EMA, if properly isolated would not require any sensors, you said that the way it works is by disrupting the jet of molten metal the shape charges use by sending electricity through it. So as electricity doesn't go through open electrical circuits it will only consume electricity of there's a shaped charge to penetrate it an close the circuit formed by it and the armor system. The power issue must come from somewhere else.
Yep, that's true, if you use a dc current source, like super capacitors, a generator, by nature, produces AC current. 2 metal plates isolated from each other are nothing more than a simple capacitor, capacitors have a relatively low AC resistance, meaning that this still will act as a short circuit. However, that's not the problem i see with this technology, it is actually a clever use of the properties of conducting metal objects in an electric field. The problem i see is the logistical and the operational ones. As the capacitors needed to provide the current have a pretty high self discharge rate, they will have to be constantly charged, wich obviously costs fuel. Another maybe not so relavent point would be the actual armor composition itself. As tank manufaturers more and more try to keep the armor as modular and as replaceable as possible, this would mean a huge increase in complexity and cost, just to be able to replace smaller parts of the armor. Another concern would be the isolation itself. But what i think,what would drive the nail into the coffin of this concept, is the fact that this is an activ system, that uses fuel even if it isn't needed and it will only protect the crew from one specific type of weapon, simple shaped charges. A tandem warhead could still get around this system, by using the first shaped charge to drill a "pilot whole" and enable the second shaped charge to blow through. There are shaped charge warheads, that use the shaped charge to drill a whole, only, to allow a kind of elongated frag granat to shoot into the crew compartment and potentially kill everything in there.
@@Spookston Well, it wasn't really a mistake, just a bit of a misunderstanding oon the technical side. ;D To the concept of metal foam as a filler, technically, this would be a great idea, practically, not so much. It would certainly be easy to produce crude metal foam piecs in large quantities, however, big homogenous pieces with certain shapes could be to difficult to produce at reasonable cost. I would actually suggest the next best thing, sintered metal. Mor specifically, parts made out of sintered steel wool. You still got high energy dissipation coupled with low weight but you get the advantage of this being a comparatively low cost solution, for the most part because of the energy efficient sintering process. There was also one kind of armor, that you haven't mentioned, that would be fluids. I mean, it isn't exactly a future technology, as tanks like Merkava made excessive use of using fuel tanks as armor, but i am talking about moving fluids or even non newtonian fluids. the ideaa behind both being the disruptionof the projectil path and therefor reduced penetration.
Yep, last part needed is some super capacitors that build up charge slowly over time and you should be able to be fit it to just about any tank with a reasonable powerplant. The supercapacitors might come with some weight and space considerations though.
Meanwhile somehwere in North Korea: "Write that down, write that down!" "Sir, but what are we going to do with it, we can't produce neither of those things anyway?" "..."
We need to invest in multidimensional displacement technology, in order to make the armor of the tank warp in, and out, of existence. The armor/nothing will deflect/do nothing and absorb/do nothing incoming projectiles which will in turn also be displaced out of existence you can't/can hit a tank that doesn't/does exist, *Schrödinger's Tank* !
I’m thinking that metal foam would suffer heavily from armor fatigue, but given the responsiveness that modern tanks have, it could be worth having armor pieces that need to be replaced when hit, but offers more protection.
I mean it's not like any modern armor is meant to stand a second shot to the same place anyway. ERA gets used up, NERA a huge hole teared, ceramics crack and backers bend and break up, even hard kill systems don't prevent enough penetration to leave the armor unscathed... With the stupidly high energy and focus that modern AT weapons have, there's no real material or system that would survive several shots with reasonable weight. Heck it's often not even expected to fully prevent damage from the first hit, at least from another tank's gun
Good think to mention since I was just thinking that. Also what about vibration? Like when your hit will the metal foam vibrate rapidly due to the absorption of a solid uranium rod being shot at it faster than the speed of sound while the armour (compared to RHA) is as light as a feather?
For the electric armor: You can simply store a lot of electric energy in a huge capacitor bank connected to either sides of the plates. As soon as the jet penetrates the circuit is completed and current will flow. You don't need to waste any energy as it is stored in the capacitors and sensors are unnecessary because the jet will do that part by design. Problems are: -Dangerously high voltages on the hull that can fry humans and equipment alike. -Huge capacitor banks needed for storage. Likely more than 100kg ( My guess is ~500kg but weight isn't a problem for tanks anyway).
Pole here. We did not. Some university professor (Włodzimierz Strupiński) invented a novel way of producing it but had no money to start mass production. In order to procure money, the government got involved but the state-owned company tasked with producing it was plagued by mismanagement and lately started selling off their lab equipment to stay afloat.
Your comment that em armor would require a large amount of electricity to simply stay active does not make sense since no electricity flows unless a projectile hits it.
It needs a large amount of electricity to redistribute the charge to make it effective again. I think is what he meant. Yes when a bridge is made the effectiveness is lost. So you must be able to charge the armour more or somehow Syphon the charge to make it effective again.
Although this is true you have to take into account the inevitable discharge overtime that occurs whenever you stock electricity and the electricity needed for a recharge aswell.
pand_vidoo jbc the leakage current would be little to nothing. Modern capacitors have leakage currents in the milli to micro amp range. Given that em armor needs high power-density not necessarily high energy density recharge time would be pretty quick.
Kiyo Senpai You do not charge the armor itself. You would use capacitors to provide the charge, and you would keep the armor in sections like you do with era that way if one panel is hit you do not loose armor effectiveness over the entire tank.
The jet of a shaped charge is fast, on the order of several km/s when uninterrupted by any armor. If the mechanism by which electromagnetic armor disrupts these fluid jets involves things like the lorentz force or even just ablation from joule heating, that means the electrical impulse must be enormous to counteract the insane kinetic energy. As in, kiloamperes or even megaamperes. The only device I can think of compact enough to fit on a tank and also deliver current like that (i.e. smaller than a huge capacitor bank) is an "explosive flux compression generator", like the kind used in nuclear weapons to drive neutron gun sources. Unfortunately these are driven by insensitive high explosive charges, meaning they are triggered and would need a sensor to activate. The other option, like mentioned in the video, would be a pre-existing electric potential high enough that the meager capacitance between the armor plates could drive enough energy into the jet to knock it apart. This amount of voltage would be akin to lightning, and you would need to sandwich a layer of exotic material with an insanely high dielectric constant to keep breakdown from occuring between the two plates. Hell, you might even need structural elements to keep the static attraction of each plate from smashing this dielectric.
You dont need to fully vaporize the jet though. It's tip is really hot (close to boiling) and thin, and the molten needle doesnt have anything close to a homogenous speed or a resistance besides inertia... You only have to cause a little bit of boiling/ablation mostly at the point, and the jet will lose cohesion, dispersing much more quickly through the armor behind. That is not to say you dont need a very strong capacitor, but we are talking of kilojoules rather than megajoules as vaporizing it would demmand, that's within reach of modern capacitors for quite a light weight (for a tank anyway). The difficult part is now to make it reliable, *safe*, sturdy, affordable, and able to dish out the power output required (dozens to hundreds of megawatts), again safely and preventing misfires. I agree the dielectric is probably the weakest point of that technology too, specially on the safety end, but I guess it could be turned off except when a threat is expected, which should make it at least safer than ERA, facing a similar issue. They probably are quite bulky too, but spaced armor is too and still used...
@@antaresmc4407 Interesting thought about the kinetics of shaped charge jets, I will admit I don't know a whole lot about the physics other than just "behaves like a liquid because of plastic deformation and not melting." Regardless of that, even if energy demands are more modest than I make out I'm still inclined to believe explosive pulsed power is a better option than capacitors in almost any situation where triggering is needed. I've since learned about so many different types of it that exist, too.
@@UA-camguy543 well, a liquid is basicly a solid with 0 yield strength, which doesnt really technically exist anyway, so when the stress is just way higher than the YS, you can just call it a liquid... SC liners are often actually molten though (it depends afaik), as one of the limiting factors is the waste heat absorbed by it. About power source, Im not very familliar with those, but you dont only need high power and current, you need high energy, while voltage doesnt really matter. A few napkin calculations suggest you'd need 10kJ ± a magnitude... Idk if the tech is scalable enough, and you'd get such ridiculous power that itd be hard to make the circuit not burn itself down. Plus you'd need incredible precision, a tenth milisec early and a lightning grade arch sets your circuit ablaze not hitting the projectile, one late and the jet overshoots enough to short circuit where it shouldnt, the enemy could just make a round with an inaccurate fuse, while suboptimal it'd cut costs and work... Also tandem charges would defeat the system. Lastly, idk how much they cost but sounds expensive and you dont need it be particularly small... A capacitor armor has the advantage that it cant be fooled and needs no extra device besides power (sensors always being weak spots and explosives damage multipliers, not to mention the generator would itself be basicly a HEAT round inside the tank... Lastly, if the dielectric is soft it can double as NERA, which is nice I guess
Spookston "I'm going to talk about classified current and future armor, with information from an inside source" *US government enters the chat* *Chinese government enters the chat* *Russian government enters the chat*
From my (possibly faulty ) understanding metal foams are mostly usefull in enhancing ceramic armor peformance by delaying/dampening shockwave reflection of the backface (with the foam as supporting material ) that being one of the main limiters of ceramic performance ). By increasing the time the ceramic resists the projectile (dwell time ) as well as decreasing the crush zone in ceramic armor performance is increased. Foams apparently also function well as a spall liner.
