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From: terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Reactive armour
Message-ID: <13144@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 15 Jan 90 01:34:46 GMT
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Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
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From: terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker)
>There is one thing I don't understand about reactive armour.  Why doesn't
>someone come up with a round for a standard machine gun that is optimized
>for setting off the reactive plates?  Seems to me that you could set up
>a few gunners and just have them rake the tanks, then the tank killers
>can finish them off with their standard HEAT rounds or whatever.
>
Reactive armor is designed to be inert to kinetic penetrators, so
you'd have to have some kind of explosive shell.  Although there have
been proposals and even designs for MG explosive bullets, I doubt
there is sufficient explosive mass.  Incendiary rounds may generate
sufficient heat, but I imagine it would be easy to use explosives that
are relatively immune to that.  The major problem is range.  The
current primary use of HEAT is by ATGMs.  You are asking those
operators to close to MG range (effectively 1000m) to scrub off the
reactive armor.  This denies them their primary advantage; the 4-6 km
range of the missiles.  If you have to get that close in the first
place why not use a gun (105mm +)?

-- 
Terry Rooker
terryr@cse.ogi.edu