Posted on 06/19/2006 6:15:29 AM PDT by Cannoneer No. 4
Wheeled armored vehicles have become the hot item everywhere on the planet, especially in the last five years. The new American Stryker vehicle is just part of the trend. However, the success of the Stryker in Iraq has encouraged more orders for these vehicles, which are faster on roads, and cheaper and easier to maintain. The main manufacturers are Patria (Finnish), Steyr (Austrian, but owned by General Dynamics), Mowag (Austrian [Swiss], also owned by General Dynamics) and the BTR line (an old series of Russian vehicles, currently built by two Russian firms.) There are other manufacturers, but the above firms have most of the business for traditional wheeled armored vehicles. These are 6x6 or 8x8 vehicles weighing from 12-20+ tons. The most serious competition is coming from armored trucks, using design innovations pioneered by South African firms. These armored trucks, best represented by the Cougar vehicle used by the U.S. Army and Marines, are 4x4 vehicles that are about have the weight of the usual wheeled armored vehicles. The armored trucks are also less than half the cost of the wheeled armored vehicles, yet provide similar carrying capacity and protection. This is an end to the Cold War arms race to produce more powerful, and expensive, "infantry fighting vehicles" (IFV). These ran on tracks, like tanks, and had gotten nearly as heavy as the lighter tanks. But these beasts were too expensive, especially when most armies were looking at more peacekeeping in their futures, or some other kind of police work.
Stryker
We could use a few of those along the Mexican border...........
Patria AMV (Armoured Modular Vehicle)
We just had a reunion of Viet Nam War transporters – and among the gun trucks and other equipment someone brought a V-100 armored car. I had almost forgotten about them.
Which way is South in that pic?...........
What's all the fence-like stuff around the vehicle for???
"What's all the fence-like stuff around the vehicle for???'
RPGs.
Slatted armor to repel RPGs.
How does the "fence stuff" help with RPG's? And why RPG's in particular, if other than their prevalence in theater?
Answer from a non-expert:
That is added in-theater as a defense against RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades). The RPGs hit the fence-like structure and detonate prior to actually hitting the armor on the vehicle.
Causing the RPGs to detonate further away from the vehicle greatly reduces their effectiveness against the armor.
Fletcher J
30 posted on 11/23/2003 10:30:45 AM EST by blanknoone
You were right back then, and they're finally listening to you.
In order for a lightweight RPG to punch through thick armor plating, the RPGs utilize the physics of a "focused" charge. (not sure if that's the correct term or not)
The energy from the exposion is focused onto a small area of the armor, which allows it to burn through it.
The method can be compared to using a magnifying glass to set fire to a piece of paper. The glass has to be just the right distance from the paper in order for the focused light to create enough heat to burn it. Too close or too far away, and you get nothing. The fences/slat armor around the vehicles cause the RPGs to detonate further away from the vehicle, dispersing the effects of the explosion.
With the slat armor, the focus of the exposion looks less like ">|" and more like "><|".
Flether J
Thank you. That makes a lot of sense and is consistent with what I've heard about what makes the RPG's such a threat.
Ah, cool. Thanks for the diagram!
Fletcher J
Looks like the Scout variant.
Our Cav Squadron was part of that mission for a few weeks. A buddy of mine is a Troop XO there. He said they caught a LOT of illegals crossing over, and they were all under strict orders to have NO contact with the Minutemen.
Is the slatted armor on the Stryker a standard item, or was this a battlefield modification?
A guy from my town was the one who thought up mounting Rhino horns on the front ends of Shermans to bust through the hedgerows during the Normandy Breakout. I always thought that was a really cool story. Is this something similar?
Defense of the land frontiers of the nation should be an Army mission. There shouldn't even be a Department of Homeland Security. USNORTHCOM should be doing that. But they don't listen to me.
You have it pretty much right. RPGs have shaped charges. The expanding gasses of the explosion are forced in one direction. (Do you remember that day in math when the class studied vectors and you studied that hottie in the third row? This is why you should have paid attention!) The superheated gasses are channeled and compressed onto a single spot and burn through the armor like a cutting torch. As the hole gets started, the sides also act to channel the gasses inward and continue the cutting action. If the charge detonates early, containment is lost, the spot gets too large, and the gasses bounce harmlessly off of the armor.
Slat armor is an add-on. The Strykers in Iraq were fitted with it down in Kuwait two and a half years ago. CONUS Strykers don't have it. Slat armor evolved from the rebar armor on the old Riverine boats.
