UK develops plastic stealth tank(!!!!)

UK companies QinetiQ and Vickers Defence Systems have developed a "plastic tank" which offers improved protection and demonstrates stealth technology to reduce its radar reflection and heat sig.

Our new plastic armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) has sailed through its battle tests and proved to have major advantages over conventional metallic armoured vehicles of a similar size.
""""""
The plastic tank at a glance:
*Weight: just 24 tons, four tons lighter than the similar metallic vehicle
*Top speed of 40mph over rugged terrain
*Decreased fuel consumption, reducing the need for supporting fuel tankers
*Increased survivability for the crew, through: reduced visibility to radar and infra-red scanners; reduced risk of shrapnel inside the hull; better protection against bullets, mortars and land-mines
*Ideal for use in salt-water conditions, as plastic is less susceptible to corrosion than metal.

Source: www.qinetiq.com... (read more there)

This is apparently production-ready technology(!). The demonstrator is not an MBT and it is unclear to what extent this technology applies to MBTs or compares to current MBT armor.

EDIT: Another source: www.stratmag.com...
Suggests that this armor is not suitible for MBTs, at least not as main armor.

[edit on 5-5-2006 by planeman]

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[edit on 8-5-2006 by UK Wizard]

a stealth tank! sweeeet, you could just blow through spped traps and the cops wouldnt even get a reading......i want a car like it!

Soooo, what happens when it gets slammed by a HEP/HESH round?






seekerof

Originally posted by Seekerof

Soooo, what happens when it gets slammed by a HEP/HESH round?






seekerof

Good question... And I have a pretty good clue of what will happend if that would happend...

A prototype of this vehicle was demonstrated outside Whitehall about 18 months ago. While left unattended it recieved a parking ticket.

Really steathy!

[edit on 6-5-2006 by PaddyInf]

Seeker:
It will probably handle hits from HEP/HESH rounds, just as well as all other APC/IFV out there...

That is poorly and it probably won't stand against any true AT weapons..

Planeman:
Any idea on the power to weight ratio?

Originally posted by northwolf
Planeman:
Any idea on the power to weight ratio?

One report says that the demonstrator vehicle has a ratio of 23hp/tonne (nb 1 tonne = 0.9842 ton). Considering it's lighter than the equiv conventional vehicle then you can either go for a better ratio or just fit a lesspowerful engine. Or the same engine and keep the power:weight ratio but have more armor.

[edit on 6-5-2006 by planeman]

Hmm...

I can see the headline now. "Giant magnifying glass melts plastic stealth tank."

from the title of this thread i would guess that stealth is an important feature in this new tank. but my understanding of anti tank weapons is that they are laser guided, wire guided or are unguided so why is stealth important?

justin

niceeee

is this on order or just a demonstrator?

I can so see a bunch of infantry just walking up behind it with a flamethrower melting it.

To die for.

Shattered OUT...

Well there not going to design a tank that can be melted by a flamethrower or any other kind of fire device, ohhh your joking

Originally posted by justin_barton3
from the title of this thread i would guess that stealth is an important feature in this new tank. but my understanding of anti tank weapons is that they are laser guided, wire guided or are unguided so why is stealth important?

justin

Reduce signiture to millimetric wave radars (as on Apache, Havoc etc) and radars used by JSTARS et al. There is a potential to reduce susceptibility to laser designation although I expect a smoke screen is better. And IR signature.

Originally posted by planeman
Reduce signiture to millimetric wave radars (as on Apache, Havoc etc) and radars used by JSTARS et al. There is a potential to reduce susceptibility to laser designation although I expect a smoke screen is better. And IR signature.

I doubt a MMW guidance system would have too much trouble with this tank. As you said though, it is probably more applicable for surveillance systems such as JSTARS.

Planeman,

First off, it's not 'stealth' anything until you mask or remove the multiple surface breaks and in particular the running gear discontiguities. Because these cavity and density variables are about 90% of what makes a tank more or less detectable once you've Angled-RAM removed the 'quills' of major surface-plane Mie speculars. Something like the Barracuda MCS system points the way towards 'getting there' with tread-skirts and thermal sheeting camouflage but the fact that this tank is not fitted with it may be suggestive of how little they trust it to be fitted with 'hangers and bangers' on what may well be fragile or limited load bearing composite surfaces. I know from aerospace that drilling multilayer aluminum/composite fastener holes is a crack and fracture process waiting to happen on wingskins.

In particular MMW and I2R both are natural material emitters native to mass interferometry and background 'color' intensities so I doubt highly whether this vehicle is invisible so much as unmapped (at best). Of course the APG-78 on a Longbow or the APY-8 on a Predator have roughly 15-30km worth of range at best so vulnerability in the search mode may still be reduced but /predictability/ (driving down a road, engaging other forces etc.) is still going to be high in a cued search.

