Armor Developments Part 4

After Abrams

Early Mounted Combat System vehicle concept art from the Future Combat Systems program. U.S. Army image.

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Early Mounted Combat System vehicle concept art from the Future Combat Systems program. U.S. Army image.

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The follow-on to the Abrams was to have been part of the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS), a family of vehicles designed together to function in a highly networked battlespace. When FCS was canceled by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in 2009, individual components were split off as independent programs. Among those was the Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV), the first component of which will be an advanced Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV). At this point, the GCV program office has no directive to design a new tank, but some of the development efforts going into the IFV may be adaptable to a future MBT.

“We expect threats to get more and more lethal, but since we can’t make a 200-ton vehicle with the mobility and affordability we need, we will have to have armor that is much more mass efficient. It takes 10 pounds of steel to stop a given bullet, but I’d rather have 5 pounds of ceramic or 2 pounds of composite, going as light as we can to maintain the mobility and transportability we need,” Dr. Douglas Templeton, deputy associate director for ballistic protection at the Army’s Tank Automotive Research, Development & Engineering Center (TARDEC) said. “We’re also concerned about the overall effect on the vehicle. Humvees originally were designed to replace the jeep and carry people around. In Somalia and into Iraq 2, a vehicle meant to carry 2,000 pounds is now being weighed down with thousands of pounds of armor, which impacts its automotive performance.

“We’re taking years of lifetime off vehicles in months, which is an issue and a cost impact for the nation. That’s one reason we’ve gone to MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles) – they give us an ability to handle some of the specific threats we’re seeing in-theater. But MRAPs are a point solution and not usable everywhere. In Afghanistan, we’ve had to go to the MRAP All-Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV), which is more agile.”

For Templeton, this is a combination of mass efficiency and looking at an integrated solution rather than just piling on more armor.

“In the past at TARDEC, we looked at things from the outside in – the survivability onion: Don’t be detected, targeted, hit, penetrated, killed. In the last year or so, we’ve re-looked at that and determined the onion still exists, but we need to look at it from an occupant-centric design, from the inside out. We start with the driver and crew and improve the vehicle as we work out. That includes seats, restraints, soft armor inside the vehicle; one big problem we’ve had is people survive the basic explosion, but then get hit by things that break lose and fly around inside the vehicle.”

Future armor may make extensive use of magnesium alloys and aluminum alloys, but also multifunctional capabilities, he added, using a material or assembly of materials to accomplish a number of key goals.

“Ideally, I would have a composite ‘armor’ that not only stops a bullet but also acts as part of the structure of the vehicle. Historically, that’s how steel tanks were built – the armor and structure were one and the same and so, you could argue, they were multifunctional. But as they got heavier, more of the weight became associated with the armor than what the structure needed,” Templeton said.

“Today we are working to eliminate parasitic weight, so all the material used not only handles the armor needs, but also structural loads. Then I can tailor the vehicle to address the threats I expect to go up against. And if the worst threat I expect to see is an AK-47, I don’t need an armor package that stops the main gun projectile from a T72 tank.”

Not all protection involves a material that cannot be penetrated. In some cases, at least a component of 21st century armor may be electronic, such as the “sensor bubble” that was part of the FCS concept to reduce the need for heavy physical armor.

“Active protection includes active intercept and electronic countermeasures, what some people call a ‘soft kill.’ Some anti-tank weapons are laser-guided and you can put a brighter laser spot on the ground away from your vehicle and divert an incoming missile to that spot. A nice thing about the electronic soft kill is you do have an unlimited magazine,” he said.

“With FCS, we wanted high transport, light weight, but also high survivability. When we did the modeling and live fire tests, I can tell you flat out some of the proposed FCS vehicles had better survivability than an Abrams. But that is predicated on your active protection systems working and that remains a challenge. I can tell you just about every goal ballistically with FCS not only was met, but well exceeded by our armors. It would have been an interesting vehicle.”

Much of what was planned for FCS can still be seen in the GCV, Templeton added.

“It may be heavier, but that is driven by current threats, such as the IEDs in Iraq and now emerging in Afghanistan. You still see the same thrust for modularity, not just for armor but other parts of the vehicle. But you can’t tailor the vehicle for specific threats by carrying a lot of excess stuff you don’t need,” he said.

