A new series of an action movie about the opposition of means of attack and defense.
The modern naval battle will end quickly and ingloriously. The shot is a shipwreck. There are no survivors. Air defense systems? Anyone who dares to fight back will be flogged to death with the debris of downed missiles. Real facts recorded at landfills around the world. It is useless to shoot down missiles in the near zone if there is no protection (at least!) From the flying fragments of the destroyed missile.
But what if ships take on a new level of protection? At least in order to have time to discharge your ammunition into the enemy.
In the new series of the action movie, we will consider the issue of armor-piercing special ammunition of the new generation. What solutions can modern designers offer? And how effective are passive defenses against the latest threats?
Yes, any armor can be pierced. But we are interested in: what's next? A hole in the deck or the side? The floating bulk of the cruiser will not even notice her presence.
It is required not only to pierce, but also to carry a sufficient charge of explosives through the protection. Which could destroy internal bulkheads, damage mechanisms and disable the ship.
And this will be a problem:)
_
From the conversation:
- An acquaintance fell from a hundred-meter staircase and survived.
- How???
- He fell from the first step.
The story is great for describing the next plot.
Contrary to the description for the video:, the facts tell a different story.
The reinforced concrete wall is two meters, but not in thickness, but in width. And its thickness is less than one meter - this is clearly noticeable at the end of the video (see moment 1:50).
Yes, nothing strange. The description of combat damage and characteristics of weapons is replete with all kinds of falsifications. But the essence of our conversation will be about something else.
According to experts studying the damage, there is no concrete evidence of what the cumulative jet turns into after overcoming the armor barrier. What are its appearance and characteristics? There is no exact answer either in the reports, or in the manuals, or in the manuals of military academies. As if the military is not at all interested in this issue.
There is a well-founded opinion (about the arguments - just below) that after breaking through the side, a "portion" of drops of armor is sprayed into the fighting compartment of the tank at a temperature of ~ 400 ° С. This substance is undoubtedly deadly when in contact with a human body, but when meeting with the mechanisms of the tank, its effect is limited to scratches on the metal.
If hot metal droplets do not catch the ammo rack, hydraulic fluids or fuel tank, then the tank remains in service.
This explains the appearance of surviving tankers after multiple (!) Damage to armored vehicles with cumulative ammunition. If the hot mixture does not touch anything flammable / explosive / fragile, like a human body, its effect on mechanisms and metal structures is too imperceptible to be mentioned in repair lists.
The booked volume of the tank is only a few cubic meters. meters. Unlike BTT, the volume of ship hulls reaches tens of thousands of cubic meters. m. For this reason, the use of classical cumulative ammunition against sea targets is useless, just like trying to chop an iceberg with a knife to chop ice.
A cumulative effect that can penetrate any obstacle is not suitable for the role of a damaging factor when meeting a ship. But it can become the basis for the creation of tandem ammunition.
What will be discussed has little in common with the common tandem ammunition for tank guns, consisting of two shaped charges installed in a row.
In our case, everything is much more complicated. The head (shaped charge) charge must make a sufficiently large hole to penetrate into the main warhead (“penetrator” with explosives).
The main question in this problem is: how wide can the hole be made?
And how strong does the penetrator rod have to be to pass through the “eye of the needle”? What proportion of the penetrator (filling factor) will remain directly on the explosive?
After all, it was for the sake of the latter that the whole booth was started. Both the head shaped charge and the penetrator are just means. The goal is to plant explosives under the armor.
The answers to these questions will be a disappointment for anyone who hopes that modern military technology can create any type of ammunition. They are able to effectively overcome the ship's air defenses, break through 150-200 mm of an armor barrier with one jerk and inflict damage inside with a high-explosive explosion, demolishing protective anti-fragmentation bulkheads and destroying several important compartments.
First, let's see how wide the channel can be made by conventional grenade launchers.
A huge variety of photographic evidence is walking around the Internet. Here is one of them. The illustration shows the Abrams tank hit by a shot from an RPG. Here you can define the size of the hole. The diameter of the "Abrams" skating rink is about 60 cm, which means that the diameter of the "black point" is about two centimeters. Of course, the inlet, charred along the edges, visually slightly exceeds the channel left in the armor by the cumulative jet. It is even thinner.
The result obtained is in good agreement with theoretical data. According to which the diameter of the hole is on average 0.2 of the diameter of the shaped charge (i.e. caliber).
For comparison: RPG-7 grenades have a caliber of 75 mm to 105 mm.
Another confirmation of the above is the video with "Cranberry" at the beginning of the article. A thin steel bar can hardly be placed in the channel left by the explosion. The journalist of the Zvezda TV and Radio Company, together with his partner, hardly “screws” it into the broken block.
This is a bad sign. So narrow is the hole made.
Anyone who hopes to increase the diameter of the hole due to the many times greater mass of a promising anti-ship missile with a tandem warhead will face new disappointment.
The diameter of the hole left by the cumulative jet is determined by two parameters. The material of the barrier. And the diameter of the shaped charge. I repeat: not by mass, not by length, but by diameter.
Do you really think that the diameter of the body of modern missiles is much larger than the caliber of a hand grenade launcher?
One of the most powerful and modern representatives of its class. RPG-28 "Cranberry". The diameter of the grenade is 125 mm.