Using sensors with electromagnetic armor which I just heard of seems to me to present another advantage. It could be used in conjunction with capacitors. Capacitors store an immense electrical charge but take a time to acquire that charge. They can acquire their charge over time with a lower voltage electrical supply. This reduces the size of the generator that would be needed to produce the same amount of electrical current on a continuous basis that would be needed without them. A sensor could discharge the capacitors with the approach of an incoming weapon thus allowing the capacitors to hold their charge in anticipation of attack. This is the way lasers weapons are powered.
A little side-note, EM-armor does not waste electricity while active. Maintaining a charge in a bank of capacitors (most likely solution) does not require any energy until the armor is activated and you need to build it up again. The only loss of energy would be the small leakage from imperfect insulating-materials, which for modern day plastics, or even a simple airgap, is minimal.
One problem would presumably be the cost of these protective systems. While the tank you speculated towards the end of the video would be a defensive powerhouse, it would presumably be even heavier and more expensive than current tanks. At some point the cost of defensive systems that could stop a round may be so high that it's just not worth doing, resulting in smaller and lighter tanks instead.
That's why it's time to call the whole tank thing and just use drones. Instead of sending a few big heavy tanks, send thousands of unmanned, unarmored, light, fast, possibly electric, disposable missile launching drones. Doesn't matter if they get destroyed because they are cheap and easy to replace and no loss of life.
@@sankhyohalder97 future armor will using nanotechnology and nanomaterial finding a hybrid nanostructure made out of rare metal such a or using high atom element comparison as a known Unbinilium
I would like to point out that the research done on the ballistic protection potential on metal foam composites was strictly in that of small caliber rifle rounds along with fragmentation from 23mm HE-I rounds. Comparing it’s ballistic protection against these shells with that of RHA just doesn’t stand in the argument of tank protection until it has been tested and compared to current composite armor against chemical and high density kinetic projectiles
The way I understood it is that the same thickness of metal foam beat the same thickness of RHA. In this case the scale matters little, the point is that it provides better protection then regular steel armor. And to compare it with current composite armor is useless, as metal foam would be a part of a composite setup not all the protection. What does matter is how it does at different penetrator designs
@@Ally5141 This isn't scale. This is penetrator design, which is what I said matters. Because there is more then one Long rod APFSDS design anyway, and they are better or worse at stoping bullets. Saying scale matters means the effect would be different if the bullet and matterial thickness would be scaled up, and it simply isn't the case. If you change the design of the bullet in the test to the same one as a long rod, then if you scaled up the test the result would stay the same as with a big APFSDS
shepardpolska except composite armor setups don’t primarily consist of RHA... they consist of composite materials including depleted uranium/tungsten and other super dense materials as well as the likes of ceramics. So no, until it has been tested as part of a composite scheme and directly against the current armor materials that aren’t RHA, the findings do not indicate that it’s the “future of tank armor”
shepardpolska there’s also a significant difference between the way that a typical full metal jacket bullet in a rifle caliber interacts with armor compared to a long rod monobloc penetrator, a segmented penetrator, or chemical munitions. There’s a reason that the armor protection on a tank varies between shell types in accordance to its armor scheme, and how different composite arrays can provide more than their dimensions in protection vs RHA. this means that, until it has been tested against these munitions... the findings have no indication as of yet that it will be better than existing armor typed against these munitions
A bit like many other groundbreaking techs. Its not hard to do once its going, but it needs substantial initial investement of money, infrastructure and time. Startups can't muster enough to make it happen, and big companies that already sit on the market ususaly scoff at it, because they ALREADY control the market, so will not gain anything from the technology, and in fact could end up disrupting their own bottom line by making their previous products and infrastructure irrelevant. Big issue with so many areas of the market being in a virtual stasis combined with the fact that investors have VASTLY grown in importance, all the while having drastically reduced their attention span. Nowadays, you have to be very profitable in the short term to get attention, rather than investing for long term performance.
As someone who got retired from the Army as an M1 tanker there are some issues I see with an unmanned turret, issue number one is redundancy. If the digital sights go out there's no way they're gonna can aim the gun because he won't have a simple ballistic sight that he can look down the gun through because he'll be next to the driver in the hull, the tank Commander's view of the battlefield will be compromised when his independent viewer goes out. if the autoloader goes out you won't be able to manually the reload the gun because again you're not near the gun. If the machine guns jam and you have to clear the jam again you won't be able to clear the jam because your machine guns are nowhere near you they're in the turret. That and a automatic turret also means no loader which increases workload of the crew one of the reasons why the Army is going with General Dynamics MPF design is because they still keep the loader in the turret, the loader does a lot of things besides load the gun for a tank crew in the Army which I will not get into here. Because of these disadvantages I don't think it's good idea to have unmanned turret for main battle tank I think they might be a good idea to have an unmanned turned for a tank destroyer or if we need to again, a "heavy tank" and the main gun will have be extremely powerful to offset these advantages but for a main battle tank that will find itself in a tank fight and in a urban fight, im not seeing a good advantage here.
@@hazardous458 the Gunner has two backup sights, a "Daysight", a none Thermal sight that still allows the gunner to use the laser, if its working. A"GAS" sight (Gunners aux sight) which is a simple ballistic binocular scope the is located right next to the breech. The Commander can also take over and aim and fire the gun with the CITV.
Tbh the way technology is right now I have a feeling the next war will be a trench warfare esc battle of attrition. I believe ballistic missiles and planes being able to shoot things from miles away is going to have a large impact on the ability of armor to do it’s job. I know all of our leadership is going to go into the next war thinking like world war 2 and be dead wrong. The tanks of the future are probably completely different from what we can comprehend looking from our ww2 outlook.
If that metal foam is inter meshed with micro ceramic spheres and have the spaces filled in with some sort of high performance ooblek, it would make DU rounds have a harder time penetrating, thanks to the fact ooblek is both a non-Newtonian fluid, and at the same time, has a high temperature threshold, making it cooler, which would both cool the DU perpetrator as it passes through it, and make it harder to pass through the armor.
For those interested in real world near future weapon and armor physics simulation, Children of a Dead Earth is a near future space sim built on realistic near future concepts. It also allows you to design ships, and ship modules like weapons from the ground up, with a ridiculously large selection of real world materials to choose from, and lots of fine tuning. The game relies on a ton of calculus to predict performance. As realistic as the game is, there is a few exploits that take advantage of the calculus. Computers can, at best, only approximate calculus solutions. So, scale up a weapon far enough, and compounding errors can lead to things like, say, a rail gun that fires projectiles with more kinetic energy than the electrical energy the weapon consumes... A violation of conservation of energy. Similarly, this is one of the only games I know of that does multibody orbital dynamics, which means your computer can struggle to calculate orbital conics. Also, you can freeze and crash the game if you launch too big an attack in combat, since every object's physics needs to be simulated. Anyway, the game is mostly fun as a sandbox to see what happens when you smash unstopable forces into imovable objects, see what kinds of armor schemes and weapons work well. Personally, I like to go with lightweight boron/silicone aerogel sandwich armor, with a whipple shield, and one rail gun firing what are basically tiny pistol rounds at speeds measured in C from well outside enemy range.
Metal foam can stop shaped charges if you fill out the holes. The perforated steel armor for example was used in the earliest leopard 2 composite armor, they discovered it wasn’t good at stopping heat so they filled out the holes.
placeholder It would still be effective if filled with ceramic. The ceramic would instantly shatter but the metal would still deform and knock the round off course. As long as they’re 2 different materials, it shouldn’t affect the performance.
I notice you didn't mention NERA (non-explosive reactive armor), which AFAIK is a core part of most composite armor schemes. It consists of spaced plates of metal-rubber/plastic-metal. When struck by a HEAT-jet or kinetic penetrator, the rubber/plastic vaporizes, shifting the metal plates and disrupting the jet/penetrator. It's essentially a passive, non-explosive counterpart to ERA. A more conventional armor plate is often placed on top to prevent the metal-plastic-metal sandwiches from being excessively degraded by small arms fire.
Solipsil he was comparing metal foam to RHA and then going onto how it would be used to replace NERA in the likes of an abrams when there has been no (public) tests that have shown that metal foam is even more effective than current NERA
@@Hollycalvey I got the impression that metal foam is great at absorbing energy/impulse once the HEAT jet or kinetic penetrator is already broken up, but that it isn't all that good on doing said breaking up. So it might be used as a layer underneath NERA, but since it's so voluminous, it'd probably perform poorer than just more NERA. Seems great for space use after a whipple shield has vaporized a piece of debris/micrometeorite, but not really suited for any terrestrial application I can think of.
No it has uses terrestially. IMO Its main use is delaying and dampening impact shockwave reflection on the backface of bulk hard armor layers. That is one of the main limiters in ceramic armor performance. By increasing dwell time and limiting crush zone formation you increase the performance of the ceramic. ( as well as limiting damage to the ceramic for more penetration events ). I could imagine it having a similar benefit for extremely hard steel armor systems by lessening the "plugging" tendency.
Metal foam would likely be very good against shaped charges. The voids in the structure can disrupt the jet and prevent the normalization of the liner penetrator in much the same way as spaced armor.
