Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1333129
sabot rounds. The collaboration could have been extended to other domains, armor included. Nonetheless - no tangible proof exists here. Undoubtedly though, the new solution was superior when placed alongside ERA, and, even more importantly, it was safer. After all, it became an element of the latest Israeli MBT design. The sides of the turret were protected similarly - with 80 mm thick NERA modules arranged in parallel to the turret surface. At 20° to 30° angle an extra 160-230 mm layer of protection was created as a result. The effectiveness was doubtful when the hit was almost perpendicular. This must have been different for the 20-30° angles. To what extent has the new armor improved the turret protection? This can be estimated, as the "base values'' are somewhat identical to the ones applicable to Merkava Mk 1. The relative protection levels have not been homogeneous for the base - for the APDS and APFSDS it was 160 mm of RHA at the weakest point of the turret (half-rounded base), through 250-300 mm of RHA at the front of the turret, up to 340 mm of RHA for the top portion of the turret. The side protection level, with angles of around 20 degrees, was lower - relative 200 mm and less, but still decent, given the materials and technologies applied. Protection levels vs. shaped charges were higher - 450 - 500 mm when it came to warheads manufactured at the time, concerning the front part of the turret, except for its half-spherical base that offered much lower levels of protection (less than half of the estimated value). The above protection was then covered with a single or double layer of NERA, or NxRA, excluding the front wedges of the turret accommodating a single layer. If a HEAT round hit the tank at an angle of ca. 20-25° the warhead could be more than 30% less effective when penetrating the NERA layer. Then it also needed to go through the spaced armor, known from the Mark 1 variant. The extra armor protected the crew from HEAT rounds capable of penetrating up to 600-650 mm of RHA. This was possible if the hit took place in a setting where the whole system (NERA + spaced armor) was placed at an angle of less than 30° in relation to the blast energy vector. In case of hits at angles that were higher, warheads that could penetrate 450-500 mm of RHA could be possibly sufficient to pene- trate such armor. The extra NERA layer also translated into higher protection levels against APDS and APFSDS rounds - but most probably the increase was minor, at 5-10%. VEHICLES