The diameter of any missile of the "Caliber" family is exactly 533 mm to ensure launch through a standard torpedo tube (21 inches).
So we arrived. The diameter of the largest anti-ship missile system created in our time is only 4 times larger than that of a cumulative hand-held RPG grenade!
For the main anti-ship missile of NATO countries ("Harpoon"), this value is even less, because the maximum diameter of its body is only 340 mm.
As a result, when the “Caliber” is equipped with a tandem warhead weighing tens of kilograms, the hole diameter will not exceed 100 mm (0, 2D).
So, the diameter of the penetrator cannot exceed 100 mm. Cross-sectional area - 0, 008 m2. If we assume that it is entirely made of RDX (shellless explosive device, yeah), then with a density of 1800 kg / m3, the length of a 50-kilogram charge will be a little bit 3 meters.
Now, dear fans of tandem ammunition, it is your turn to explain how to "push a camel through the eye of a needle." Otherwise - a three-meter rod through a hole with a diameter of 100 mm with a minimum gap. At transonic speed. At the same time, without bending or breaking it in half.
To prevent the destruction of such a long warhead in the event of inevitable contact with the edges of the hole, the warhead must have exceptional mechanical strength. Those. almost the entire rod should be made of alloy steel, tungsten alloy or other high-strength material. What will be left to the share of explosives? After all, you can just beat the ship with a crowbar until the end of time.
What would be the exact fill factor for such an ammunition? It is difficult to name the exact meaning. One thing is clear: with a sufficient thickness of the metal shell of the "penetrator", the content of explosives in it will be low. And if you look at things more realistically, taking into account the restrictions on the longitudinal size of the warhead, the ratio of the density of the metal and explosives, the need to install a detonator, then it will not exceed a couple of tens of kilograms.
There are two conclusions from this.
1. Anti-ship tandem ammunition with the specified parameters will not be able to inflict sufficient damage to a protected ship to disable it.
2. The design of the tandem anti-ship missile will be irreversibly spoiled an attempt to give it armor-piercing qualities. As the facts show, the 500-kg warhead, after all the costs for the shaped charge and the penetrator shell, as a result, contains only a couple of tens of kilograms of explosives. Ten times lessthan similar in weight high-explosive warheads of existing heavy anti-ship missiles ("Caliber", LRASM, etc.).
Of course, there will be advisers who will begin to convince that an explosion of 20-30 kg will still destroy some of the equipment and affect combat capabilities. A tenfold reduction in the content of explosives in the warhead does not provide advantages for the defenders, therefore the armor is useless.
Well, a 500-kg high-explosive warhead, equipped to the eyeballs with explosives, the first hit will blow an unarmored ship to shreds.
P. S
Already, in practice, tandem ammunition has been created, whose penetrators contain as much as 56 kg of explosives. We are talking about warheads MEPHISTO weighing 481 kg, used in German anti-bunker ammunition of the TAURUS series.
It is reported that a tandem warhead is capable of penetrating 6 meters of soil and then another 3 … 6 meters of reinforced concrete.
It is incorrect to use TAURUS as an example of ammunition against protected sea targets. Differences between soil / concrete and Krupp armor steel are too great.
First, the density is 2 … 3 times higher, which will drastically reduce the efficiency of the shaped charge.
The other parameters differ just as seriously: Brinell hardness (depending on the grade of concrete) - 3-5 times. Tensile Strength - Concrete performs well in compression, but in bending it is two orders of magnitude worse than conventional structural steel. The introduction of steel reinforcement into concrete will in no way make reinforced concrete an analogue of high-quality armored steel with a cemented top layer.
These differences can be easily confirmed in practice. On the construction market, there are many models of pneumatic guns that easily drive 200 mm nails into the reinforced concrete walls of panel houses.
But try shooting a nail gun at the neck of a railroad rail. (Attention! Do not perform at home - it is fraught with a ricochet in the stomach.)
As for the layer of ordinary soil, then that parameter is not even worth discussing. The strength of the soil is negligible compared to steel. So much so that any of us can dig a hole with an ordinary shovel.
But try, armed with a shovel, to leave at least one scratch on the tank's armor.
For this reason, the assessment of the armor-piercing abilities of TAURUS using the example of breaking through a layer of earth and reinforced concrete is not correct.
At the same time, despite all the facilitating circumstances, the main charge of TAURUS contains only 56 kg of explosives (with a warhead mass of almost 500 kg and a rocket launch mass of 1.3 tons).
The use of miniature shaped charges for engineering purposes as an argument is also incorrect.
The ability to punch through thick steel plates with explosive content in a few grams is encouraging for the supporters of tandem warheads. However, in practice, everything is different.
There is a specific parameter - the penetration depth related to the weight of the charge. Have miniature godfathers. charges and RPG grenades, this parameter differs by a factor of 10. In numbers, this looks up to 50 mm per gram of explosives against only 0.7-5 mm per gram for RPG grenades.
With an increase in the weight of the charge, the specific penetration depth per gram of explosive only continues to decrease.
Most importantly, an increase in the weight of the shaped charge has little effect on the most important parameter - the diameter of the hole left (it still linearly depends on the diameter of the warhead and the density of the target material). This is where all the problems arise when creating tandem power supplies.
