight) which is a simple ballistic binocular scope the is located right next to the breech. The Commander can also take over and aim and fire the gun with the CITV.

Tbh the way technology is right now I have a feeling the next war will be a trench warfare esc battle of attrition. I believe ballistic missiles and planes being able to shoot things from miles away is going to have a large impact on the ability of armor to do it’s job. I know all of our leadership is going to go into the next war thinking like world war 2 and be dead wrong. The tanks of the future are probably completely different from what we can comprehend looking from our ww2 outlook.

Commented for future reference.

@Solipsil He also mentioned ERA and active protection though, which are also already in service.

Solipsil he was comparing metal foam to RHA and then going onto how it would be used to replace NERA in the likes of an abrams when there has been no (public) tests that have shown that metal foam is even more effective than current NERA

@@Hollycalvey I got the impression that metal foam is great at absorbing energy/impulse once the HEAT jet or kinetic penetrator is already broken up, but that it isn't all that good on doing said breaking up. So it might be used as a layer underneath NERA, but since it's so voluminous, it'd probably perform poorer than just more NERA. Seems great for space use after a whipple shield has vaporized a piece of debris/micrometeorite, but not really suited for any terrestrial application I can think of.

No it has uses terrestially. IMO Its main use is delaying and dampening impact shockwave reflection on the backface of bulk hard armor layers. That is one of the main limiters in ceramic armor performance. By increasing dwell time and limiting crush zone formation you increase the performance of the ceramic. ( as well as limiting damage to the ceramic for more penetration events ). I could imagine it having a similar benefit for extremely hard steel armor systems by lessening the "plugging" tendency.

Yea no graphene will make whoever can make it very rich

A bit like many other groundbreaking techs. Its not hard to do once its going, but it needs substantial initial investement of money, infrastructure and time. Startups can't muster enough to make it happen, and big companies that already sit on the market ususaly scoff at it, because they ALREADY control the market, so will not gain anything from the technology, and in fact could end up disrupting their own bottom line by making their previous products and infrastructure irrelevant. Big issue with so many areas of the market being in a virtual stasis combined with the fact that investors have VASTLY grown in importance, all the while having drastically reduced their attention span. Nowadays, you have to be very profitable in the short term to get attention, rather than investing for long term performance.

Indeed, I don't know why he assumed that was the case, the circuit is open till tripped!

Basicly vampire voltage till active.

@@sankhyohalder97 future armor will using nanotechnology and nanomaterial finding a hybrid nanostructure made out of rare metal such a or using high atom element comparison as a known Unbinilium

The way I understood it is that the same thickness of metal foam beat the same thickness of RHA. In this case the scale matters little, the point is that it provides better protection then regular steel armor. And to compare it with current composite armor is useless, as metal foam would be a part of a composite setup not all the protection. What does matter is how it does at different penetrator designs

@@shepardpolska the scale matters, mostly because long-rod kinetic penetrators behave differently from rifle bullets when hitting target

@@Ally5141 This isn't scale. This is penetrator design, which is what I said matters. Because there is more then one Long rod APFSDS design anyway, and they are better or worse at stoping bullets. Saying scale matters means the effect would be different if the bullet and matterial thickness would be scaled up, and it simply isn't the case. If you change the design of the bullet in the test to the same one as a long rod, then if you scaled up the test the result would stay the same as with a big APFSDS

shepardpolska except composite armor setups don’t primarily consist of RHA... they consist of composite materials including depleted uranium/tungsten and other super dense materials as well as the likes of ceramics. So no, until it has been tested as part of a composite scheme and directly against the current armor materials that aren’t RHA, the findings do not indicate that it’s the “future of tank armor”

shepardpolska there’s also a significant difference between the way that a typical full metal jacket bullet in a rifle caliber interacts with armor compared to a long rod monobloc penetrator, a segmented penetrator, or chemical munitions. There’s a reason that the armor protection on a tank varies between shell types in accordance to its armor scheme, and how different composite arrays can provide more than their dimensions in protection vs RHA. this means that, until it has been tested against these munitions... the findings have no indication as of yet that it will be better than existing armor typed against these munitions

That's why it's time to call the whole tank thing and just use drones. Instead of sending a few big heavy tanks, send thousands of unmanned, unarmored, light, fast, possibly electric, disposable missile launching drones. Doesn't matter if they get destroyed because they are cheap and easy to replace and no loss of life.

American tanks, where even the armor shoots you

This is how I play From The Depths

Problem with that statement is that DU literally sets itself on fire when in contact with oxygen.

