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by SEJeff 1528 days ago
A sabot round is really two parts, right? You have the shaped charge that blows up exterior armor and then a small penetrator, generally the size and shape roughly of a pencil, that goes in and makes a tiny hole.

Active protection systems like Trophy are designed to pre-detonate that shaped charge so that they actual sabot penetrator just bounces off the normal armor, or is hit by ERA (explosive reactive armor). I'm sure APS work better against most ATGMs than sabots, but fundamentally, many of them are designed similarly. Sans maybe there are no depleted uranium ATGMs.
1 comments
sushibowl 1528 days ago
modern APFSDS rounds work purely through kinetic energy penetration and don't contain any explosive charge. The penetrator is usually around an inch in diameter, and maybe 30 inches long. I doubt Trophy can target these rounds effectively since velocity is just too high, something like mach 5 (compared to a javelin's paltry 140 m/s).
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x86_64Ubuntu 1528 days ago
A TROPHY system wouldn't screw up the APFSDS round's bearing and structural stability? I know it's moving really fast, but how effective is it should the tip be broken off, or the round begin to tumble in flight before hitting the tank at a broadside angle?
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greedo 1528 days ago
IF the APS system (Trophy or Arena) could hit the sabot in time, yes, it would diminish its penetration capability substantially. Whether it can react fast enough to do so is doubtful. 3500mph projectiles are tough to counter. There have been plans to try to deflect it via armor so the tip gets shattered and the energy dissipated, but I'm not sure how effective that is with current armor tech.
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jandrewrogers 1528 days ago
The US latency target for APS from detection to engagement is tens of milliseconds. That is good enough for just about everything except sabot from short range.
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greedo 1528 days ago
Latency target says it all. Hard kill of sabot munitions just isn't currently feasible.

Plus, while adding layers of protection to armor (or ships and planes) is a useful endeavor, the maxim of shooting the archer, not the arrow is a better strategy. There's a point of diminishing returns when you layer so much on a vehicle instead of dealing with threats using an entire system (Artillery/Infantry/ECM/ECCM/Air Support).

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