chobham armour

asma18

Active member
Can any Brit on this site tell me when the Americans obtained the right to manufacture Chobham Armour.Did you not retain something? did they buy it or was it just given? Apparently the Sth Korean K1 MBT has the British Armour made in the U.S. How stupid is that? giving your competitor the main thing that seperates the Abrams and Challenger. The Challenger thus far has the better service record a lot of that is due to the chobham armour.
 
Can any Brit on this site tell me when the Americans obtained the right to manufacture Chobham Armour.Did you not retain something? did they buy it or was it just given? Apparently the Sth Korean K1 MBT has the British Armour made in the U.S. How stupid is that? giving your competitor the main thing that seperates the Abrams and Challenger. The Challenger thus far has the better service record a lot of that is due to the chobham armour.

I'm not totally sure but I believe it is made in the US under the BAE banner which is a massive British company, with depots and plants worldwide including Australia.

Usually the Brits give away their inventions because government never backs inventors.
 
What about the rest of our industries given to East Asia?

Giving away our chobham armour to the US on request, who then hand it on to whoever they like, is nothing new.
Where on earth do you think the Japanese obtained their Battleship and Aircraft Carrier Technology? That cost us our Empire! Yes I Know we were allied to Japanand that alliance made sense. But then we dropped that to become allied to an Anti-Imperialist Former Colony so that we could wage another pointless devastating war against our natural ally Germany - that did not make sense.
Nothing will go right with our country until we replace the shady businessmen at the top with Sensible Nationalists ( the US could benefit from such an approach as well. )
 
It was first implemented on the M1
And why should not we share our knowledge with our allies? Knowledge saves lives.
It has always been such that we have the brains and the Americans had the money.
 
I know the fuel tanks for the T-60 were made by a British company.
They got the contract from a then West German company that won a contract from another company to produce the fuel system and these fuel tanks were an off the shelf item which was modified for use in the T-60 (Still with me, or have I lost you?)
I also believe we sold versions of the Chieftan with Chobham armour to Iran, when it was under the Shah, and when the Ayatolah took over the Soviets were given the opportunity to "have a look" as they did with the F-14s they had.
No such thing as a secret nowdays.:lol:
 
Originally Posted by 42RM
It was first implemented on the M1
And why should not we share our knowledge with our allies? Knowledge saves lives.
It has always been such that we have the brains and the Americans had the money


Always ?? you Brits suffer under collective inferiority complex
Who gave you the nuclear submarine technology? HMS Dreadnought the first British nuclear submarine and her Westinghouse nuclear reactor 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement ring a bell ?
 
Can any Brit on this site tell me when the Americans obtained the right to manufacture Chobham Armour.Did you not retain something? did they buy it or was it just given? Apparently the Sth Korean K1 MBT has the British Armour made in the U.S. How stupid is that? giving your competitor the main thing that seperates the Abrams and Challenger. The Challenger thus far has the better service record a lot of that is due to the chobham armour.



The chobham armour is actually simply steel over special ceramic plates,over kevlar ,over steel. The whole system makes up chobham armour and Kevlar was invented in the US so its partly an American invention therefore its not that secret
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted by 42RM
It was first implemented on the M1
And why should not we share our knowledge with our allies? Knowledge saves lives.
It has always been such that we have the brains and the Americans had the money


Always ?? you Brits suffer under collective inferiority complex

The Brits don't suffer any inferiority complex, its a pity our government don't back British inventors as they should.


Who gave you the nuclear submarine technology? HMS Dreadnought the first British nuclear submarine and her Westinghouse nuclear reactor 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement ring a bell ?

Among other things such as penicillin, fingerprinting, DNA analysis, hovercraft, VTOL technology, (I could go on) who gave you the jet engine and the Magnetron which heralded the evolution of modern radar? Ring a bell?
 
Last edited:
The Brits don't suffer any inferiority complex, its a pity our government don't back British inventors as they should.




Among other things such as penicillin, fingerprinting, DNA analysis, hovercraft, VTOL technology, (I could go on) who gave you the jet engine and the Magnetron which heralded the evolution of modern radar? Ring a bell?

And the Brits were the first to clone a Welch or a Falklander.....oh sorry I meant a sheep.
 
It has always been such that we have the brains and the Americans had the money




BritinAfrica

Relax pal.. I just wanted to prove that the above statement is so unuttarably assinine that one can only imagine this guy typed it without even thinking.
 
The chobham armour is actually simply steel over special ceramic plates,over kevlar ,over steel. The whole system makes up chobham armour and Kevlar was invented in the US so its partly an American invention therefore its not that secret

The construction details of the Chobham armour developed in the 1960s at the British tank research centre on Chobham Common, Surrey, England, still remains top secret, it has been described as being composed of ceramic tiles encased within a metal matrix and bonded to a backing plate and several elastic layers. The US might have invented Kevlar, but Kevlar is only one component in Chobham

If Chobham is not so secret, why aren't other nations using it? Only the M1 Abrams, Challenger 1, and Challenger 2 tanks have been disclosed as being thus armoured. The armour was first tested in the context of the development of a British prototype vehicle, the FV4211.

