Reactive Hull Armor

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and ultimate defense of a warship- j

Mr. Kugelman is a civil engineer with thf , Coast Guard at Juneau, Alaska, and has apph^e _syj-

Naval engagements of the last decade reveal a vulnerability in current shipboard air-defense systems. The doctrine of lay­ered air defense works very well—until an enemy projectile reaches its target.

During the Falklands Conflict, the Argentines’ French-built Exocet air-to- surface missiles were extremely success­ful in penetrating the defenses of the Brit­ish surface fleet, as were the Iraqi Exocets that crippled the USS Stark (FFG-31) and killed 37 of her crew. De­spite our long- and close-range antiair­craft and antimissile systems, we may be

The Navy’s Iowa (BB-61)-class battle­ships provide a vestigial reminder that armor is the ultimate warship defense. The armor around the New Jersey's (BB-62, above) conning tower is 17.3 inches, for example. New armor technologies should be exploited before the BBs are gone and the lessons forgotten.

missing a layer in the so-called layered air-defense system—armor.

Historically, the ultimate defense of a major warship has been its armor. The armor covering some parts of the Iowa (BB-61 (-class battleships is thick enough to repel an Exocet penetration, but our other combatants, with lightweight armor (including Kevlar), obviously cannot stop antiship missiles.

One affordable, lightweight armor sys­tem, which one could call the ultimate defense, is reactive armor, such as that used on tanks for defense against some munitions and projectiles. It seems feasi­ble that a reactive armor system could be applied to the vital parts of a warship, so that it could survive an antiship missile hit and retain all or most of its capabili­ties. There are different types of reactive armor systems, but they all react actively to an attack by most projectiles, unlike passive ship armor, and weigh consider­ably less than conventional armor.

One example is Manfred Held’s U. S.

patent number 4,368,660, which consjS basically of an explosive sandwiched ^L tween two plates. As an attacking P^r0J^eC tile hits and penetrates the reactive arni⁰ at a certain velocity, the sandwiched ^eX plosive will erupt, causing tremend⁰^. damage or destruction to the projectile- destroyed, its warhead will detonate °^u side the ship’s skin, limiting ship d^a,a age. The Stark’s damage and casualty could have been reduced with reac ¹

armor, modified for ship use.         j

An idealized reactive armor system the future would involve two-ply ^c struction of ships’ vital parts. A thin o^{u 1}

jectiles. The inner plate would p^reVI_[]) projectiles or their detonated parts * penetrating to the ship’s interior sp^aC The head of an Exocet missile ing a frigate outfitted with this ad^vanC^_r armor system would penetrate the ⁰ plate at three times the speed of soun the velocity expected of future ^antl!,_()fS missiles. Penetration triggers sens within the plate spacing that would P vide information about the appro*¹¹¹ physical size of the projectile, its rd^a. « location, and its approximate penetra ~ velocity to a high-speed data process information is combined with the c^a ^ lated energy release and propagating . locity of a very-high-speed, elong . _t energy jet so that the projectile and u> will meet within the space between armor plates. The resulting coil^|S ...

must learn from past experience _((J apply the cutting edge of technology the future generation of naval wars

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patent that involves a shipboard reactive ^ariI,a tern. He has a B. S. degree in civil and mec engineering, an M. S. degree in engineering ¹¹¹ ment, and is a registered professional engine