Such being one of the key differentiators between vehicles and aircraft that the ranges of weapons system effect vs. environmental/terrain types in which they can be found are such that it is often harder to see a fleeting airframe target which is lethal at 80nm than it is a clunky vehicle buried in surface clutter.

Of course a sector swath mode on the APY-3 covers a lot of ground but the MP-RTIP is looking to speed the rate at which individual patch maps can be taken, down from minutes to seconds so that you should be able to use FOPEN techniques to at the least 'pull out the negative image' effects by which the 'invisible' tank is defined by the phase and amplitude texture variables around it.

Second, Vickers is and has been, since WWI known as 'V3' or Vae Victis Vickers. A company notorious for exporting high leverage gun, armor and naval technologies to damn near everybody who could afford to pay up. Since this tank is almost certainly a 'foreign technology joint venture' under the now defunct FCS-

www.fas.org...

As a scout followon to the Bradley, one has to wonder how much the 'next generation' will be funded and facing rather than fielded by U.S..

Third, I've seen what splintered fiberglass looks like and the only descriptives that comes to mind are 'porcupine swallows handgrenade'. Whereas steel is a skin-as-bone = patch-and-drive welders fix, once truly damaged, FG is virtually impossible to repair because damage propogates up and down linearly as well as through the material so that it's structural loadings are destroyed over considerable distances via microfracturing. Aluminum oxide armor substrates may stiffen things somewhat to prevent frangible sheer forces from migrating any distance but then you have the problem of skin-over-bone = multi-specialty repair work. I also DO NOT trust hybrid composite:metallic structures to remain securely bonded under severe vibration and 'bounce' loadings and once you start sluffing off segments of inner and outer composites, it's likely that the life of the vehicle will be over. Phenolic resins are also notoriously hard to work with and create massive hazardous materials problems in both depot and field repair conditions. For a mere 4 ton weight savings, I find the entire concept to be questionable.

Fourth, While the notion of 'many tanks, one hull' may seem delightful; the fact is that it rarely works. As we've seen with the AGS and Stryker systems attempts to stuff tankrifles and heavyweight armor + systems into limited space; either the principal structure (turret race and limited traverse) fails under operating loads or the automotive systems do under the sheer weight increase. Add to this the fact that you need ALL vehicles in a combat team to have EQUAL transportability and EQUAL mobility and things just get nasty because the principle reason APC/IFV hulls are 'adaptable' to various _non_ gun-platform mission needs is because they are basically a box enclosing MANPRINT (highly inefficient) volumes. While what makes a tank survivable is it's ability to front (al arc) load everything on a beefed up suspension with MINIMUM internal volumetric waste. And a lot bigger powerplant/transmission system. Myself, armor as a designated-target (recognizable silouhette) in unconventional combat where you cannot define a threat axis isn't worth the anonymity and speed of conventional vehicles. SOF agrees with me. OTOH, in both OOTW and main-force encounters, man is too slow to debus and begin maneuver driven combat compared to the simplicity of annihilating with effects based systems all local points of contact. Preferrably with over the horizon systems.

As such, I am less and less convinced that an 8-10 man troop compartment is a good thing. Even as I am absolutely _certain_ that air mobility with an 18-24 tone system is a complete joke for sortied delivery rates and available range:platform inventory numbers (intra vs. inter theater airlift being in constant competition with other logistic support missions for things like airpower). While I am sure that the best 'tank' is one which can be deployed in numbers (10-20 per plane) and maneuvered with literal abandon (70mph on a 3-4ft hull silouhette). Thus leveraging it's target lethalities towards strapon mission systems like heavy ATGW for anti-armor while doing the majority of it's work with light cannon and guided mortars in the SSC and COIN missions.

In this, the ACAVP and CAV-ATP remind me more of the systems testbeds like SHADOW and ACAP which 'demonstrated' the baseline technologies _but not proper integration thereof_ leading to the failed LHX.

Until you deliberately hedge your mission parameter specs for close combat effectors towards highly 'stackable' (volume efficient) robotics and away from maz-caz humans. While making your tank into something you can afford to lose 1-2 of in every engagement with scaled and modular (field level cannibalization) component systems SPECIFIC to the U-Haul and Direct Fire platforms that result, you will never get anywhere with plastic tanks. They just won't be cheap enough nor capable enough to be worth the changeover costs from conventional armor systems. IMO.


KPl.

KPI, it's composite so the exierior is likely to be radar-transparent with any stealth features below, probably behind RAM.

The United Defence stealth tank, also using composite armor, looked like this.


United Defence are now owned by BAE Systems, as are the now defunct Vickers (/Alvis). The Brits own the companies that make half the main armored systems used by US forces: Paladin, M113, Bradley...

reply to post by justin_barton3


The roflcopters use loldar

What happens if you hit it with a tracer round?

When it burns like a romancandle are the fumes toxic?

reply to post by northwolf


The Warrior has decent armour - it can stand up to anti-tank missiles, RPGs, etc.