The dynamic protection of armored vehicles was difficult and dramatic to create.
Soviet developers of dynamic protection in the late 70s - early 80s carried out research at the Research Institute of Steel, relying on developments made long before that by domestic scientists B. V. Voitsekhovsky, A. I. Platov and others.
Since 1978, A. I. Platov worked in our department, and all of us, young employees, had great respect for Alexander Ivanovich, a veteran, one of those who stood at the origins of the knowledge of this most complex phenomenon - the ultra-high-speed process of interaction of the cumulative jet of anti-tank ammunition attacking a tank, with a reactive armor device.
Armor should not jump
The cumulative jet moves at a speed exceeding the first cosmic one, the whole process takes several tens of microseconds in time and proceeds at pressures at which even the strongest armor steel flows like water. The first in the USSR copyright certificate for the invention of the element of dynamic protection (EDZ) "Cross" was received by the head of our department, D. A. Rototaev.
There were also enough problems - both objective and, as they say, handmade. At a remote site near Moscow, an episode took place that will be remembered for a lifetime. By firing 125-mm shaped-charge projectiles, we tested an armored model "nose", imitating a multilayer frontal part of the tank hull, equipped with built-in volumetric EDZ of the "Cross" type. The cost of one artillery shot was several hundred rubles and was comparable to the cost of a live cow. That is why our director M. I. Maresev, a veteran front-line soldier and a Siberian, shook his head sadly with every shot of a 125-mm artillery gun and grumbled in a Siberian way: “The cow flew again” …
While we, the engineers of the research institute, got from Moscow to the landfill and the service bus "creaked" to the 18th site, the test team, who arrived four hours earlier than us, did not waste time in vain and had already completed the equipment of the "nose", having installed all the EDZ "Cross »Inside specially mounted pipes. Externally, the layout of the armored unit with built-in reactive armor looked like it should be. In any case, we were satisfied with the external inspection of the experimental assembly and gave the go-ahead for testing. The polygon team went to prepare the gun for firing, and our engineering staff took refuge in caponiers welded from 16-mm steel armor plates (not a single splinter would penetrate!), Installed at a distance of about 50 meters from the tested model. A polygon caponier is a steel box, set on the priest, open on one, back, side and closed in front, on the sides and on top, equipped with a periscope and viewing slots covered with glass anti-fragmentation triplexes. In one caponier, from three to five people could hide from the fragments that scattered during the explosion of a cumulative projectile, depending on their build and (in the cold season) on the thickness of the pea jackets, fur jackets and coats they were wearing.
We settled down to the triplex of the viewing slots, through which only cracks from the fragments that had fallen into them during the previous tests were clearly visible. We all open our mouths wide - this way the action of the shock wave is more easily tolerated. The zealous command: "Or-r-rudie!"A close, habitually sharp clap of a cannon shot, and an unusually strong, deafening rumble of a mixed explosion of a cumulative projectile and a triggered reactive armor hitting the eardrums, the whistle of fragments flying overhead … A moment of silence … Then two or three of some unusual, quiet, but perceptible slap on the ground … We all stand half-deaf, with our mouths wide open and do not understand anything. Nothing, except that something extraordinary happened - the explosion turned out to be too strong.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Vladimir Putin for agreeing to return the Magah tank (version of the American M48), which was captured by Syrian troops as a trophy in 1982. It served well to strengthen the defensive power of the USSR. Photo: google.com
We leave the caponier and admire the 100-mm armor plate, which miraculously grew out of the ground fifteen meters from our shelter. The stove sticks out with its corner stuck into the ground. And on the way from the tested model, or rather from what was left, there are several pits on the ground, which the multi-ton steel colossus left, hitting the ground and jumping. So leaves traces on the water - "pancakes" successfully thrown flat pebble, ricocheting from the water surface.
