Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: military@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: HEAT shell question and proposal.
Message-ID: <13039@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 11 Jan 90 04:59:50 GMT
References: <12756@cbnews.ATT.COM> <12820@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 23
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: att!utzoo!henry
>From: bxr307@csc.anu.oz
>	I am surprised that no one in the military is looking at the use of
>HESH (H.E. Squash Head or HEP to the US people out there) as a counter to
>reactive armour...
>... literally "blow off" the reactive armour boxes and leave large gaping
>holes in their covering of the main armour plate as well as severely disabling
>the vehicles crew (cuncussion), perhaps killing them (by the scabbing of
>secondary projectiles off the inner armour) and destroying or damaging most of
>the vehicles optical/optronic systems through the cuncussion...

HESH is not magic.  I doubt that all these effects will be available at the
same time.  Any explosion -- HESH, HEAT, whatever -- on the exterior of the
tank will get rid of some of the reactive armor.  Whether the holes will be
big enough to exploit is a harder question.  I'm a bit skeptical about the
concussion effects being so much greater; do remember that a HEAT warhead
has quite a bit of explosive in it.  And the scabbing effect works well
only for single-plate armor, while most modern armor is multi-layer.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu