Sorry of this is a silly question but if ERA blocks protect damage by having explosives inside them shouldn't rounds like 14.5mm AP-I make them burn? I know that AP-I rounds will not penetrate the armor or make the ERA explode but shouldn't the explosive component of ERA burn like C4 when you hold a match to it? Shouldn't sustained heavy AP-I fire set all your ERA tiles on fire?
>>65101965Inciendaries, big bullets, big fragments indeed set ERA tiles on fire.
>>65101965The problem with setting an ERA tile on fire and not killing the enemy tank is that the enemy tank will try to kill you.
>>65102158Obvious, i was just wondering if stuff like API and tracers make it burn. Do they make ajacent tiles burn? Given how many i've seen on some tanks i could imagine that if they could ignite adjacent tiles enough of them burning could force you too abandon it.
>>65101965They'll punch a hole through the container and the explosives without setting them off. Don't know if the incendiary filler would necessarily ignite the plastique but ERA is in theory designed to tolerate being raked by autocannon fire without pointlessly degrading (going off/igniting). This is done through the formulation of the explosives in terms of initiation properties. Kontakt 5 has something about how the impact needs to have a certain energy density and overall velocity or it doesn't go off which is why the Russians replaced it for mainline ERA with Relikt due to some of the optimizations done on the earlier M829 family to defeat ERA. One of those optimizations (can't remember if its the A2 or A3) is to have a stepped penetrator nose (underneath the ballistic fairing) that expands the explosive rather than have the full diameter of the penetrator slam into a tile of K5. Supposedly it is less likely to go off. I have no idea if the Russians (or really any ERA manufacturer) would actively think about trying to make ERA more readily resist SAPHEI, HEI and API (etc, etc, etc) induced ignition but that's one of those rando pieces of knowledge on ERA mechanics where there's a bunch of optimizations that Joe Public never hears about.For all we know the explosives could be a bitch to ignite even compared to wet wood or fire retarded filled plastic to the point you'd need to set thermite on it or blast it with a blowtorch for a while versus have hot burning metallic fragments. There's that one Russia state TV propaganda program where the whole episodes are on Youtube but I think they do a retarded thing of driving an ERA laden tank into a fire including using burning tires to make a point that the ERA doesn't readily ignite when it is within the container even from (brief) exposure to open flames.>>65104057They're in their metal containers so I don't think the plastique will ignite from open flame readily.
>>65104440From a quick check alot of AP-I rounds do use thermite, the impression i get is the explosives don't burn all that quickly so any combustion is limited to that single brick.
