Depleted Uranium Armor

Obviously true capabilities/structure are classified, so this is a informative discussion/speculation thread, but is DU truly worth using as an armor component? AFAIK no other nation to my knowledge uses it as armor besides the U.S. (bear in mind this has economic/environmental concerns attached for some nations) have other nations simply found better materials? Is it not worth the added weight/cost? What theoretically could be a decent replacement for DU? Post any references to DU armor performance or how it might be structured within the array.
I'll post some shit I've grabbed over the years regarding DU armor, bear in mind this could be incorrect assumptions or deliberate disinformation I personally just find the concept of tank armor materials some interesting shit and are curious if any anon's know a bit more

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    We have a lot of DU compared to most other nations. We can pretty much do whatever we want with it instead of saving it for certain projects.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      It's important to remember that the US has the industrial base already in place to work with DU as well. It's been used for aircraft trim and weight distribution for decades as an example.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Depleted uranium is not rare or expensive. It's not even that strongly controlled because its almost impossible to turn uranium 238 to 235.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >its almost impossible to turn uranium 238 to 23
        It's possible to turn it to plutonium 239 thoughever

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You need a breeder reactor to do that efficiently, which only a handful of countries have (US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and India).

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It's more that depleted uranium is a byproduct of nuclear weapon production which is somewhat illegal. Additionally, uranium is chemically hazardous even when radioactively stable. For countries that produce nuclear weapons it's not just free but something that they're actively trying to get rid of.

        For non-nuclear nations, depleted uranium is a bit more expensive as they have to pay to transport a dangerous substance.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >It's more that depleted uranium is a byproduct of nuclear weapon production which is somewhat illegal.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/
            Perhaps controlled is a better term but most countries would get in trouble for producing nuclear weapons.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Lead is also a byproduct of nuclear weapon production lmao. And you point to the NPT in general, hoping this implies something, when actually it proves to everybody you're just talking out your ass.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Lead can be found by other means while depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process only. Simply digging up uranium will give you natural uranium, not depleted uranium. If you became a supplier of depleted uranium there would be significant international scrutiny and possible sanctions.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And in the context of this thread, the quote chain you were originally responding to and even the original question you were answering, all that is completely irrelevant.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >If you became a supplier of depleted uranium there would be significant international scrutiny and possible sanctions.
                You would get no extra scrutiny. That's because, as you say, you only get it from uranium enrichment and that's a process that's already under international scrutiny specifically aimed at making sure you're not secretly trying to make nukes. So there's no extra scrutiny needed when you want to sell the leftovers from your civilian commercial nuclear fuel enriching, everything's already IAEA inspected and certified not-a-weapons-program.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Especially since most DU is actually nuclear waste

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's denser than lead and harder than steel, it makes a pretty good armour

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      makes me think that it would be an excellent backing material to catch anything a NERA array couldn't fully stop.
      Pic related I don't remember exactly where I saved it from, I do remember thinking the source may have been dog shit.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Pulled from an article a while back, I've seen DU armor referred to as mesh previously. Sounds like bullshit to me, but then again I don't know jack shit about material sciences or NERA armor arrays beyond basic info.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What he's describing is a metal-metal composite. Those are real and work well but are hard/expensive to produce.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Given that the industry managed to bullshit everybody into thinking ceramic plates were being used when in fact it was NERA for about two decades, I'm betting this is bullshit.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        somewhat related

        in a tank museum video that they show the s tank with no metal grate on the front because all the swedes trained with no metal grate because it was classified and it was never added because they never went to war. just funny to think that a simple metal grate was classified

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        NERA uses ceramics though.
        Mostly silicon boride bonded/sprayed/what ever to steel plates.

        • 1 year ago
          RC-135 Rivet Joint

          I think NERA just needs the sandwich array scheme you can use ceramics in the scheme to increase it's effectiveness (like as a backplate)

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          NERA doesn't need ceramics, steel-rubber(-steel) plates is a form of NERA. Ceramics can be employed in an array of steel-rubber plates. The NE in NERA is nonexplosive, so as long as the armor can be considered "reactive" it is NERA. Soviet cellular armor can be considered NERA as well.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            No shit you fricking clown.
            And you were the one saying NERA can't have ceramics Kek.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Different directions of different densities (mesh) cause long rods to twist or tumble, and once the force is off centre of axis they snap and lose energy

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I think they just used it because they needed to upgrade the original m1 design which was lacking against kinetic threats. There's obviously only so much space to add additional armor while DU offers more protection by volume than most other materials. I'm not sure why it's described as a mesh sometimes. Possibly they found they could drill a bunch of holes in it without changing its protection. I would think the DU layer is directly behind the outer steel layer, usually high hardness materials go towards the front in composite armor.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >What theoretically could be a decent replacement for DU?
    Enriched uranium.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Nothing is better.
    There are alternatives, but they are more bulky and possibly heavier

    Leopard 2 uses a combination of NERA placed in front of an armor package that uses tungsten rods, steel and ceramics.
    This produces a pretective effect that is reportedly better agaisnt HEAT, but less effective at stopping APFSDS than the DU armor package on Abrams.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Mostly, uranium is dense. This means that inch per inch uranium will require more kinetic energy to displace than any other substance we use for armor. This means that it's effective against just about every kind of attack and resistant to most kinds of penetration aids.