The sad Moscow engineers, together with the testers of the local proving ground team, "hiding their eyes" begin to inspect the scene, trying to understand what happened. The moment of truth comes pretty quickly. To the side, in closed green wooden boxes neatly laid by the polygon team, in which the EDZ "Krest" was brought from the base warehouse of explosives, a large number of carefully milled round steel plates are found. These are special partitions, which before the experiment had to be installed inside the tubes of the armored unit, separating the EDZ "Cross" from each other and preventing the transfer of detonation from one element to another. In order to detonate an explosive (explosive) in only one, a maximum of two EDZ, through which the cumulative jet of an exploded artillery shell passes. In total, about two hundred grams of explosives should have exploded.
However, the testers from the proving ground team showed "Russian ingenuity" and, taking advantage of the lack of control from the Muscovite engineers, made life easier for themselves by installing EDZ without anti-knock partitions. The cumulative jet passed through the EDZ located in two pipes. Each pipe has 12 EDZ. As a result, all 24 EDZs exploded in both tubes, which is almost three kilograms of explosives. Such an explosion easily tore off the multi-ton steel armor plate from the tested model and threw it towards the firing artillery gun and the caponier in which we were hiding. If this colossus had flown a little more, it would have swatted the caponier itself, and everyone who was in it, like flies.
Trophy as an argument
For three years, from 1979 to 1982, in our department several alternative types of EDS were investigated and worked out - both volumetric and plane-parallel. A calculation method was created that made it possible to estimate the space-time and energy characteristics of the process of interaction of the cumulative jet with the EHE. Comprehensive laboratory and polygon studies of various EDS options have been carried out, including using the methods of mathematical planning of experiments and regression analysis. On the basis of the obtained models, engineering optimization was carried out and rational parameters were selected. Work began on the design of two types of EDZ and the technology for their manufacture and equipment with explosives. The work was going on as planned, when suddenly the situation changed instantly.
In June 1982, the first Lebanese war broke out in the Middle East between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors. At the end of June, a group of engineers from our Research Institute of Steel, which included me, was urgently sent to Kubinka. On one of the sites of the local research institute of armored vehicles stood an intact Israeli M48 tank with a complex of "explosive reactive armor" - ERA BLAZER. During the fighting in the Sultan Yaakub area on the night of June 10-11, the Syrians managed to capture several Israeli tanks completely unharmed. Within a few days, one of these trophies was delivered to the USSR, and we began to investigate it.
Only after that, it became clear to the USSR's top military leadership that without dynamic protection it was impossible to ensure the survival of tanks on the battlefield with the massive use of a huge arsenal of various anti-tank cumulative and armor-piercing sub-caliber projectiles. And our department actually switched to work according to the wartime schedule - practically without days off and vacations, for 10-12 hours a day.
As a result, in just six months, we finally completed the design of the unified EDZ 4S20, including the original anti-knock baffles, in order to prevent the uncontrolled transfer of detonation from one EDZ to another described above. On 4S20 and a container for installing EDZ on the main armor units of all tanks, the author of these lines, together with other employees of the department and related defense research institutes and design bureaus, filed applications for an invention and received international patents.
Unlike the 20 standard sizes of the Israeli EDZ of the BLAZER complex, the domestic EDZ 4S20 we created was unified for all main tanks that existed at that time, it has a lower specific weight and a significantly smaller area of weakened zones. Already on January 14, 1983, an act of the state commission was signed on the adoption of the ROC "Contact-1". We began technological preparation for the mass production of the EDZ 4S20, and in 1985 the Kontakt-1 mounted ERA of tanks was adopted by the Soviet Army.
Lighter, cheaper, more reliable
As a result of the R&D performed by our department - "Contact-2", "Contact-3", "Contact-4", "Contact-5", "Relikt" - the designs of the EDZ 4С22, 4С23 line were developed to protect not only tanks with powerful armor protection, but also lightly armored and even unarmored military equipment from various high-speed weapons. Dynamic protection has become built-in. Now it is an integral part not only of modern Russian tanks, but also of infantry fighting vehicles. The dynamic protection developed by us has been adopted by many foreign countries.
Tanks and other objects of military equipment equipped with such complexes have saved the lives of hundreds of our soldiers and officers who participated in various military conflicts. It was not in vain that we risked then!