Perhaps a safe tank armor system could be made by the use a of two seperated plates that form a capacitor, the two plates have also explosive reactive armor in the form of a curtain. As the armor piercing jet connects the two plates electricity would flow through the metal disrptuting its tip's shape and also bending the metal jet similar to the way a rail gun functions...The explosive reactive armor plates are only at the top of the plates and the are activated by the metal jet and shoot a flying plate perpenticularly to the metal jet further bending it and disrupting it. This way it would be safe for the friendly troops next to the tank. I wonder if they have already tested it
This may already be in use: Emerald plates within a Chobham type composite armour package. It sounds exotic and incredibly expensive until you realise emerald is just aluminium oxide. So it's light, very very hard and also many times more heat resistant than RHA. The "ceramic" that they refer to in composite armour could be this.
I expect more plastics to be used in armour. They can be surprisingly strong and kinetic energy gets transformed into heat (melting of the plastic). It's also potentially good against shaped armor. Obviously, we're talking about composites with metal and ceramic.
@@KoishiVibin I have a rough idea. It depends whether they are supposed to resist HEAT or APFSDS. The latter needs high hardness materials sandwiched in between layers that prevent the debris from being displaced.
@@edi9892 yes and no. the basic principle for NERA is for flyer/bulge element. this can be anything, it just has to have the sandwitched materials feed flyer plate material into the penetrator, inflicting lateral stress and increasing penetrated material. for ceramics, this becomes stranger. it is currently known that while contained ceramics are effective at low scales, experiments with siliceous core armor found that larger and larger scale implementation decreased the effects
You need to update this video with more current information, graphene is pretty easy to mass produce nowadays just as small flakes rather than contiguous sheets and we are only a few years away from those as well.
Capacitors (essentially what EM armour is) always require a maintenance charge - it is not the full charge placed across the plates but still is a decent amount, furthermore, it may have an issue of accidental discharge if one of the plates scrapes on something. in which case you have to fully charge the plate again.
@@phinix250 yes, but it's not draining energy in the same way when it's "turned on" as say, running an appliance. Where you put a charge in and it then uses that charge aslong as it is being supplied.
Valentine Technically it would drain some electricity, as electricity would escape through sharp corners and whatnot, thus needing constant power to the armor.
The electrically charged armor is basically a capacitor; it takes energy to charge, and once it's charged it remains charged until it is discharged by something(heat penetrator) completing the circuit.
You could also have a switch inside for the EM armor to turn on or off, saving cost/complexity, and power, but leaving it up to the crew, which can make errors
Fill the meta foam with ceramic and now you’ve got a super material. It’d effectively have the ductility of the metal matrix, and the hardness of the ceramic. Bonus points against HEAT due to structure of differing hardness and density’s. It would still be lighter then RHA, but not by as much as simple metal foam
There's recently been some advancements in mass producing graphene actually. It's not perfect but it's far better and cheaper than it was. This combined with the continual focus on and interest in Graphene makes it a promising future armor.
Considering that it is porous, and would thus have the projectile pass through multiple layers of differing material, I would guess that metal foam would be extremely effective against HEAT and shaped charge ammunition.
A couple other options for future armor, none as revolutionary: --High-magnesium lightweight armor steels. Maybe not for tanks, but there is interest in its use for lighter vehicles. Per unit of weight and volume, it absorbs KE more effectively than RHA. It's lighter and can be manufactured with standard practices, although the magnesium in the alloy is expensive. A type of perforated armor made from this was being researched for uparmored Humvees to get the weight back down. --Monomolecular sapphire for composites. Excellent for defeating HEAT. Basically, most crystals are random jumbles of smaller crystal structures, and mechanical/thermal failures happen along the boundaries. By growing a synthetic sapphire as a single crystal, it's stronger against both KE and HEAT, the latter of which the sapphire crystal diffuses without easily melting. Very expensive, but this was tested decades ago, and since then single-crystal castings for aircraft parts have become commonplace, so manufacture would probably be easier than originally estimated. --Iridium and osmium. Sometimes in composite armor you just need a layer that is insanely dense and/or insanely hard to melt. Iridium and osmium fit this need, being the two densest pure elements and having amongst the highest melting points. These metals are scarce on Earth, and damnably difficult to make. Current global production is a few tons per year--you literally mine out meteorite impacts to get them.
Another reason to finally go to space. If we somehow get to a metal-rich part of solar system's main asteroid belt, basically all elements will suddenly be in a nigh-unlimited supply
The Secret of the best defence is not which type of armour is better than the other is finding a balance between them making each individual type of armour work one another is concept is perfect
Metal foam works because the "balls" of the metal foam make projectiles too start bouncing around as they enter the armor. Kinda like the plate with holes in it. There's also foamcrete which has the same properties as the metal foam.
@@frogalex He did say that in Q&A video, he doesn't participate in or do anything "furry" and doesn't see himself as one. He just likes the picture and has a couple variations of it. Doesn't mean he won't become the tank furry though
Metal foam with air/gas pockets in it would need replacing each time it is hit as it would lose effectiveness much quicker than standard armour. Its would mean a strong HE hit would mean the foam would need replacing however HEAT could be made less effeactive if rubber or similar materials were used to fill the pockets. There are lots of options with metal foam and could potentially allow for interchangeable armour panels which could be changed with each environment. For example have HEAT effective armour for urban combat to reduce RPG risk but then kenetic effective foam mixes for tank combat areas.
I believe I once saw a video about a kind of metal foam that was ridiculously difficult to saw through. It was advertised as an “uncuttable material.” An exaggeration, but in tests it did wear out multiple saw blades without getting fully through the block of test material.
Interesting, concise and well done. However I have a different idea. The crew should all be placed in the turret for increased visibility and lowered weight of the vehicle overall. If all of the protection is emphasized in the turret with a crew is located and it is a smaller part of the tank then the tank itself can be a much lower weight. You have the choice of reducing the weight of the turret and placing the crew in the hall or reducing the weight of the hull and placing the crew in the turret where there is increased visibility. I believe this is a better solution. But who listens to me? I'm a retired military engineer.
E-M armor as shown DOES NOT NEED A RUNNING POWER SOURCE!! The time it must work is too short for any electric generator to provide the needed current. What you need is a bank of fully-charged super-capacitors (graphene can create these too) that have conductors heavy enough to allow them to discharge very rapidly into the weapon when activated. The capacitors would then be recharged by engine-powered DC generators. Depending on how much current is needed per discharge against the impacting weapon, several such capacitors may be carried to allow for several quick defenses while the discharged ones are being recharged.
I could imagine metal foam being used in a troop carrier, as it would help defeat anti-material rifles and low caliber cannons, but in terms of body armor, I doubt it would be useful despite the reduced weight as it's been found that even if you can make armor that can shrug off a 50 BMG, the kinetic energy transfer would still heavily injure if not flat out kill the person who was struck. The only pro to this is the fact that now they don't have a massive hole going through them. Rather, they would just have plenty of crush injury which is a bit more manageable for an open casket funeral.
@@barrybend7189 Oh yea, almost forgot about naval craft. I suppose it could also see use in aircraft to a limited degree to aid in reinforcing the airframe of a fighter or bomber. Or adding some armor to a helicopter.
Turkey uses Cubic Boron in their armor (in Altay). You can buy one and test it. Small piece of it can stop a 9mm from point blank (2-5mm of it) but it is rumoured that it is weak for chemical energy rounds
Yay, finally a video about Armor. Unsure to which extend i will use these technologies in on my own science fiction tank (that im designing right now. What a concidence), but its always good to see some new possibilities. In general i want to thank you for all the good compact information you share on YT. It will be very interesting to see how different tank defensives will look like in the future. In my Universe the probably most important part of passive armor is RPF (Reactive Protection Fluid) which can reach stopping value of more than 7 times that of steel. Btw, would you like to make a video about my tank if there is nothing else to do ? ;)
Right now, a combination of composite armor added on by ERA, soft kill APC (laser warning & smoke grenades) and hard kill APC (like the AMAP-ADS/Afghanit) is the best choice.
I would think that the heat proof polymers that have been cropping up would play a role as well. But that is probably further down the road when polymers can be both heat and kinetic resistant. I also like the idea of modular overlapping panels that could be more easily replaced if a tank takes a hit. I think LeClerc uses such a thing.
Do you think 1-man turrets could make a comeback in an attempt to minimize turret profile but still give the commander the bonuses of fighting open-hatch? The Chieftain touches on this tendency in one of his Q and A videos I believe and I think putting the gunner in the hull but allowing the commander to be up top would be a good compromise between capability and reduced turret profile
Maintaining a current costs energy. Maintaining a relatively moderate voltage between two separated plates does not. I'm not 100% sure why EMA is desireable, but if there's no circuit, it can't consume power. So you could just charge it up all the time.
By moderate voltage, I mean anything that's well below the voltage needed to arc between the plates or for lots of dark flow. Also obviously this applies much better for DC than AC voltage. As AC can get across spark gaps without interacting with the material in between using magnetic effects. Impedence and resistance are not the same thing.
What did that picnic table and umbrella ever do to you? It's bad enough you ran over them once, but then you went back and did it again! Oh, the humanity...
for powering EM armor why need a seprate power source? unless you need it on while not running the engine just use what every electric device in a vehicle uses an alternator and maybe a battery. 5:15 remote periscopes....
The primary attribute that affects kinetic energy penetrators is mass. A metal foam would really only be useful against smaller projectiles like auto cannons not main tank armaments. It should perform pretty well against HEAT warheads due to the penetrator jet being distorted/ ablated as it hits more and more pockets. So, I'm doubtful metal foams would be extensively used at the frontal 30 degrees of the tank. It's much more likely to be used on the sides where protection from HEAT and auto cannons is more of a focus. If you want to make the front of the tank more resilient to the usual apfsds then you must increase mass, deflection, and or somehow create enough stress on the penetrator to deform/ fracture it. The only real exception to that would be some kind of scifi-esk repulsion thingy lol.
@@justhitreset858 ERA and NERA work the same way. NERA is what is usually referred to when talking about composite armor. Most NERA works like this. Two flyer plates, and a bulging element between them. Upon penetration of the bulging element, the bulging element drives the flyer plates outwards, inflicting lateral shearing stress on the penetrator and feeding material into the penetrator's path. It also as a consequence bends the penetrator towards normalization of 90 degrees with the array.
Graphite is quite new. The easyest way to make alluminium was not developed in a day. So its wery likley that the proces will get more eficient in the future.
Graphene is actually extremely easy to mass produce, but it's one of those over-hyped super materials of the future, so I'd take any claims on its performance here with a grain of salt. Even if it could work as tank armor, it could be unintentionally terrible at the task becuase of its many unique properties. The last thing you want is for your new Graphene tank armor to start reacting to explosions in ways that can be difficult to predict. It's better to go with a less effective material that reacts predictably under extreme conditions. Either way, it's unlikely we'll see Graphene enter real mass production until its properties are better understood.
@@coren8 I don't believe so. Graphene is a one atom thick layer of carbon atoms produced from Graphite. Graphite has very few interesting properties on its own and would make terrible tank armor. Graphene is something of a wonder material, with a number of incredible properties. As a fun fact, Graphene is so easy to produce it was discovered by accident. Just cover a piece of tape in graphite and you've got Graphene. Nobody would have noticed it was a different material if it weren't for its odd properties.
@@coren8 I doubt that matters for tank armor. I'm sure they could use many small strips of Graphene in place of huge sheets. It wouldn't make the material any weaker and it would make replacing any damaged areas significantly less difficult than having large continuous sheets. Though the large-scale production woes are much more a result of low demand than sheer inability. There really hasn't been any need to produce huge Graphene sheets yet since nobody is looking to buy it in those sizes. Once the material is more effectively understood, demand may increase and the state of Graphene production may change.
My bet is a robotic arm will be sputtering and melting Zirconia, then spooling nanotubes as a ply into the molten surface, to 3D print foam-like structures with a consistent gradient from solid shell to foam absorber. Good for space-based scramjets and the like, too.
EM armor would be really beneficial to asymmetric warfare since it removes the need for ERA in urban settings while giving enough protection to the crew against man portable AT weapons.
The effectiveness of metal foam against shaped charge projectiles might depend on what the foam is composed of. I doubt an air-filled foam would perform well, but a foam composed of, say, steel and ceramic would probably have better performance than air-filled foam.
I suggest that the future armour should be made from steel in the outside and in the inside should be filled with carbon fibres ( like these used on formula 1 car),sloped at 35° and welded in a streamlined shape so that it can protect the tank from almost anything. Because these fibers are very strong and they can stand a lot of pressure. Besides,they are being mass-produced for racing cars so if we utilise this for tank manufacturing,sure that it'll be great and will have awesome results. :)
Hey can you please do a video or videos going over all the "half tanks" of Gundam like the Guntank( early, project V and assault), Hildolfr, Tragos, Loto. Also look at the M61 MBT. Also the two armors you mentioned( EMA and foam metal) are in Gundam Seed with the Astray units mostly using foam metal while the GATX gundams using PS armor( a variation on EMA). Also foam metal can be layered to be part of an ablative layer inside Ship hulls due to it's ability to take impacts.
Barry Bend I was specifically going to mention the Astray units. Not only were they not able to secure the Phase Shift tech, they swapped it for minimal foam metal to both increase agility and combat duration, as the GAT-X series chews through power constantly to feed the Phase Shift armor system, just like an EMA system.
Not sure how EMA works but isn't the counter to EMA to just build the shaped charge to get hot enough so that the molten stream is no longer magnetic ?
Hey Spokston, I have a question. Does the Leopard 2 A5 (and higher) "arrowhead" turret armor work a little bit like the perforated one? I ask because there is something like normalization of hitting kinetic round and thus the penetrator hits angled front of arrowhead, perforates it and then has to penetrate another slab of armor (still in the arrowhead armor addon) angled in very different way (vertically and horizontally) and after that it can hit main turret armor. Does this kinetic penetrator normalize twice or even three times when trying to hit main armor? And if yes, does this effect has a potential to break the sabot because of tension caused by normalization while still being in the process of going through first one or two layers when normalizing to one more differently angled layer? Fast pic of arrowhead addon: www.google.com/search?q=leo+2+a5+armor&sxsrf=ALeKk02cYijqp1g3rqOUbLJgs0ilC8whSQ:1588967812548&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAy5qwhqXpAhVIPJoKHToSBI8Q_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1920&bih=937#imgrc=NkjNqLLFHIJUpM Great video as always ;)
Wouldn't the electromagnet armour not use power while the cuircit is not completed from the shaped charges stream or whatever? I may be wrong but I think that's how cuircits work, can't use power if it's not a complete loop
Force fields. Bullets are metal(magnetic) If we set up a electro magnetic field we could deflect bullets, artillery, planes, etc. Invincible to metal not some explosives
I just watched a program about the international space station and its defences against micro-meteorites etc , is there any way that any of that tech can be adapted to tanks etc ?
This type of EM armour shouldn't consume much energy because it is practically a capacitor that can be complemented with other capacitors. After it is charged up, only the leakage charge should be compensated, which is miniscule if the EMA well-designed. Additional internal capacitors can be connected in parallel to the EMA in order to match the required capacity. The effectivity of such armour mainly depends on the additional capacitors that can be installed in the tank. But to know it wouldn't need much effort to achieve high voltage, even a simple demonstration wan-der-waals generator can achieve multiple thousands of volts. If such voltage isn't enough than voltage multiplier circuits can be used. So a tank's powerplant should be more than able to charge up such a capacitor. The only thing that depends on the powerplant's power output is the condensator charging time, and the ability to compansate the leakage.
Everyone knows the future of tank armour relies on stalinium-adolfinium composite armour
only beer and vodka can destroy it
Truly unstoppable but can only be destroyed by depleted freedomium rounds
Your forgeting Trump-titanium
You mean Trumptanium?
Did someone say FREEDOM?
These videos always manage to be informative without dragging on. You're good at striking that balance and it makes your content really enjoyable.
EMA, if properly isolated would not require any sensors, you said that the way it works is by disrupting the jet of molten metal the shape charges use by sending electricity through it. So as electricity doesn't go through open electrical circuits it will only consume electricity of there's a shaped charge to penetrate it an close the circuit formed by it and the armor system.
The power issue must come from somewhere else.
My mistake
Yep, that's true, if you use a dc current source, like super capacitors, a generator, by nature, produces AC current.
2 metal plates isolated from each other are nothing more than a simple capacitor, capacitors have a relatively low AC resistance, meaning that this still will act as a short circuit.
However, that's not the problem i see with this technology, it is actually a clever use of the properties of conducting metal objects in an electric field.
The problem i see is the logistical and the operational ones. As the capacitors needed to provide the current have a pretty high self discharge rate, they will have to be constantly charged, wich obviously costs fuel.
Another maybe not so relavent point would be the actual armor composition itself. As tank manufaturers more and more try to keep the armor as modular and as replaceable as possible, this would mean a huge increase in complexity and cost, just to be able to replace smaller parts of the armor. Another concern would be the isolation itself.
But what i think,what would drive the nail into the coffin of this concept, is the fact that this is an activ system, that uses fuel even if it isn't needed and it will only protect the crew from one specific type of weapon, simple shaped charges. A tandem warhead could still get around this system, by using the first shaped charge to drill a "pilot whole" and enable the second shaped charge to blow through. There are shaped charge warheads, that use the shaped charge to drill a whole, only, to allow a kind of elongated frag granat to shoot into the crew compartment and potentially kill everything in there.
@@Spookston
Well, it wasn't really a mistake, just a bit of a misunderstanding oon the technical side. ;D
To the concept of metal foam as a filler, technically, this would be a great idea, practically, not so much. It would certainly be easy to produce crude metal foam piecs in large quantities, however, big homogenous pieces with certain shapes could be to difficult to produce at reasonable cost.
I would actually suggest the next best thing, sintered metal. Mor specifically, parts made out of sintered steel wool. You still got high energy dissipation coupled with low weight but you get the advantage of this being a comparatively low cost solution, for the most part because of the energy efficient sintering process.
There was also one kind of armor, that you haven't mentioned, that would be fluids. I mean, it isn't exactly a future technology, as tanks like Merkava made excessive use of using fuel tanks as armor, but i am talking about moving fluids or even non newtonian fluids. the ideaa behind both being the disruptionof the projectil path and therefor reduced penetration.
Yep, last part needed is some super capacitors that build up charge slowly over time and you should be able to be fit it to just about any tank with a reasonable powerplant. The supercapacitors might come with some weight and space considerations though.
a reminder that the jet is fluid or liquefied not molten
you've successfully struck up the weirdest cross sectional nieche of tank enthusiasts and people with furry profile pictures
Why not be both?
That venn diagram is almost a circle
Meanwhile somehwere in North Korea:
"Write that down, write that down!"
"Sir, but what are we going to do with it, we can't produce neither of those things anyway?"
"..."
TheArklyte “we’ll just steal it from the Chinese, we rip off everything they have anyway”
-Yeah WRITE IT DOWN, so we can use it on our ICBMs
-but sir
- _S H U S H_
@@NotNicot America explodes
Well what if we remove all the armour and just make all the components of the tank float
We need to invest in multidimensional displacement technology, in order to make the armor of the tank warp in, and out, of existence.
