Note that the chart says "the armour design" not "tank design". If the armour composition, which I assume what Mr. Taylor meant in his works, was already in full development so that loads of money were already swallowed by the project and promised to lead to great results, then it was no wonder that the Germans decided to chase their own design. Bear also in mind that having armour manufactured within your borders with all the rights to modify it can be a very cruicial aspect in a decision of whether to use foreign technology or develop your own.
Maybe this was a factor that never was officially mentioned. I am basing this on all the info I have at my hands and I am not going to claim I was undoubtedly correct on everything I write. Edit: It still is a choice they made, isn't it? If Germany decided to rather chase their own armour development rather than implementing Chobham and had taken into account that their development was probably at a point where not continueing it would cause more grief than good - probably in financial aspects and terms of indipendency It could also have meant that the tank would have had to face a radical redesign to mount the armor.
That is unfortunately not clearly mentioned in any source I have. The way the armour works was known by the "Burlintgon principe". What this included is not really known yet, at least I didn't find any details about it. The name "Burlington principe" or "Burlington armour" or "Chobham armour" could either mean something very basic like: "An armour design that uses air gaps, multiple materials in layers at an angle to defeat incoming projectiles" or mean something very specific like: "Chobham is made of the composition of X materials in a certain order at a minimum angle of X degrees and must be covered by cosmetic armour plating".
It could certainly be either one. The truth just is that we just don't know enough about the armour, how many versions were ultimately out there or what the specifications are like. That is only known by the MoD and other people which are very, very good in keeping their mouth shut.
It is true that there are many conceptions of the armour out there, but so far I have not really stumbled over something very official saying: "This is Chobham and this is exactly how it is made and looks like. The original armor performance could be achieved by scaling the array down, i. Back then the British research of improved versions of Chobham armor was focused on further improving the performance against HEAT ammunition mainly.
In terms of protection against kinetic energy, all that is mentioned is " [a]ll modifications to Burlington must always retain or enhance its KE effectivness ". Is the name "Chobham" correct? The easiest answer would be " yes and no ". The official codename for the initial versions of Chobham, including the ones presented to West-Germany and the United States was Burlington armour.
The name Chobham armour was however already used inofficially in documents from , before the British ministry of defence first revealed the existence of Chobham armor to the press. The idea that the name "Chobham armor" was created by journalists not knowing a better word for the highly secretive armor that had been presented to them, can thus be dismissed as a myth. Between and a new type of armor or a modified version of Burlington was developed under the Project Almagest.
Unfortunately no details can be given here, because I do not have access to the UK National Archives from here and a trip to England just for one blog entry doesn't seem to be reasonable for a hobbyist blog like this. Later the United Kingdom developed a new type of armor - probably just a modified version of Burlington - known as Buckhorse armor. To what extend the armor was ever developed is unfortunately unkown at this point of time due to lacking information. The Challenger 2 uses Dorchester armour , an improved version of Burlington armor.
This has also been inofficially? The existence of Pageant armor should refute the myth that Chobham armor is "super classified" and only made in Britain and handled by British troops, a rather odd myth popular in some British Army fanboy groups. There is no ceramic material used in any early version of Chobham. The drawings from the studies for fitting the Chieftain with Chobham armor and the development of the Chieftain Mk. These developments have included the study of materials such as improved steels, other metals, plastics, ceramics , glass and other fibre re-inforcment to produce homogenous, composite and sandwich armours.
Thus it's rather easy to see that the early versions of Chobham armour - the versions demonstrated to West-Germany in and to the United States to some presuambly minor extend in to But what is with the more advanced versions of Chobham? Do they consist of ceramic tiles in a honeycomb structure with some special, magical binding mechanism?
The best answer to give to this question seems to be " no, not really ". While some versions of Chobham armor might use ceramic materials to some extend i. Damaged Chobham armor on a Warrior IFV Based on photographs from damaged Warrior infantry fighting vehicles IFVs , which had been fitted with Chobham armor, one can clearly see that the Chobham armor is a form of spaced armor. Otherwise the RPGs would not be able to punch deep holes into the armor modules and in some cases as pictured above even get stuck inside the armor, when the warhead doesn't fuze properly.
Furthermore a photograph from a damaged M1A1HA main battle tank, which should utilize a version of Chobham armor with additional layers of depleted uranium, reveals that even the "heavy tank version" of Chobham seems to incorporate layers of spaced sandwich plates.
Despite there being cooperation in terms of armor and tank technology between West-Germany and the United Kingdom, the actual Leopard 2 is claimed to be somewhat indigenous. The relationship between the Leopard 2's armor and Chobham armor might be investigated in a future article.
However one explanation to this might be Dr. Pundits were quick to declare that the armoured assault was as outdated as the cavalry charge. In reality, it was just another swing of the pendulum, as tank designers went back to their drawing boards. The British came up with Chobham armour. The exact composition is still secret, but Chobham armour is believed to consist of layers of nylon micromesh, titanium and ceramic material bonded together.
In the US, a new type of armour was devised made from sheets of a hardened depleted uranium alloy in sealed units. Both types reportedly give complete protection against Heat rounds: the secret may be in the hardness of the armour which resists the jet of a Heat attack.
The Soviet tanks, though numerous, lacked these exotic and expensive new armours. Nato planners were confident that a mass Soviet assault could be stopped in its tracks with a rain of anti-tank cluster bombs, a dozen types of guided missiles and large numbers of rocket launchers.
Then the Russians unveiled their own armour in the mids. Known as explosive reactive armour, or ERA, it consists of a layer of explosive tiles fitted to the outside of a tank. Each tile is sandwiched between steel plates, so when a Heat round strikes one it detonates and the steel plate is projected through the armour-piercing jet.
This degrades the jet so it is no longer effective and the tank is undamaged - though the exploding armour presents a hazard to any infantry in the area. The new armour made Soviet tanks virtually immune to Nato's anti-tank weapons except those, such as depleted uranium shells, which did not rely on the Munroe effect. In some cases the tanks in question were subject to multiple point-blank hits by both KE-penetrators and HEAT rounds, but the old Russian ammunition used by the Iraqis, in their Polish licence built T 's, their old T 's bought from Russia and upgraded with "enigma" type armour, and T tanks left them completely incapable of penetrating coalition armour.
It's also worth noting that the Iraqis rarely actually hit the coalition tanks, because of lack of training and inferior optics.
To date, only Chobham-protected tanks have been defeated by enemy fire in combat, including an M1 that was hit in a weak spot by an RPG-7 in the Second Gulf War.
The latest version of Chobham armour is used on the Challenger 2 called Dorchester armour , and though the composition most probably differs the M1 Abrams series of tanks, which according to official sources is presently protected by silicon carbide tiles. Given the publicly stated protection level for the earliest M1: mm steel equivalence against KE-penetrators APFSDS , it seems to have been equipped with alumina tiles. Though it is often claimed to be otherwise, the Leopard 2 does in fact not use Chobham armour, but pure perforated armour , avoiding the horrendous procurement, maintenance and replacement costs of those ceramic armour systems not based on the cheap but rather ineffective alumina.
For many modern tanks, such as the French Leclerc and the Italian Ariete , it is yet unknown which type is used.
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