Scientists Work on Force Fields for Tanks

[mexicola]

Oh great!

Now exploiting poor countries will be even easier!

Hell yeah! *grabs his bag and heads for the nearest boot camp*

 

[TheEnglishman]

My big question is if they repel the attack, where does the attack go? Surely it endangers civilians and soldiers who don't have the luxury of force fields. And if the Brittish government can't afford helicopters for the soldiers, how are they gonna mass produce force fields?

 

[Player 2]

Still no flying cars. WHERE ARE YOU FLYING CARS!?

Spoiler: we've had flying cars for decades

 

[GiantRedButton]

Its an Emp, not a forcefield.
The title is kinda misleading

 

[Saucycarpdog]

I will admit, this is cool. But a couple countries already have their own "force fields"

Israel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_active_protection_system
US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Kill_active_protection_system
Russia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_active_protection_system

 

[gigastrike]

So it's going to use a directed magnetic field to deflect incoming rockets? ...How long do you think it would take for terrorists to get their hands on RPGs that aren't made out of magnetic materials?

P.T.: What's the defence system that the Honey Badger in MW2 used?

 

[martin's a madman]

Well, it will probably cause people to start further developing EMP technology, the same old ball game of "build something to protect" they'll build something to destroy build something to defend against their new toy, they'll build something even NEWER! So... Yeah not incredibly exciting for me.

 

[Njaard]

That's badassery at it's highest level! Truly astonishing!

 

[Huntingsworth]

Well, time will tell if its cost-efficient to implement those "shields" or add an extra layer of armor plating.

Or whether it's physically possible. Seriously, how does one manipulate electrical energy to create a solid shell?

You can't. It's impossible. The idea is that a sudden pulse of charge to the hull would create an EM wave that would slightly alter the trajectory of the RPG, hopefully enough to prevent damage to the crew.

I am extremely skeptical that this actually makes sense. I'd wait for a demonstration before I believe it. Can an EM pulse really alter the trajectory of a large, partly-metallic, mostly non-ferromagnetic projectile?

From the article:

"At a test in 2002, senior British Army officers saw the chassis of a Warrior infantry carrier, which was fitted with the early electric armour, survive repeated attack by RPGs before being driven away with only minor damage.

Scientists from Dstl outlined their plans to use this technology at an MoD showcase of military technology last week.

The MoD has tasked Dstl with reducing the weight of armoured vehicles by 70 per cent over the next decade in a bid to improve speed and manoeuvrability."

 

[Calatar]

Well, time will tell if its cost-efficient to implement those "shields" or add an extra layer of armor plating.

Or whether it's physically possible. Seriously, how does one manipulate electrical energy to create a solid shell?

You can't. It's impossible. The idea is that a sudden pulse of charge to the hull would create an EM wave that would slightly alter the trajectory of the RPG, hopefully enough to prevent damage to the crew.

I am extremely skeptical that this actually makes sense. I'd wait for a demonstration before I believe it. Can an EM pulse really alter the trajectory of a large, partly-metallic, mostly non-ferromagnetic projectile?

From the article:

"At a test in 2002, senior British Army officers saw the chassis of a Warrior infantry carrier, which was fitted with the early electric armour, survive repeated attack by RPGs before being driven away with only minor damage.

Scientists from Dstl outlined their plans to use this technology at an MoD showcase of military technology last week.

The MoD has tasked Dstl with reducing the weight of armoured vehicles by 70 per cent over the next decade in a bid to improve speed and manoeuvrability."

That was a demonstration of a different technology, not the force-field one in question. Look closer. Your quotation is directly preceded by:

"An early incarnation of a different type of electric armour technology has already been trailed by Dstl.

"It used several layers of metal which have electric current flowing through them.

"When an RPG round penetrates the outer layer, it completes the electrical circuit creating a highly electrically charged field between the layers.

"This charged field vaporises the copper jet that shoots out from the front of the RPG warhead, preventing it from penetrating the inner hull of the vehicle and keeping the soldiers inside safe. "

I still have no evidence that electromagnetism can dramatically affect the trajectory of a non-ferromagnetic projectile. It seems unlikely. In Mythbusters they fired a lead bullet over the top of a series of large, powerful, rare-earth neodymium magnets with little change in trajectory. That may not be the most powerful magnetic field imaginable, but it was quite powerful, and the bullet only dipped slightly.

Just looked it up, the field on Mythbusters was approximately 60,000 gauss (presumably at 0 distance). And this deflection occurred at a distance of less than an inch from the magnets. It really seems like it would require some insane power to replicate a magnetic field that powerful at a distance significant enough to divert an RPG.

Making some generous assumptions (possibly faulty), the amount of current required to create a magnetic field of 60,000 gauss at a distance of 10 meters would be approximately 300 million amperes. That's anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times as much current as a bolt of lightning. Since power is related to current squared, that's potentially 6-8 orders of magnitude more power than a bolt of lightning provides. Even a super supercapacitor would have trouble doing that.

This is why I am skeptical until there is a demonstration or a more sufficient explanation of the scientific principles.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I'm extremely skeptical. An applied current can generate a magnetic field strong enough to deflect a warhead before the shaped charge has properly impacted and had a chance to form yes, but it would take a hell of a large capacitor to produce the kind of voltages needed to deflect any projectile that is coming in at rocket speeds. The timing I'm certain could be perfected... but one rocket followed immediately by another would be a very bad time to find out that you don't have enough juice to get the job done.

There's probably a reason why this mentions 'supercapacitor material'. Though I'm sure that has it's limitations too, the energy density of a super-capacitor is can be 100 times greater (or more) than that of regular capacitors.

(And low energy density is one of the big reasons capacitors aren't used as if they were batteries. - Though there are certainly others.)

Of course, what you're saying about a lack of power really applies to armor as well. Though I'm sure it's less likely (and actually from games that implement shield systems broken up into directional segments VS those which treat a shield as a single unified thing, I know this from practical experience too...), if two rockets hit a heavily armored tank in rapid succession, you could still have serious problems if they hit the same location.

Meanwhile, the probability of having a limited charge with which to deflect projectiles really does make this sound like the behaviour you get from shields in fiction.

And the same logistics would seem to apply:
Armor is more reliable, but once it's damaged, that's it. (With the obvious proviso that in the real world armor is very directional - not often taken into account in fiction)

This, meanwhile, could easily get overloaded if you throw a lot of stuff at it in one go. But... At the same time, if the system reliably deflects a projectile, there's a reasonable chance that it can do so without the tank taking any serious damage.

So... It's trading off the ability to absorb a single large volley of fire against that of absorbing multiple smaller ones.

Eh. At the end of the day it's all speculation. And if a system like this works at all, the tactical implications would probably be something that can only really be discovered the hard way.

 

[sam13lfc]

I like how much science fiction seems to influence science sometimes, this is awesome (even though it's barely getting started lol).