The armor/nothing will deflect/do nothing and absorb/do nothing incoming projectiles which will in turn also be displaced out of existence
you can't/can hit a tank that doesn't/does exist, *Schrödinger's Tank* !
@@kabardino1337 I love you
Tbh, I think the future is soft kill and hard kill protection systems, along with just anti 30mm autocannon armour...
Maxim
But what if the tank is sending out shots from a different universe...
no armor is the best armor taken to a whole new level
I was just reading the community post and I just got this notification wow very good timing
This guy knows nouthing
what a poor science realism begin started
I’m thinking that metal foam would suffer heavily from armor fatigue, but given the responsiveness that modern tanks have, it could be worth having armor pieces that need to be replaced when hit, but offers more protection.
well armor will become light as kitchen tool
I mean it's not like any modern armor is meant to stand a second shot to the same place anyway. ERA gets used up, NERA a huge hole teared, ceramics crack and backers bend and break up, even hard kill systems don't prevent enough penetration to leave the armor unscathed... With the stupidly high energy and focus that modern AT weapons have, there's no real material or system that would survive several shots with reasonable weight. Heck it's often not even expected to fully prevent damage from the first hit, at least from another tank's gun
Good think to mention since I was just thinking that. Also what about vibration? Like when your hit will the metal foam vibrate rapidly due to the absorption of a solid uranium rod being shot at it faster than the speed of sound while the armour (compared to RHA) is as light as a feather?
It’s the same as ceramic in that sense though
For the electric armor:
You can simply store a lot of electric energy in a huge capacitor bank connected to either sides of the plates. As soon as the jet penetrates the circuit is completed and current will flow.
You don't need to waste any energy as it is stored in the capacitors and sensors are unnecessary because the jet will do that part by design.
Problems are:
-Dangerously high voltages on the hull that can fry humans and equipment alike.
-Huge capacitor banks needed for storage. Likely more than 100kg ( My guess is ~500kg but weight isn't a problem for tanks anyway).
Eh high voltage high smoltage.
hand will be shocked
Poland:
*finds a way to mass produce graphene*
Tank furry:
I’m gonna pretend I didn’t see that
Polska jest strong!
Poland stronk!
But how much is the mass production and how good is the quality of the grafin
Pole here. We did not. Some university professor (Włodzimierz Strupiński) invented a novel way of producing it but had no money to start mass production. In order to procure money, the government got involved but the state-owned company tasked with producing it was plagued by mismanagement and lately started selling off their lab equipment to stay afloat.
Nethan2000 , yeah it’s been quite for a couple of years.
Your comment that em armor would require a large amount of electricity to simply stay active does not make sense since no electricity flows unless a projectile hits it.
True. EM armor functions like a giant capacitor. It gets charged and stays charged until hit.
It needs a large amount of electricity to redistribute the charge to make it effective again. I think is what he meant. Yes when a bridge is made the effectiveness is lost. So you must be able to charge the armour more or somehow Syphon the charge to make it effective again.
Although this is true you have to take into account the inevitable discharge overtime that occurs whenever you stock electricity and the electricity needed for a recharge aswell.
pand_vidoo jbc the leakage current would be little to nothing. Modern capacitors have leakage currents in the milli to micro amp range. Given that em armor needs high power-density not necessarily high energy density recharge time would be pretty quick.
Kiyo Senpai You do not charge the armor itself. You would use capacitors to provide the charge, and you would keep the armor in sections like you do with era that way if one panel is hit you do not loose armor effectiveness over the entire tank.
The jet of a shaped charge is fast, on the order of several km/s when uninterrupted by any armor. If the mechanism by which electromagnetic armor disrupts these fluid jets involves things like the lorentz force or even just ablation from joule heating, that means the electrical impulse must be enormous to counteract the insane kinetic energy. As in, kiloamperes or even megaamperes.
The only device I can think of compact enough to fit on a tank and also deliver current like that (i.e. smaller than a huge capacitor bank) is an "explosive flux compression generator", like the kind used in nuclear weapons to drive neutron gun sources. Unfortunately these are driven by insensitive high explosive charges, meaning they are triggered and would need a sensor to activate.
The other option, like mentioned in the video, would be a pre-existing electric potential high enough that the meager capacitance between the armor plates could drive enough energy into the jet to knock it apart. This amount of voltage would be akin to lightning, and you would need to sandwich a layer of exotic material with an insanely high dielectric constant to keep breakdown from occuring between the two plates. Hell, you might even need structural elements to keep the static attraction of each plate from smashing this dielectric.
@@nichsulol4844 what
You dont need to fully vaporize the jet though. It's tip is really hot (close to boiling) and thin, and the molten needle doesnt have anything close to a homogenous speed or a resistance besides inertia... You only have to cause a little bit of boiling/ablation mostly at the point, and the jet will lose cohesion, dispersing much more quickly through the armor behind.
That is not to say you dont need a very strong capacitor, but we are talking of kilojoules rather than megajoules as vaporizing it would demmand, that's within reach of modern capacitors for quite a light weight (for a tank anyway). The difficult part is now to make it reliable, *safe*, sturdy, affordable, and able to dish out the power output required (dozens to hundreds of megawatts), again safely and preventing misfires.
I agree the dielectric is probably the weakest point of that technology too, specially on the safety end, but I guess it could be turned off except when a threat is expected, which should make it at least safer than ERA, facing a similar issue. They probably are quite bulky too, but spaced armor is too and still used...
@@antaresmc4407 Interesting thought about the kinetics of shaped charge jets, I will admit I don't know a whole lot about the physics other than just "behaves like a liquid because of plastic deformation and not melting." Regardless of that, even if energy demands are more modest than I make out I'm still inclined to believe explosive pulsed power is a better option than capacitors in almost any situation where triggering is needed. I've since learned about so many different types of it that exist, too.
@@UA-camguy543 well, a liquid is basicly a solid with 0 yield strength, which doesnt really technically exist anyway, so when the stress is just way higher than the YS, you can just call it a liquid... SC liners are often actually molten though (it depends afaik), as one of the limiting factors is the waste heat absorbed by it.
About power source, Im not very familliar with those, but you dont only need high power and current, you need high energy, while voltage doesnt really matter. A few napkin calculations suggest you'd need 10kJ ± a magnitude... Idk if the tech is scalable enough, and you'd get such ridiculous power that itd be hard to make the circuit not burn itself down. Plus you'd need incredible precision, a tenth milisec early and a lightning grade arch sets your circuit ablaze not hitting the projectile, one late and the jet overshoots enough to short circuit where it shouldnt, the enemy could just make a round with an inaccurate fuse, while suboptimal it'd cut costs and work... Also tandem charges would defeat the system. Lastly, idk how much they cost but sounds expensive and you dont need it be particularly small...
A capacitor armor has the advantage that it cant be fooled and needs no extra device besides power (sensors always being weak spots and explosives damage multipliers, not to mention the generator would itself be basicly a HEAT round inside the tank... Lastly, if the dielectric is soft it can double as NERA, which is nice I guess
@@antaresmc4407 similiar to phase shift armor from gundam seed series
Spookston "I'm going to talk about classified current and future armor, with information from an inside source"
*US government enters the chat*
*Chinese government enters the chat*
*Russian government enters the chat*
Aged like fine wine with WT forum leaks
From my (possibly faulty ) understanding metal foams are mostly usefull in enhancing ceramic armor peformance by delaying/dampening shockwave reflection of the backface (with the foam as supporting material ) that being one of the main limiters of ceramic performance ). By increasing the time the ceramic resists the projectile (dwell time ) as well as decreasing the crush zone in ceramic armor performance is increased.
Foams apparently also function well as a spall liner.
Using sensors with electromagnetic armor which I just heard of seems to me to present another advantage.
It could be used in conjunction with capacitors.
Capacitors store an immense electrical charge but take a time to acquire that charge. They can acquire their charge over time with a lower voltage electrical supply. This reduces the size of the generator that would be needed to produce the same amount of electrical current on a continuous basis that would be needed without them.
A sensor could discharge the capacitors with the approach of an incoming weapon thus allowing the capacitors to hold their charge in anticipation of attack.
This is the way lasers weapons are powered.
A little side-note, EM-armor does not waste electricity while active. Maintaining a charge in a bank of capacitors (most likely solution) does not require any energy until the armor is activated and you need to build it up again. The only loss of energy would be the small leakage from imperfect insulating-materials, which for modern day plastics, or even a simple airgap, is minimal.
One problem would presumably be the cost of these protective systems. While the tank you speculated towards the end of the video would be a defensive powerhouse, it would presumably be even heavier and more expensive than current tanks. At some point the cost of defensive systems that could stop a round may be so high that it's just not worth doing, resulting in smaller and lighter tanks instead.
That's why it's time to call the whole tank thing and just use drones. Instead of sending a few big heavy tanks, send thousands of unmanned, unarmored, light, fast, possibly electric, disposable missile launching drones. Doesn't matter if they get destroyed because they are cheap and easy to replace and no loss of life.
Actually EM armor doesn’t require much electricity, just enough to stop the passive discharge of the capacitors
Indeed, I don't know why he assumed that was the case, the circuit is open till tripped!
Basicly vampire voltage till active.
