Cement, Sand, Plexiglass: Latest Russian Solutions for Tank Protection
At the start of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine just about every vehicle deployed on the battlefield was covered in explosive reactive armor (ERA) – a sheet or slab of high explosive sandwiched between two metal plates designed to disrupt the ability of shaped charge and kinetic warhead to penetrate the vehicle.
After more than three years of President Vladimir Putin’s misguided war Russia is currently experiencing a shortage of the materials necessary to manufacture sufficient ERA to protect both new-build tanks and armored vehicles and retrofit those on the front line.
The Moscow based research body “The Scientific Research Institute of Steel (NII Stali),” which designed much of the modern armors used on Russian tanks and other protective products such as military helmets, was tasked with coming up with a solution by Russia’s Ministry of Defense Main Armored Directorate.
The military issues website Defense Express, citing an April 8 Telegram post by Ukrainian milblogger Andriy Tarasenko on his “Tanks Old and New” channel, described one solution that NII Stali had trialed according to a recent scientific paper it had published.
This described what the institute termed non-explosive reactive armor (NERA) which consists of a “sandwich” of a 6 mm layer of plexiglass between two 2 mm-thick steel plates held together by adhesive tape to provide close contact between the three elements.
The institute claimed that as the shaped charge jet from an anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) warhead penetrates the plexiglass barrier, it creates a shockwave that dislodges the steel plates causing the energy of the jet to be disrupted by the moving plates.
The report says NII Stali tested the NERA using the shaped charges from Russian RPG-7 and SPG-9 grenade launchers and compared its effectiveness against that of the standard Kontakt-1 ERA. It concluded that this new NERA set-up provided protection equivalent to around 70% of that of the ERA.
NII Stali’s research apparently examined the use of other readily available material including cement and sand as the filling in the “sandwich,” both of which offered no more than 14% of the protection afforded by ERA.
The Italian milblogger OSINT-1, who had previously discussed the significance of the absence of the expected ERA on tanks destroyed by Ukrainian ATGW and drones, also commented on the research paper and the “three solutions” on X saying that he considered that none of the proposed NERA options would be capable of doing the job.
In fact, NII Stali came to the same conclusion and, following publishing of their report, recommended that the plexiglass NERA should only be used as a supplement to ERA on the sides and turret of a vehicle but employing Kontakt-1 or the improved Kontakt-5 for frontal protection.
The study concluded that with this layout an 86% level of protection could be afforded. The milbloggers suggested that this would provide little comfort to Russian tank crews who, when their vehicles were even equipped with 100% ERA protection, were being decimated by Western ATGW such as the US Javelin, Ukrainian first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones and landmines.
The military issues website BulgarianMilitary.com commented that the issue went beyond this one equipment but highlighted the impact of growing material shortages on Russia’s weapons manufacturing capabilities brought about by the combination of three years of sanctions and unprecedented levels of attrition on the battlefield.
The media outlet also said the fact that Russia’s research institutes were releasing information that was documenting these, and other problems, was illuminating. The fact that NII Sali’s findings followed closely on from Russia’s 38th Research Institute of Armored Vehicles report on the superiority of the US M2A2 Bradley IFV over its Russian equivalents could be seen as a strong political as well as technical message to Moscow.
Source: Kyiv Post