Scientists at the US Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, however, have now revealed details of how smart armor would work.
According to research published in the current issue of New Scientist, each tank would be covered with tiles made of strong plastic under which a sandwich of different materials would be installed. First there would be a mat of optical fibers, then a thin sheet of standard armor plating, and underneath that would lay a series of metal coils.
When an anti-tank shell explodes on standard armor, the copper cone of its head is projected as a powerful jet of metal, traveling at five miles a second. This jet focuses a high amount of energy on a tiny area and therefore can easily slice through several feet of dense metal, causing devastation inside a tank.
However, on striking smart armor a shell would cause a very different reaction. It would first sever optical cables in the mat below the tank's outer plastic cover. This would trigger sensors to activate electrical capacitors inside the tank that would send a mighty electrical current surging through the metal coils at the base of the smart armor.
A massive electromagnetic field would be produced inside the armor, as the high-velocity copper jet begins to pass through it. This field would induce electrical currents in the copper.
"If you get enough current into the copper, you can heat it up and start pinching it in certain regions, making it unstable," states Mike Zoltowski, of the Army Research Laboratory. The thin copper jet would be flattened and broadened out and so would be unable to cut through the thin standard plating at the base of the smart armor.
Electromagnets would essentially be used to dissipate the energy of an anti-tank missile or shell, like the force shields that protect the fictional Starship Enterprise.
"This kind of development is now seen as urgent by military planners," Chris Foss, editor of Jane's Armour and Artillery, said. "For example, some countries are working on "top attack" missiles which fly over the turret of an oncoming tank instead of striking it front on, where it is most strongly shielded. They would drop their payloads on the tank's relatively unprotected turret area."
To protect against that, designers would be forced to add even more thick armor plating to these other parts of the tank, adding to its weight and fuel consumption and making it more unwieldy. The answer is magnetic pulses, says Zoltowski. "The benefit is that you wouldn't need 800 millimeters of steel armor."
Source: UK Observer; New Scientist
I posted the important info part because this site is not online sonetimes.
So if the link below doesnt work,you can atleast read the part I saved .
http://www.blackvault.com/news2/star_tr ... t_sup.html
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: tkobo on 2002-06-09 17:24 ]</font>