@@sankhyohalder97 future armor will using nanotechnology and nanomaterial finding a hybrid nanostructure made out of rare metal such a or using high atom element comparison as a known Unbinilium
I would like to point out that the research done on the ballistic protection potential on metal foam composites was strictly in that of small caliber rifle rounds along with fragmentation from 23mm HE-I rounds. Comparing it’s ballistic protection against these shells with that of RHA just doesn’t stand in the argument of tank protection until it has been tested and compared to current composite armor against chemical and high density kinetic projectiles
The way I understood it is that the same thickness of metal foam beat the same thickness of RHA. In this case the scale matters little, the point is that it provides better protection then regular steel armor. And to compare it with current composite armor is useless, as metal foam would be a part of a composite setup not all the protection. What does matter is how it does at different penetrator designs
@@shepardpolska the scale matters, mostly because long-rod kinetic penetrators behave differently from rifle bullets when hitting target
@@Ally5141 This isn't scale. This is penetrator design, which is what I said matters. Because there is more then one Long rod APFSDS design anyway, and they are better or worse at stoping bullets. Saying scale matters means the effect would be different if the bullet and matterial thickness would be scaled up, and it simply isn't the case. If you change the design of the bullet in the test to the same one as a long rod, then if you scaled up the test the result would stay the same as with a big APFSDS
shepardpolska except composite armor setups don’t primarily consist of RHA... they consist of composite materials including depleted uranium/tungsten and other super dense materials as well as the likes of ceramics. So no, until it has been tested as part of a composite scheme and directly against the current armor materials that aren’t RHA, the findings do not indicate that it’s the “future of tank armor”
shepardpolska there’s also a significant difference between the way that a typical full metal jacket bullet in a rifle caliber interacts with armor compared to a long rod monobloc penetrator, a segmented penetrator, or chemical munitions. There’s a reason that the armor protection on a tank varies between shell types in accordance to its armor scheme, and how different composite arrays can provide more than their dimensions in protection vs RHA. this means that, until it has been tested against these munitions... the findings have no indication as of yet that it will be better than existing armor typed against these munitions
Its not that graphene is “hard” too mass produce
Its that noone is spending effort too mass produce it.
Yea no graphene will make whoever can make it very rich
A bit like many other groundbreaking techs. Its not hard to do once its going, but it needs substantial initial investement of money, infrastructure and time. Startups can't muster enough to make it happen, and big companies that already sit on the market ususaly scoff at it, because they ALREADY control the market, so will not gain anything from the technology, and in fact could end up disrupting their own bottom line by making their previous products and infrastructure irrelevant. Big issue with so many areas of the market being in a virtual stasis combined with the fact that investors have VASTLY grown in importance, all the while having drastically reduced their attention span. Nowadays, you have to be very profitable in the short term to get attention, rather than investing for long term performance.
As someone who got retired from the Army as an M1 tanker there are some issues I see with an unmanned turret, issue number one is redundancy. If the digital sights go out there's no way they're gonna can aim the gun because he won't have a simple ballistic sight that he can look down the gun through because he'll be next to the driver in the hull, the tank Commander's view of the battlefield will be compromised when his independent viewer goes out. if the autoloader goes out you won't be able to manually the reload the gun because again you're not near the gun. If the machine guns jam and you have to clear the jam again you won't be able to clear the jam because your machine guns are nowhere near you they're in the turret. That and a automatic turret also means no loader which increases workload of the crew one of the reasons why the Army is going with General Dynamics MPF design is because they still keep the loader in the turret, the loader does a lot of things besides load the gun for a tank crew in the Army which I will not get into here. Because of these disadvantages I don't think it's good idea to have unmanned turret for main battle tank I think they might be a good idea to have an unmanned turned for a tank destroyer or if we need to again, a "heavy tank" and the main gun will have be extremely powerful to offset these advantages but for a main battle tank that will find itself in a tank fight and in a urban fight, im not seeing a good advantage here.
madkabal Does the Abrams have a backup sight in case the main gunners optic gets knocked out? If so, where is the backup sight located?
@@hazardous458 the Gunner has two backup sights, a "Daysight", a none Thermal sight that still allows the gunner to use the laser, if its working. A"GAS" sight (Gunners aux sight) which is a simple ballistic binocular scope the is located right next to the breech. The Commander can also take over and aim and fire the gun with the CITV.
Tbh the way technology is right now I have a feeling the next war will be a trench warfare esc battle of attrition. I believe ballistic missiles and planes being able to shoot things from miles away is going to have a large impact on the ability of armor to do it’s job. I know all of our leadership is going to go into the next war thinking like world war 2 and be dead wrong. The tanks of the future are probably completely different from what we can comprehend looking from our ww2 outlook.
If that metal foam is inter meshed with micro ceramic spheres and have the spaces filled in with some sort of high performance ooblek, it would make DU rounds have a harder time penetrating, thanks to the fact ooblek is both a non-Newtonian fluid, and at the same time, has a high temperature threshold, making it cooler, which would both cool the DU perpetrator as it passes through it, and make it harder to pass through the armor.
Problem with that statement is that DU literally sets itself on fire when in contact with oxygen.
For those interested in real world near future weapon and armor physics simulation, Children of a Dead Earth is a near future space sim built on realistic near future concepts. It also allows you to design ships, and ship modules like weapons from the ground up, with a ridiculously large selection of real world materials to choose from, and lots of fine tuning.
The game relies on a ton of calculus to predict performance. As realistic as the game is, there is a few exploits that take advantage of the calculus. Computers can, at best, only approximate calculus solutions. So, scale up a weapon far enough, and compounding errors can lead to things like, say, a rail gun that fires projectiles with more kinetic energy than the electrical energy the weapon consumes... A violation of conservation of energy. Similarly, this is one of the only games I know of that does multibody orbital dynamics, which means your computer can struggle to calculate orbital conics. Also, you can freeze and crash the game if you launch too big an attack in combat, since every object's physics needs to be simulated.
Anyway, the game is mostly fun as a sandbox to see what happens when you smash unstopable forces into imovable objects, see what kinds of armor schemes and weapons work well. Personally, I like to go with lightweight boron/silicone aerogel sandwich armor, with a whipple shield, and one rail gun firing what are basically tiny pistol rounds at speeds measured in C from well outside enemy range.
Metal foam can stop shaped charges if you fill out the holes. The perforated steel armor for example was used in the earliest leopard 2 composite armor, they discovered it wasn’t good at stopping heat so they filled out the holes.
placeholder The leopard2av used advanced spaced armor layouts. The 2a0 used perforated steel followed by NERA
placeholder It would still be effective if filled with ceramic. The ceramic would instantly shatter but the metal would still deform and knock the round off course. As long as they’re 2 different materials, it shouldn’t affect the performance.
I notice you didn't mention NERA (non-explosive reactive armor), which AFAIK is a core part of most composite armor schemes. It consists of spaced plates of metal-rubber/plastic-metal. When struck by a HEAT-jet or kinetic penetrator, the rubber/plastic vaporizes, shifting the metal plates and disrupting the jet/penetrator. It's essentially a passive, non-explosive counterpart to ERA. A more conventional armor plate is often placed on top to prevent the metal-plastic-metal sandwiches from being excessively degraded by small arms fire.
Commented for future reference.
@Solipsil He also mentioned ERA and active protection though, which are also already in service.
Solipsil he was comparing metal foam to RHA and then going onto how it would be used to replace NERA in the likes of an abrams when there has been no (public) tests that have shown that metal foam is even more effective than current NERA
@@Hollycalvey I got the impression that metal foam is great at absorbing energy/impulse once the HEAT jet or kinetic penetrator is already broken up, but that it isn't all that good on doing said breaking up. So it might be used as a layer underneath NERA, but since it's so voluminous, it'd probably perform poorer than just more NERA.
Seems great for space use after a whipple shield has vaporized a piece of debris/micrometeorite, but not really suited for any terrestrial application I can think of.
No it has uses terrestially.
IMO Its main use is delaying and dampening impact shockwave reflection on the backface of bulk hard armor layers. That is one of the main limiters in ceramic armor performance.
By increasing dwell time and limiting crush zone formation you increase the performance of the ceramic. ( as well as limiting damage to the ceramic for more penetration events ).
I could imagine it having a similar benefit for extremely hard steel armor systems by lessening the "plugging" tendency.
hear me out
point defense but everything's a point
guns spamming in all directions shooting down anything in a tank's way
American tanks, where even the armor shoots you
This is how I play From The Depths
Metal foam would likely be very good against shaped charges. The voids in the structure can disrupt the jet and prevent the normalization of the liner penetrator in much the same way as spaced armor.
Perhaps a safe tank armor system could be made by the use a of two seperated plates that form a capacitor, the two plates have also explosive reactive armor in the form of a curtain. As the armor piercing jet connects the two plates electricity would flow through the metal disrptuting its tip's shape and also bending the metal jet similar to the way a rail gun functions...The explosive reactive armor plates are only at the top of the plates and the are activated by the metal jet and shoot a flying plate perpenticularly to the metal jet further bending it and disrupting it.
This way it would be safe for the friendly troops next to the tank.
I wonder if they have already tested it
Graphene will probably be mass producable within the next 50 years or so. I wouldn’t dismiss it so easily.
Bro nice new pfp, it's cute
Nice profile pic
Just when I get used to seeing the old one, he changes it!
This may already be in use: Emerald plates within a Chobham type composite armour package. It sounds exotic and incredibly expensive until you realise emerald is just aluminium oxide. So it's light, very very hard and also many times more heat resistant than RHA. The "ceramic" that they refer to in composite armour could be this.