    The drawback is that DU is heavy as all hell. It's a very inelegant approach like just doubling the thickness of the armor.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Pulled this from my saved files. Came from some forum that I can't find anymore, kicking myself for cropping out the rest of the screenshot

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      oh and for additional info since I've seen a lot of people call it Chobham on here in a recent thread. If I'm not mistaken (going off memory here feel free to correct me, BRL-1/2 were the original armor arrays used by the M1/M1A1 and the Challenger. The M1A1 HA was the first to use the HAP armor package, which included DU. Since then there has been HAP-1/2/3 with HAP-3 equipping the M1A2SEPV.3
      Again going off of memory, there's serial numbers on the turret of an Abrams which should denote the armor package as well. DU equipped will end in U, but there's different letters if it's an export variant or not, I think E was for the arab states.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        What's the thickness of the M1's UFP on the SEP v1 and onwards? 2in/51mm is a number I've seen tossed around

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          30mm-51mm angled at 82 degrees are the estimates I've seen, personally I think 51mm is more likely
          There were a few claims I've seen that said that at some point the RHA was swapped for a UHHS encased laminate composite similar to other euro MBTs. One poster said he helped replace the UFP after it received damage from an RPG-7 hit, claimed it looked like rubber, alumina and steel not full RHA.
          Obviously take that with a grain of salt, assuming it was true that wouldn't dramatically increase protection anyway, but would help against bomblets maybe.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          https://i.imgur.com/8roDAfV.png

          30mm-51mm angled at 82 degrees are the estimates I've seen, personally I think 51mm is more likely
          There were a few claims I've seen that said that at some point the RHA was swapped for a UHHS encased laminate composite similar to other euro MBTs. One poster said he helped replace the UFP after it received damage from an RPG-7 hit, claimed it looked like rubber, alumina and steel not full RHA.
          Obviously take that with a grain of salt, assuming it was true that wouldn't dramatically increase protection anyway, but would help against bomblets maybe.

          The early M1s were 38mm, somewhere around the M1A1 upgrade they added a 16mm plate on top of that to bring it to 54mm, then the ones produced after that were made with a 51mm plate, I saw some sources on this posted in a War Thunder discussion the other day but didn't save it.

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Why turn yourself into a metal bunker if you can be a ghost that summons thunders

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'm no chemist or materials science guy, but isn't the whole point of using the stuff because it's really fricking dense but also relatively easy to obtain? Relative to osmium and other dense stuff, I mean.

    What I'm saying is that there's materials that would be better, but you'd need to get way better at finding/extracting/using rare shit first.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's Bongoloids Chobham composite armour upgraded with du plates for improved protection vs apfsds rounds.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I know nothing of materials science or armor.
    All I know about DU is that it is ideal for AP due to the material shearing in such a way that it maintains a penetrating point.
    So this same property also makes it perform well as armor? It shears/flakes mechanically, dispelling impact energy?

    From someone who knows nothing about the science, it's neat that the same thing that makes a material good for AP -also- makes it good for the armor.

    Can stable uranium be alloyed? Are there any DU-alloys that could perform without layering other materials?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I might be wrong, but in case of tank armor I believe it's mainly just the combination of hardness and density.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Can stable uranium be alloyed? Are there any DU-alloys that could perform without layering other materials?
      They use DU-titanium alloys possibly others.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Op here. Im phone posting so I don't have access to my files. DU alloys are used and there's a variety of combinations that have been tested. Specifically for armor penetrators rather than armor though im sure DU armor is likely alloyed. Theres DU and titanium alloys like the other anon mentioned as well as ternary alloy types like uranium vanadium and niobium I believe. If the thread is still up in the morning I'll post an interesting PDF I have on ternary DU penetrators. Forget the name something about UVX Sabot technology or something of the sort. The tl;dr is essentially tungsten was good but not quite as good as DU. Tungsten tended to mushroom during impact while DU alloys shelf sharpening and self ignition at high temp/pressure allowed it to penetrate more on average then any alternative. Plus tungsten was more expensive.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    is there such a thing as depleted uranium spall liner's ?

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