Posted on 11/08/2004 8:35:18 AM PST by John Jorsett
Rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) are the typical weapons of choice when insurgents decide to attack trucks and armored vehicles. RPGs are cheap, simple to operate, and if used properly can inflict significant damage on Stryker and Bradley armored vehicles. Unarmed and armored Hummers are especially vulnerable, since the various armor kits for the Hummer are designed to protect occupants from small arms and machine gun fire, not anti-tank grenades.
One quick fix to protect the Hummer is a unique airbag system developed by a small California company that deploys a "curtain" down outside the side of the vehicle being attacked. Four bags are needed to protect all quadrants and are held in place with simple Velcro straps. A small radar detects the incoming RPG or RPGs and inflates the airbag with a carbon dioxide gas cartridge. The RPG is literally "caught" by the airbag like a pillow and slowed enough so the nose-mounted fuse doesn't detonate the warhead. Instead, the RPG ends up collapsing upon itself, shredding the secondary self-destruct fuse and looking like a stomped-on beer can. Currently, the airbag and cartridge have to be replaced after one use, but the designers are working on a reusable airbag that can simply be rolled up and put back into place.
Cost for the system is expected to run between $5,000 to $7,000 dollars and weighs around 50 pounds. The Army is in the process of awarding a contract with the goal of getting systems to Iraq within 6 months, at a initial product rate of 25 systems per month. Other systems are being refined for use on canvass-topped vehicles and the Stryker. The system has the potential to replace both the current Stryker "RPG" fence standoff metal framework as well as reactive armor systems and has the twin advantages of being lighter and less expensive than reactive armor. It's also safer around infantry than reactive armor. Multiple tests of the airbag system have been run using RPGs, with one test managing slow down an RPG enough to stop it relatively intact – forcing a stop to the tests until range safety could come out and blow it up in place.
Over the longer term, the Army is looking towards electronically "charged" armor protection. The protection scheme would be composed of an outside armored plate, a spaced gap, and an inner charged plate. Shaped charges are essentially hot streams of metal traveling at (very) rapid speed to penetrate armor. A shaped charge from an RPG or other antitank weapon would detonate, penetrate the outer armor plate, and the hot metal stream would make contact with the charged inner plate, forming an electrical circuit that ends up splattering the metal across the inner plate rather than breaking through into the hull of the vehicle.
Charged armor is a better solution than reactive armor, as it is both lighter than reactive and also non-threatening to nearby infantry. At least two manufacturers have successfully demonstrated charged armor solutions, one retrofitting a Bradley AFV with a large capacitor to charge the inner hull plate. One manufacturer has demonstrated that the Bradley charged armor can take multiple RPG hits onto the same section of the hull without penetration and was willing to show a short demonstration film to those of the proper security clearance. In theory, charged armor should work equally well against weapons with larger shaped charge warheads, but the manufacturer would not comment on any tests done in that area. Ideally, charged armor would be an integrated solution as a part of a hybrid-electric vehicle. Power would be available from the vehicle to charge the armor for protection and installing the equipment would not require an expensive rebuild from the ground up. – Doug Mohney
KEWL!
"Scotty, status!", "Shields at 100% captain"
All right! If we can stop RPG's hopefullly we can stop IED's in the future too.
If we could stop both, our casulaties would be reduced to a fraction of what they are now.
Sky
Ditto, I hope they get that working and out to the troops ASAP. RPGs are one of the principle weapons of these types and we may have to do something like Iraq again. If you take out most RPG casualties a lot of soldiers and Marines would
be comming home in one piece.
In WW2 when a new and innovative device was developed to save allied lives, many manufacturers were sought to produce the device under license.
Have we lost our brains? The means to care? The resolve? What?
Damned clever!!
In some cases, all of the above. How many bullsh*t gov't programs that we pay for could be cut so that we as a nation could focus on what's really important at this point in time?
Good news but let's also use more B-52s.
We just upped the production of armored Humvee's from 450 to 550 a month, 25 a month seems like someone doesn't believe it will work.......
The RPG is literally "caught" by the airbag like a pillow and slowed enough so the nose-mounted fuse doesn't detonate the warhead.....is pure BS IMHO !
The RPG series has a small metal cup over the piezoelectric crush switch that send a signal to a "detonator" at the base of the shape charge via a flat wire. That cup is left on the PG if the user will fire it through heavy rain or tall grass........it is that sensitive in most cases. Based on my experience with the PG-2 and 7 series I'm skeptical as to the airbag thingie. As we see on the strykers currently the mesh grid that trashes the warhead before it can reach the armor works just like we used chainlink fence in static / fixed fighting positions to disrupt or break up so it wouldn't function as designed per se.....the stryker "fence" is a valid standoff form of protection from the side, front or rear shot.I'm gonna have to see this airbag work before I believe it. I'm thinking it will deonate the RPG at a greater standoff so the shape charge doesn't get optimum jet formation to punch the lighter armor of the "utility" vehicle forced fed into an APC wannabe.
Just my opinion ......
It will not take the rag heads long to realize they need to use two RPG's on the same target.
You are wrong about the wire - the nosecone is a three-layer sandwich, forming the circuit. That's why the chain-link works; it shorts the inner and outer layers, and grounds the charge.
Every PG-7 I've taken apart has a Piezio point switch with the flat wire running to the base det of the shape charge. It don't detonate at the point. Please splain again what yer talking about....?
What year manufacture?
I haven't seen the dual warhead versions so anything after the PG7M........
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