I expect more plastics to be used in armour. They can be surprisingly strong and kinetic energy gets transformed into heat (melting of the plastic). It's also potentially good against shaped armor. Obviously, we're talking about composites with metal and ceramic.
...do you actually know how composites work?
@@KoishiVibin I have a rough idea. It depends whether they are supposed to resist HEAT or APFSDS. The latter needs high hardness materials sandwiched in between layers that prevent the debris from being displaced.
@@edi9892
yes and no. the basic principle for NERA is for flyer/bulge element. this can be anything, it just has to have the sandwitched materials feed flyer plate material into the penetrator, inflicting lateral stress and increasing penetrated material.
for ceramics, this becomes stranger. it is currently known that while contained ceramics are effective at low scales, experiments with siliceous core armor found that larger and larger scale implementation decreased the effects
You need to update this video with more current information, graphene is pretty easy to mass produce nowadays just as small flakes rather than contiguous sheets and we are only a few years away from those as well.
technically the EM armor wouldn't waste energy since It isn't grounded, so there's nowhere for it to go
Capacitors (essentially what EM armour is) always require a maintenance charge - it is not the full charge placed across the plates but still is a decent amount, furthermore, it may have an issue of accidental discharge if one of the plates scrapes on something. in which case you have to fully charge the plate again.
@@phinix250 yes, but it's not draining energy in the same way when it's "turned on" as say, running an appliance. Where you put a charge in and it then uses that charge aslong as it is being supplied.
Valentine
Technically it would drain some electricity, as electricity would escape through sharp corners and whatnot, thus needing constant power to the armor.
@@phinix250 issue protection core main modulary generator connected tank
The electrically charged armor is basically a capacitor; it takes energy to charge, and once it's charged it remains charged until it is discharged by something(heat penetrator) completing the circuit.
You could also have a switch inside for the EM armor to turn on or off, saving cost/complexity, and power, but leaving it up to the crew, which can make errors
Fill the meta foam with ceramic and now you’ve got a super material. It’d effectively have the ductility of the metal matrix, and the hardness of the ceramic. Bonus points against HEAT due to structure of differing hardness and density’s. It would still be lighter then RHA, but not by as much as simple metal foam
There's recently been some advancements in mass producing graphene actually. It's not perfect but it's far better and cheaper than it was. This combined with the continual focus on and interest in Graphene makes it a promising future armor.
Like many thin graphene plate's with fillers out steel wool or metal foom which have Non Newtonische liquid
It's been over a decade and no one has done anything with graphene, it will be obsolete before anything is produced with it.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 That's rich.
Considering that it is porous, and would thus have the projectile pass through multiple layers of differing material, I would guess that metal foam would be extremely effective against HEAT and shaped charge ammunition.
A couple other options for future armor, none as revolutionary:
--High-magnesium lightweight armor steels. Maybe not for tanks, but there is interest in its use for lighter vehicles. Per unit of weight and volume, it absorbs KE more effectively than RHA. It's lighter and can be manufactured with standard practices, although the magnesium in the alloy is expensive. A type of perforated armor made from this was being researched for uparmored Humvees to get the weight back down.
--Monomolecular sapphire for composites. Excellent for defeating HEAT. Basically, most crystals are random jumbles of smaller crystal structures, and mechanical/thermal failures happen along the boundaries. By growing a synthetic sapphire as a single crystal, it's stronger against both KE and HEAT, the latter of which the sapphire crystal diffuses without easily melting. Very expensive, but this was tested decades ago, and since then single-crystal castings for aircraft parts have become commonplace, so manufacture would probably be easier than originally estimated.
--Iridium and osmium. Sometimes in composite armor you just need a layer that is insanely dense and/or insanely hard to melt. Iridium and osmium fit this need, being the two densest pure elements and having amongst the highest melting points. These metals are scarce on Earth, and damnably difficult to make. Current global production is a few tons per year--you literally mine out meteorite impacts to get them.
Another reason to finally go to space. If we somehow get to a metal-rich part of solar system's main asteroid belt, basically all elements will suddenly be in a nigh-unlimited supply
The Secret of the best defence is not which type of armour is better than the other is finding a balance between them making each individual type of armour work one another is concept is perfect
Metal foam works because the "balls" of the metal foam make projectiles too start bouncing around as they enter the armor. Kinda like the plate with holes in it. There's also foamcrete which has the same properties as the metal foam.
As always, great video! Seriously I love the content you put out, educational and interesting!
tank furry has posted
He has clearly already stated that he is not a furry... surely not... not possible.
Good grief. DONT YOU GET IT ALREADY?
wait, it’s Alex Jones. That’s understandable
@@alm5992 has he really said that ?
@@frogalex He did say that in Q&A video, he doesn't participate in or do anything "furry" and doesn't see himself as one. He just likes the picture and has a couple variations of it. Doesn't mean he won't become the tank furry though
@@Aetius_of_Astora Means he's not a furry. Doesn't mean we can't give him this nickname.
Metal foam with air/gas pockets in it would need replacing each time it is hit as it would lose effectiveness much quicker than standard armour. Its would mean a strong HE hit would mean the foam would need replacing however HEAT could be made less effeactive if rubber or similar materials were used to fill the pockets. There are lots of options with metal foam and could potentially allow for interchangeable armour panels which could be changed with each environment. For example have HEAT effective armour for urban combat to reduce RPG risk but then kenetic effective foam mixes for tank combat areas.
I like how your videos always end with calming ghibli-esque music
Its the Rain theme from Halo ODST
I hear 40k mechanicus theme. Pretty great.
I believe I once saw a video about a kind of metal foam that was ridiculously difficult to saw through. It was advertised as an “uncuttable material.” An exaggeration, but in tests it did wear out multiple saw blades without getting fully through the block of test material.
It's crazy watching Spookston play War Thunder and recognizing the names of some of the people in his game.
Interesting, concise and well done. However I have a different idea. The crew should all be placed in the turret for increased visibility and lowered weight of the vehicle overall. If all of the protection is emphasized in the turret with a crew is located and it is a smaller part of the tank then the tank itself can be a much lower weight. You have the choice of reducing the weight of the turret and placing the crew in the hall or reducing the weight of the hull and placing the crew in the turret where there is increased visibility. I believe this is a better solution. But who listens to me? I'm a retired military engineer.
E-M armor as shown DOES NOT NEED A RUNNING POWER SOURCE!! The time it must work is too short for any electric generator to provide the needed current. What you need is a bank of fully-charged super-capacitors (graphene can create these too) that have conductors heavy enough to allow them to discharge very rapidly into the weapon when activated. The capacitors would then be recharged by engine-powered DC generators. Depending on how much current is needed per discharge against the impacting weapon, several such capacitors may be carried to allow for several quick defenses while the discharged ones are being recharged.
I could imagine metal foam being used in a troop carrier, as it would help defeat anti-material rifles and low caliber cannons, but in terms of body armor, I doubt it would be useful despite the reduced weight as it's been found that even if you can make armor that can shrug off a 50 BMG, the kinetic energy transfer would still heavily injure if not flat out kill the person who was struck. The only pro to this is the fact that now they don't have a massive hole going through them. Rather, they would just have plenty of crush injury which is a bit more manageable for an open casket funeral.
Metal foam and EMA can be used in on ship hulls to add a multi layer defence for stopping hull breaches.
@@barrybend7189 Oh yea, almost forgot about naval craft. I suppose it could also see use in aircraft to a limited degree to aid in reinforcing the airframe of a fighter or bomber. Or adding some armor to a helicopter.
Turkey uses Cubic Boron in their armor (in Altay). You can buy one and test it. Small piece of it can stop a 9mm from point blank (2-5mm of it) but it is rumoured that it is weak for chemical energy rounds
From what I know metal foam armor is better against shaped charges than solid armor. The cells in the foam act like mini gaps in spaced armor.
Yay, finally a video about Armor. Unsure to which extend i will use these technologies in on my own science fiction tank (that im designing right now. What a concidence), but its always good to see some new possibilities. In general i want to thank you for all the good compact information you share on YT.
It will be very interesting to see how different tank defensives will look like in the future. In my Universe the probably most important part of passive armor is RPF (Reactive Protection Fluid) which can reach stopping value of more than 7 times that of steel. Btw, would you like to make a video about my tank if there is nothing else to do ? ;)
@@xi3669 Just want to say: RPF is fictional.
Foam armor, sounds like interesting solution.
You made me hungry for dark chocolate when you showed that metal foam man
Great video ! love it !
Right now, a combination of composite armor added on by ERA, soft kill APC (laser warning & smoke grenades) and hard kill APC (like the AMAP-ADS/Afghanit) is the best choice.
I would think that the heat proof polymers that have been cropping up would play a role as well. But that is probably further down the road when polymers can be both heat and kinetic resistant. I also like the idea of modular overlapping panels that could be more easily replaced if a tank takes a hit. I think LeClerc uses such a thing.
Do you think 1-man turrets could make a comeback in an attempt to minimize turret profile but still give the commander the bonuses of fighting open-hatch? The Chieftain touches on this tendency in one of his Q and A videos I believe and I think putting the gunner in the hull but allowing the commander to be up top would be a good compromise between capability and reduced turret profile
Armor is super interesting and often counter-intuitive, but highly classified.
Maintaining a current costs energy. Maintaining a relatively moderate voltage between two separated plates does not. I'm not 100% sure why EMA is desireable, but if there's no circuit, it can't consume power. So you could just charge it up all the time.
