Modern Armored Fighting Vehicles

Book excerpt: Armored vehicles are essentially armed and armored high mobility off-road vehicles. While their mobility aspects are clearly very important, there are many high mobility off-road vehicles not designed for military applications. Therefore the key defining aspects of an Armored Fighting Vehicle (AFV), as the name implies, is the armament they carry to inflict damage and the armor they possess as protection against damage. There has within recent years been a great number of exciting and innovative developments in critical AFV technologies. Key among these are significant enhancements to both armament and armor. The primary armament of an AFV consists of relatively large caliber guns that fire a range of ballistic munitions, including kinetic energy penetrators, high explosive, incendiary, and shaped-charge warhead tipped rounds. Some guns are also capable of firing anti-tank guided missiles. In addition to the main weapon, many AFV's are also equipped with a range of secondary weapons including machine guns, grenade launchers, mortar tubes and missile launchers. These weapons and their capabilities in penetrating standardized armor is reviewed in detail in this volume. AFV armor is designed to protect the vehicle against both threats fired by other AFVs and threats originating from any other source, including buried mines, infantry portable weapons, air-launched missiles, artillery shells and improvised devices. Protection against each type of threat often requires a unique type of armor solution. These solutions are then layered onto the vehicle to provide the required protection. Vehicle armor systems include applique armor, spaced armor, reactive armor, cage armor, netted armor, electric armor, spall systems, dazzlers, jammers, and Active Protection Systems (APS). Each type of armor is covered in detail in this volume, both at a system level and with respect to their integration into specific AFVs. This volume covers the theory of AFV design, of armament performance and of armor design and performance. As well most modern AFVs are described and discussed. A modern AFV is considered to be one that was either designed over the last 20 years or is likely to continue to see service with front line combat troops for the foreseeable future. Main battle tanks, light tanks, reconnaissance vehicles, tracked and wheeled armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and tank destroyers are covered.