Capacitors (essentially what EM armour is) always require a maintenance charge - it is not the full charge placed across the plates but still is a decent amount, furthermore, it may have an issue of accidental discharge if one of the plates scrapes on something. in which case you have to fully charge the plate again.

@@phinix250 yes, but it's not draining energy in the same way when it's "turned on" as say, running an appliance. Where you put a charge in and it then uses that charge aslong as it is being supplied.

Valentine Technically it would drain some electricity, as electricity would escape through sharp corners and whatnot, thus needing constant power to the armor.

@@phinix250 issue protection core main modulary generator connected tank

...do you actually know how composites work?

@@KoishiVibin I have a rough idea. It depends whether they are supposed to resist HEAT or APFSDS. The latter needs high hardness materials sandwiched in between layers that prevent the debris from being displaced.

@@edi9892 yes and no. the basic principle for NERA is for flyer/bulge element. this can be anything, it just has to have the sandwitched materials feed flyer plate material into the penetrator, inflicting lateral stress and increasing penetrated material. for ceramics, this becomes stranger. it is currently known that while contained ceramics are effective at low scales, experiments with siliceous core armor found that larger and larger scale implementation decreased the effects

placeholder The leopard2av used advanced spaced armor layouts. The 2a0 used perforated steel followed by NERA

placeholder It would still be effective if filled with ceramic. The ceramic would instantly shatter but the metal would still deform and knock the round off course. As long as they’re 2 different materials, it shouldn’t affect the performance.

Nice profile pic

Just when I get used to seeing the old one, he changes it!

Amazing Mr. X I think you are mixing graphene and graphite up.

@@coren8 I don't believe so. Graphene is a one atom thick layer of carbon atoms produced from Graphite. Graphite has very few interesting properties on its own and would make terrible tank armor. Graphene is something of a wonder material, with a number of incredible properties. As a fun fact, Graphene is so easy to produce it was discovered by accident. Just cover a piece of tape in graphite and you've got Graphene. Nobody would have noticed it was a different material if it weren't for its odd properties.

Amazing Mr. X it is some what easy to produce small samples of graphene, but it is still nearly impossible to mass produce it in large dimensions.

@@coren8 I doubt that matters for tank armor. I'm sure they could use many small strips of Graphene in place of huge sheets. It wouldn't make the material any weaker and it would make replacing any damaged areas significantly less difficult than having large continuous sheets. Though the large-scale production woes are much more a result of low demand than sheer inability. There really hasn't been any need to produce huge Graphene sheets yet since nobody is looking to buy it in those sizes. Once the material is more effectively understood, demand may increase and the state of Graphene production may change.

Like many thin graphene plate's with fillers out steel wool or metal foom which have Non Newtonische liquid

It's been over a decade and no one has done anything with graphene, it will be obsolete before anything is produced with it.

@@bobbygetsbanned6049 That's rich.

Another reason to finally go to space. If we somehow get to a metal-rich part of solar system's main asteroid belt, basically all elements will suddenly be in a nigh-unlimited supply

Its the Rain theme from Halo ODST

He has clearly already stated that he is not a furry... surely not... not possible.

Good grief. DONT YOU GET IT ALREADY? wait, it’s Alex Jones. That’s understandable

@@alm5992 has he really said that ?

@@frogalex He did say that in Q&A video, he doesn't participate in or do anything "furry" and doesn't see himself as one. He just likes the picture and has a couple variations of it. Doesn't mean he won't become the tank furry though

@@Aetius_of_Astora Means he's not a furry. Doesn't mean we can't give him this nickname.

@@xi3669 Just want to say: RPF is fictional.

Here is the non-retard way of getting your message across: "When I heard 'metal foam' I imagined Metal Sponge Bob"

@@bahayesilyurt1510 it's a meme format you dumbass, open the internet more than once a month and you'll get it.

I AM IRON BOB

The more you dig into it, the more complicated it will get

Metal foam and EMA can be used in on ship hulls to add a multi layer defence for stopping hull breaches.

@@barrybend7189 Oh yea, almost forgot about naval craft. I suppose it could also see use in aircraft to a limited degree to aid in reinforcing the airframe of a fighter or bomber. Or adding some armor to a helicopter.

Barry Bend I was specifically going to mention the Astray units. Not only were they not able to secure the Phase Shift tech, they swapped it for minimal foam metal to both increase agility and combat duration, as the GAT-X series chews through power constantly to feed the Phase Shift armor system, just like an EMA system.