By moderate voltage, I mean anything that's well below the voltage needed to arc between the plates or for lots of dark flow. Also obviously this applies much better for DC than AC voltage. As AC can get across spark gaps without interacting with the material in between using magnetic effects. Impedence and resistance are not the same thing.
What did that picnic table and umbrella ever do to you? It's bad enough you ran over them once, but then you went back and did it again! Oh, the humanity...
for powering EM armor why need a seprate power source? unless you need it on while not running the engine just use what every electric device in a vehicle uses an alternator and maybe a battery. 5:15 remote periscopes....
An electromagnetic Umbrella would be the only way to stop the scary parachute shells.
The primary attribute that affects kinetic energy penetrators is mass. A metal foam would really only be useful against smaller projectiles like auto cannons not main tank armaments. It should perform pretty well against HEAT warheads due to the penetrator jet being distorted/ ablated as it hits more and more pockets. So, I'm doubtful metal foams would be extensively used at the frontal 30 degrees of the tank. It's much more likely to be used on the sides where protection from HEAT and auto cannons is more of a focus.
If you want to make the front of the tank more resilient to the usual apfsds then you must increase mass, deflection, and or somehow create enough stress on the penetrator to deform/ fracture it. The only real exception to that would be some kind of scifi-esk repulsion thingy lol.
...
NERA:
HERA:
Bulge/Flyer:
y'know, you could just... use metal foam in the flyer plates.
@@KoishiVibin I'm not sure what you're trying to say/ are saying.
Elaborate some or explain what you meant if you don't mind.
@@justhitreset858
ERA and NERA work the same way. NERA is what is usually referred to when talking about composite armor.
Most NERA works like this. Two flyer plates, and a bulging element between them.
Upon penetration of the bulging element, the bulging element drives the flyer plates outwards, inflicting lateral shearing stress on the penetrator and feeding material into the penetrator's path. It also as a consequence bends the penetrator towards normalization of 90 degrees with the array.
@@KoishiVibin Is that in response to what I said about needing either mass, deflection, or damaging the penetrator?
metal foram:
Me: *Imagines metal Sponge Bob*
Here is the non-retard way of getting your message across:
"When I heard 'metal foam' I imagined Metal Sponge Bob"
@@bahayesilyurt1510 it's a meme format you dumbass, open the internet more than once a month and you'll get it.
I AM IRON BOB
Graphite is quite new. The easyest way to make alluminium was not developed in a day. So its wery likley that the proces will get more eficient in the future.
Composite armour in tanks usually includes nera, so it’s not entirely passive
I think replacing the RHA backplates of the abrams with metal foam would make sense if it isn’t effective against heat shells
#Spookston, I enjoy your videos, despite not being a gamer. Thanks mate - David from West Australia
Graphene is actually extremely easy to mass produce, but it's one of those over-hyped super materials of the future, so I'd take any claims on its performance here with a grain of salt. Even if it could work as tank armor, it could be unintentionally terrible at the task becuase of its many unique properties. The last thing you want is for your new Graphene tank armor to start reacting to explosions in ways that can be difficult to predict. It's better to go with a less effective material that reacts predictably under extreme conditions. Either way, it's unlikely we'll see Graphene enter real mass production until its properties are better understood.
Amazing Mr. X I think you are mixing graphene and graphite up.
@@coren8 I don't believe so. Graphene is a one atom thick layer of carbon atoms produced from Graphite. Graphite has very few interesting properties on its own and would make terrible tank armor. Graphene is something of a wonder material, with a number of incredible properties. As a fun fact, Graphene is so easy to produce it was discovered by accident. Just cover a piece of tape in graphite and you've got Graphene. Nobody would have noticed it was a different material if it weren't for its odd properties.
Amazing Mr. X it is some what easy to produce small samples of graphene, but it is still nearly impossible to mass produce it in large dimensions.
@@coren8 I doubt that matters for tank armor. I'm sure they could use many small strips of Graphene in place of huge sheets. It wouldn't make the material any weaker and it would make replacing any damaged areas significantly less difficult than having large continuous sheets. Though the large-scale production woes are much more a result of low demand than sheer inability. There really hasn't been any need to produce huge Graphene sheets yet since nobody is looking to buy it in those sizes. Once the material is more effectively understood, demand may increase and the state of Graphene production may change.
My bet is a robotic arm will be sputtering and melting Zirconia, then spooling nanotubes as a ply into the molten surface, to 3D print foam-like structures with a consistent gradient from solid shell to foam absorber. Good for space-based scramjets and the like, too.
Metal Foam is just Tesseract from Robocraft but irl.
This is like real engineering but no animation and more gameplay and i like it
EM armor would be really beneficial to asymmetric warfare since it removes the need for ERA in urban settings while giving enough protection to the crew against man portable AT weapons.
The effectiveness of metal foam against shaped charge projectiles might depend on what the foam is composed of. I doubt an air-filled foam would perform well, but a foam composed of, say, steel and ceramic would probably have better performance than air-filled foam.
It should be possible to apply the EMA consept to metal foam, so they shouldn't need to be exclusive to each other.
I suggest that the future armour should be made from steel in the outside and in the inside should be filled with carbon fibres ( like these used on formula 1 car),sloped at 35° and welded in a streamlined shape so that it can protect the tank from almost anything.
Because these fibers are very strong and they can stand a lot of pressure.
Besides,they are being mass-produced for racing cars so if we utilise this for tank manufacturing,sure that it'll be great and will have awesome results.
:)
Hey can you please do a video or videos going over all the "half tanks" of Gundam like the Guntank( early, project V and assault), Hildolfr, Tragos, Loto. Also look at the M61 MBT. Also the two armors you mentioned( EMA and foam metal) are in Gundam Seed with the Astray units mostly using foam metal while the GATX gundams using PS armor( a variation on EMA). Also foam metal can be layered to be part of an ablative layer inside Ship hulls due to it's ability to take impacts.
Barry Bend I was specifically going to mention the Astray units. Not only were they not able to secure the Phase Shift tech, they swapped it for minimal foam metal to both increase agility and combat duration, as the GAT-X series chews through power constantly to feed the Phase Shift armor system, just like an EMA system.
0:57 Is that a goddamn human skull on the abrams? Now that's what I call protection, the munition gets scared and misses
Me: "This video is informative, engaging, and Spook is great at speaking!"
Also me: "Spook SLAPS at war thunder."
Not sure how EMA works but isn't the counter to EMA to just build the shaped charge to get hot enough so that the molten stream is no longer magnetic ?
EMA doesn't use electricity except when hit. The cirquit is not complete so no electricity flows.
Hey Spokston, I have a question. Does the Leopard 2 A5 (and higher) "arrowhead" turret armor work a little bit like the perforated one? I ask because there is something like normalization of hitting kinetic round and thus the penetrator hits angled front of arrowhead, perforates it and then has to penetrate another slab of armor (still in the arrowhead armor addon) angled in very different way (vertically and horizontally) and after that it can hit main turret armor. Does this kinetic penetrator normalize twice or even three times when trying to hit main armor? And if yes, does this effect has a potential to break the sabot because of tension caused by normalization while still being in the process of going through first one or two layers when normalizing to one more differently angled layer?
Fast pic of arrowhead addon: www.google.com/search?q=leo+2+a5+armor&sxsrf=ALeKk02cYijqp1g3rqOUbLJgs0ilC8whSQ:1588967812548&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAy5qwhqXpAhVIPJoKHToSBI8Q_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1920&bih=937#imgrc=NkjNqLLFHIJUpM
Great video as always ;)
I always want to research new ideas and concept's like you do but I don't know where to start, do you have any ideas on how to really get into it?
Specifically on tanks
One thing that concerns me about electromagnetic armour is that I'm not sure if it would perform well in extreme temperatures like heat and cold
Meat foam should be good against
Shaped charges because of the holes
Wouldn't the electromagnet armour not use power while the cuircit is not completed from the shaped charges stream or whatever? I may be wrong but I think that's how cuircits work, can't use power if it's not a complete loop
Force fields. Bullets are metal(magnetic) If we set up a electro magnetic field we could deflect bullets, artillery, planes, etc. Invincible to metal not some explosives
I wonder if you could fill metal foam with aerogel to stop HEAT shells.
I just watched a program about the international space station and its defences against micro-meteorites etc , is there any way that any of that tech can be adapted to tanks etc ?
David Green It’s already used in tanks. It’s called spaced armor is it’s common.
Good one. Make a video about more active armor concepts.
Why use increase armor when you can just teleport behind enemy tanks weak rear instead.
what if the incoming projectile is stealthed? the point of passive armor is that it will protect regardless of electronic systems on the tank
Can I ask why engineering studies you took or what are your sources?
There are a few armoured vehicles in avatar TLA, like the fire nation tank and huge caterpillar drill. That'd be an interesting video
Would metal foam be a good counter to HESH rounds?
It sounds like it would help diffuse the spalling shockwave since it is filled with holes.
This type of EM armour shouldn't consume much energy because it is practically a capacitor that can be complemented with other capacitors. After it is charged up, only the leakage charge should be compensated, which is miniscule if the EMA well-designed. Additional internal capacitors can be connected in parallel to the EMA in order to match the required capacity. The effectivity of such armour mainly depends on the additional capacitors that can be installed in the tank.
But to know it wouldn't need much effort to achieve high voltage, even a simple demonstration wan-der-waals generator can achieve multiple thousands of volts. If such voltage isn't enough than voltage multiplier circuits can be used. So a tank's powerplant should be more than able to charge up such a capacitor. The only thing that depends on the powerplant's power output is the condensator charging time, and the ability to compansate the leakage.