Challanger 2 MBT damaged by IED
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Iraq bombing damages British tank
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2.UK MoD was blamed to cover ealier incidents of MBT attacked.
3.MBT, just like CV,is vulerable if not well protected.
4.
MoD kept failure of best tank quiet,By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph, 12/05/2007--http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/13/nmod13.xmlOne of the British Army's Challenger 2 tanks was pierced by an Iraqi insurgent missile more than eight months earlier than the Government has previously admitted.
The Ministry of Defence had claimed that an attack last month that breached a tank's armour was the first of its kind in four years of war in Iraq. But another Challenger 2 was pierced by a powerful rocket-propelled grenade in August last year during an attack that blew off part of a soldier's foot and injured several others.
The injured soldier's family has accused the Government of a cover-up and demanded to know why soldiers manning Challenger 2 tanks had not been warned of the failings with the tank's armour.
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said he would challenge the government on why the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had apparently misled the public over the timing of the first incident in which the hugely robust defences of the Challenger had been breached.....
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armour is never impenetrable.
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Another +1 thread by lionnoisy.
Could he at least check his sources? His little picture at the bottom showed that Dorchester armour was "Explosive Reactive Armour"
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The latest one was hit in the balls by a big 2-3 155MM shells IED, they show RPG for what?
FYI, imagine 2-3 155mm hitting your vehicle from the rear, top or the side, penetration is still easily done.
Dorchester is new ChobamII armour. It's a composite mix... where got ERA....Not even sure if they even installed the slate armour like the cute Strykers. -
Apparently, from some guys at tank net, that area is the weakest area of armour for the Challenger 2, hence ERA in addition to the existing armour.
However, rather than IED, the Challenger 2 commander thought it was an RPG-29 which is one of the most powerful brute force anti-tank weapons usable by infantry. -
Also you must realize the dirty little secret of armours with ceramics like Chobham armour and its second gen incarnation Dorchester is that over time their CE protection might degrade due to cracks forming in the ceramic layer due to internal stresses caused by the tank going over rought terrain or metal expansion and contraction. So it requires some upkeep to make sure the protection level is still there.
A reason why despite the effectiveness of ceramics, some other armour makers still decide to go with other packages for the protection requirements, such as the perforated Tungsten/Titanium package of the Leo 2A4 and the like.
In any case one can see why the Brits decided to keep news of the penetration under wraps... you don't exactly want such news reaching the insurgents or the parties that are equipping them until you've figured out the proper reason why this happened, and the solution to it.
On paper the Challanger 2 ought to be the most CE protected tank in NATO, if not the world. -
The unit's commander described the moment the tank was hit by the missile in a letter he wrote to the wounded soldier in March. The officer wrote: "I recall seeing it [the RPG-29 being fired] and thinking, 'Oh Christ, that's bad.'
cheers
"As it slammed into the hull, I was picked up by the shock wave of the blast and thrown against the back wall of the turret. The explosion singed my eyebrows and burnt my face slightly. The tank was full of acrid smoke and fumes. I became aware of you screaming, 'I'm hit, I'm hit. My foot's off.'
"Daz [another crew member] and I looked at each other in slight disbelief - after all, what could possibly breach a CR2's [Challenger's] armour?"
Tpr Chance's mother Kay, 49, from Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, said her son had been told that the Challenger was the best in the world and essentially impenetrable to any weapons the insurgents possessed.
She said: "Sean often told me he felt totally safe because he was in the best tank in the world. But we now know that is not the case. The Government has covered it up.
"If I was the mother of the poor soldier who lost his legs last month I would be horrified to think that an earlier attack like this had happened before but none of the soldiers were told about it."
His brother Luke said that Tpr Chance had been "abandoned" by the Army following his injury. He said: "Sean has been forgotten about. He hasn't received his Iraq medal. He's been told he is going to be medically discharged because of his injury but no one has told him when and what sort of pension he might get. It's a disgrace."