“I want to do a whole plethora of things, but I don’t want one system for Function A, another for Function B, another for Function C, ad infinitum, when I can have one system that can do them all. And ideally not just with the added weight of all four at the same time, but tailored to each individual requirement.”

Future generations of armor, he believes, are likely to start with a base frame, then incorporate advanced levels of modularity and tailorability, incorporating a variety of new composites, including nanotech.

“We are seeing the use of carbon nanotubes and other nano-scale materials in structural components that give us significant weight decreases while still being able to carry a load. I think we’re probably five to seven years from seeing a fair number of vehicles produced using those approaches,” Templeton said.

“A lot of what drives the introduction of new technology is cost – and the cost for a lot of these new and revolutionary materials and combinations is coming down significantly. The cost of ceramics, due to better manufacturing processes, including a lot of robotic technology, has dropped for armor by roughly 60 percent in the last three years alone.  In terms of real dollars, we’re talking several hundreds of thousands of dollars per vehicle – and the cost is still coming down. That is a tangible aspect of the research now going on.”

Another key development is how disparate materials are combined, an area of R&D Templeton said is still “virgin territory” and the focus of considerable work. But how that is conducted also is changing, in ways that could lead to faster development and fielding of future advanced armor designs.

“In the past 10 or 15 years, the classic Edisonian experimental approach of build, test and rebuild has progressed into a lot more modeling and simulation, using virtual space. You don’t incur the cost of building something with very expensive components, then blow it up only to find it didn’t work well,” he explained.

Col. Bryan J. McVeigh, program manager for Manned Systems Integration at PEO-Integration, said advancements in both lightweight physical armor and active protection systems will require an evolutionary integration process in the next several years, which in turn raises a new challenge to ensure design architecture is sufficiently open to accept those new technologies as they mature. But those designs also must allow for changes in personal body armor and equipment used by tank crews and troops riding in IFVs.

“That does play into how I design the vehicle. I must make sure an IFV for a nine-man squad has enough room and volume for all the squad to wear their armor, carry their weapons and egress ready to engage on scene. They have to be able to hit the ground running when the ramp drops without worrying about their personal armor,” he said.

“As far as the armor goes, however, I do not include personal armor into my survivability equations, just into my design equations with respect to volume. That’s where the advanced lightweight armor comes in. Previous concepts would have been much heavier and larger, but by integrating advanced concepts, we can defeat more bang for the buck.”

Since the end of the Korean War, opponents of new investments in heavy armor have argued that the age of the tank war – and the need for tanks – has ended. But tank commanders proved the versatility of armor even in seemingly tank-defeating terrain in Vietnam. The first Gulf war proved the utility of the Abrams design, while the second demonstrated its value in urban and even COIN engagements.

“OIF has been a strong validation for the use of heavy armor, which has proven to be very versatile in just about any environment – downtown, desert, Central Europe,” Cameron says.

Even as new materials and technologies make tanks and armor lighter, faster, harder to kill and more lethal against a wide range of targets and enemy TTPs, the political and funding battles will continue. But those tasked with developing future generations of armor have their own view.

“The way our requirements are being written, I think the users have come up with a very innovative approach to that challenge,” McVeigh said. “You have Level Zero, One and Two armor, each designed to meet different threats in different scenarios. Level Zero would be used in peacekeeping, Level One more in line with what we are seeing today in Southwest Asia and Level Two for use in major conflicts – say IFV versus IFV.

“Our designs and requirements are based on a holistic survivability approach. I don’t think you can design a vehicle to effectively just defeat one attack or another; you need an effective, scalable ability to defeat a wide range of attacks and bring the force to the enemy at certain points on the battlefield. Scalable survivability and a modular approach without sacrificing mobility – it’s all a trade-off and balancing the requirements.

“Also important is the amount of work we have done to engage end users, who write the requirements for us, and industry early in this program, the latter so they understand what the requirements are and can tell the Army what they believe is doable within the time allotted to execute the mission. That was done on other programs in recent years and has been one of the smarter things we’ve done.”

This article was first printed in The Year in Defense: Review Edition in an abridged version as “Armor: Three Decades of Advances.” This is the final installment of four parts.

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