Chobham armour

Chobham armour is the informal name of a composite armour developed in the 1960s at the British tank research centre on Chobham Common, Surrey. The name has since become the common generic term for composite ceramic vehicle armour. Other names informally given to Chobham armour include Burlington and Dorchester. Special armour is a broader informal term referring to any armour arrangement comprising sandwich reactive plates, including Chobham armour. Within the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Chobham usually refers specifically to the Non-Explosive Reactive Armour & ceramic composites, while Dorchester is usually in reference to additional armour packages, primarily composed of Explosive Reactive Armour and spaced armour, although, these are often conflated when in colloquial usage. Although the construction details of the Chobham armour remain a secret, it has been described as being composed of ceramic tiles encased within a metal framework and bonded to a backing plate and several elastic layers. Owing to the extreme hardness of the ceramics used, they offer superior resistance against shaped charges such as high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds and they shatter kinetic energy penetrators. The armour was first tested in the context of the development of a British prototype vehicle, the FV4211, and first applied on the preseries of the American M1. Only the M1 Abrams, Challenger 1 and Challenger 2 tanks have been disclosed as being thus armoured. The framework holding the ceramics is usually produced in large blocks, giving these tanks, and especially their turrets, a distinctive angled appearance. Due to the extreme hardness of the ceramics used, the tiles offer superior resistance against a shaped charge jet and they shatter kinetic energy penetrators (KE-penetrators). The (pulverised) ceramic also strongly abrades any penetrator. Against lighter projectiles, the hardness of the tiles causes a shatter gap effect: a higher velocity will, within a certain velocity range (the gap), not lead to a deeper penetration but destroy the projectile instead.

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