Yet we have been told time and again that our armed forces are not trained for police work!!!
Hey! I don't remember you from math class. :)
I always say this is the greatest site for so many reasons, one of which is the knowledge among FReepers on so many topics.
Thank you!
They're the best trained armed forces in the world.
The spacing between the shaped charge and its target is critical, as there is an optimum standoff distance to achieve the deepest penetration. At short standoffs, the jet does not have room to stretch out, and at long standoffs, it eventually breaks into particles, which then tend of drift off the line of axis and to tumble, so that the successive particles tending to widen rather than so much to deepen the hole. At very long standoffs, velocity is lost to air drag, degrading penetration further.
Most of the Vietnam-era gun trucks *belonged* to Transportation Corps units, not Infantry or other *Combat Arms* units. Even the M113 A-Cav gun tracks operated by armored cav guys were often transported on flatbed trucks so as to save on track life and keep convoy speeds up. Sometimes the hulls were even stripped of tracks and roadwheels and semi-permanently dropped into the back bed of a 5-ton 6x6: Instant Gun Truck.
As a tank crewman sometimes attached on convoy runs when things were expected to be particularly unpleasant, we generally figured that it was the tired old Transpo Corps officers, Warrents and NCOs who knew what they were doing on those runs, not the bright-eyed combat arms types just out of West Point and ROTC.
But sometimes, the MPs came along for the ride, and brought the littler V100 and V150 *combat cars* along with them, some with hand-cranked *Honeywell* grenade launchers that were the forerunners of the Mark Nineteens now sometimes used in place of an M2 .50 caliber.
But they were not at all RPG-proof, not even against the smaller B-40/ RPG2 launchers mostly seen then, certainly not against an RPG-7, now common as dirt.
The quad fifty trucks were generally reckoned to be the best bet in the event a shootin match began. But there were also those who figured the quads to be RPG magnets. And there was a lot to be said for the Marines who used a Ontos recoilless rifle carrier with six guns into the back of a truck, giving them a choice of a couple of tubes with 106mm beehive in them, or a couple of others with High Explosive rounds. And they still had machineguns for closer-up work....
Curtis G. Culin was a sharper-than average NCO with the Second Armored Division's 102nd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, annoyed as most about the stalemate brought about by the hedgerows of the French Bocage farm country. Unlike most, he did something about it. Unfortunately, once the tank crews found that they could cut through the treelines fairly easily, they found that the pre-invasion aerial and naval bombardments had churned up the fields within so badly they largely had to stick to the wooded and brushy areas anyway. But at least they could cut through in places other than where expected.
It was my understanding that Sgt Culin had been a a cab driver from Chicago before the war. I was assigned by a Chicago newspaper I worked for in the 1970s to research his story for a *where are they now* piece for a Veterans Day tribute to him and the *Culin Hedgerow Device* that was named for him.
He got the Legion of Merit for his effort. His memorial is in Cranston, NJ.
But guess what: How Cpl. Joshua Dale of the USMC independently reinvented a 62 year old tactical innovation. The old idea is still around....
Actually, that's Cranford, NJ, not Cranston.
My bad, and I know better. Cranston NH was the home of the old Cranston Arms Company, producers of the Johnson rifle and *JohnnyGun* autorifle. That left the wrong spelling dormant in my mind available for use during one of my frequent vapor locks.
A lot of stripped down M113s were dropped on 5 tons, but drivers didn’t like them because of the weight and balance. The gun trucks made up in the motor pools (now called “hillbilly armor” were preferred.
Richard Killblane (Transportation Corp historian) just put out a good history of US Army convoy operations that has a concise history of gun trucks. It’s entitled “Circle the Wagons: The History of US Army Convoy Security” published by Combat Studies Institute Press, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It’s a good book if you can get it.
You are entirely correct in your assesment of "slat armor" as it is called. The company I work for was part of General Dynamics, now we are L3 communications, we still make the same products, though. Some parts for M1 abrams, some parts for Bradly Fighting vehicles, and increasingly the stryker. Soon the marine EFV, will be in production and hopefully we'll get some of that work as well.
Hi exnavy, thanks.
Good luck to you and your company - you guys keep up the good work, and keep making the best possible parts and products for our American warriors! They deserve the best.
Fletcher J
It works against the way a shaped charge works. Basically it causes the RPG charge to start early thereby decreasing it's effectiveness.
Shaped Charge Info: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/bullets2-shaped-charge.htm
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