As always British governments don't back their inventors when they should be backing them to the hilt.
 
Last edited:
The construction details of the Chobham armour developed in the 1960s at the British tank research centre on Chobham Common, Surrey, England, still remains top secret, it has been described as being composed of ceramic tiles encased within a metal matrix and bonded to a backing plate and several elastic layers.

If Chobham is not so secret, why aren't other nations using it? Only the M1 Abrams, Challenger 1, and Challenger 2 tanks have been disclosed as being thus armoured. The armour was first tested in the context of the development of a British prototype vehicle, the FV4211.

What about the Leopard II? I think the Germans used a similar armor for their MBTs and still use similar when the Leo II has developed during the years
 
The Brits don't suffer any inferiority complex, its a pity our government don't back British inventors as they should.




Among other things such as penicillin, fingerprinting, DNA analysis, hovercraft, VTOL technology, (I could go on) who gave you the jet engine and the Magnetron which heralded the evolution of modern radar? Ring a bell?


VSTOL?? are you sure ?? The Convair/Navy XFY-1 VTOL fighter was the first of its kind in the world ahead of its time, long before the Brits developed the HARRIER. And the "staggeringly brilliant VTOL technology" used in the JSF was designed at Skunk Works, here in California. Jet engine is controvertial the US has also profited from German jet engine technology after the WW2 ,as a matter of fact the real first US fighter SABRE's engine was based on German concept .


Magnetron ?? The first simple, two-pole magnetron was developed in the US . Remember, it was the inventor Percy Spencer who pioneered the mass production of magnetrons. The RADAR was developed by several countries quite independently. The first CXAM-1 antenna went to sea aboard USS TEXAS in 1938 !
 
It has always been such that we have the brains and the Americans had the money




BritinAfrica

Relax pal.. I just wanted to prove that the above statement is so unuttarably assinine that one can only imagine this guy typed it without even thinking.

You obviously don't understand British humour, his statement was made tongue in cheek as it were.
 
VSTOL?? are you sure ?? The Convair/Navy XFY-1 VTOL fighter was the first of its kind in the world ahead of its time, long before the Brits developed the HARRIER. And the "staggeringly brilliant VTOL technology" used in the JSF was designed at Skunk Works, here in California. Jet engine is controvertial the US has also profited from German jet engine technology after the WW2 ,as a matter of fact the real first US fighter SABRE's engine was based on German concept .

Yep I'm sure, the Harrier was the first VTOL fighter in the world. The XFY1 didn't get into production, the Harrier did. I think people are still waiting patiently for the JSF

The British shared Whittle's technology with the United States, enabling the engine-builder General Electric (GE) to build jet engines for America's first jet fighter, the Bell XP-59. The aircraft company Lockheed then used a British engine in the initial version of its Lockheed P-80, America's first operational jet fighter, which entered service soon after the war's end.


Magnetron ?? The first simple, two-pole magnetron was developed in the US . Remember, it was the inventor Percy Spencer who pioneered the mass production of magnetrons. The RADAR was developed by several countries quite independently. The first CXAM-1 antenna went to sea aboard USS TEXAS in 1938 !

Percy Spencer built a magnetron in 1945 for use in microwave ovens. The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field. The 'resonant' cavity magnetron variant of the earlier magnetron tube was invented by John Randall and Harry Boot in 1940 at the University of Birmingham, England.

The magnetron enabled the first effective airborne ground scanning radar to be fitted to aircraft such the Lancaster Bomber.
 
Last edited:
A lot of these things are a trade off we gets bits of American technology and they get bits of ours. Lets face during the war they got the jet engine, radar, the design for liberty ships also the design for the tail on your rocket planes came from a Martin Baker and the rights to Penicillin amongst many other things.
 
A lot of these things are a trade off we gets bits of American technology and they get bits of ours. Lets face during the war they got the jet engine, radar, the design for liberty ships also the design for the tail on your rocket planes came from a Martin Baker and the rights to Penicillin amongst many other things.

Like the Miles 52? Miles were ordered to send all their research to the US on the understanding that US research would be available to Miles. None was forth coming, the US stating that their research was classified. The Miles 52 project was ordered to be scrapped by the British Government.

Miles engineers are still bitter (those that are still alive) about being ripped off. One highly annoyed Miles engineer stated "We didn't get anything from the US, because they didn't have anything to send us."

The design of the single piece elevator used on supersonic aircraft came from the Miles 52 research.
 
Can any Brit on this site tell me when the Americans obtained the right to manufacture Chobham Armour.Did you not retain something? did they buy it or was it just given? Apparently the Sth Korean K1 MBT has the British Armour made in the U.S. How stupid is that? giving your competitor the main thing that seperates the Abrams and Challenger. The Challenger thus far has the better service record a lot of that is due to the chobham armour.


I did some research on this subject mate.. Current M1 and those being updated incorporate depleted uranium mesh into the formula,before this the Abrams used ceramic armor the formulation of which was also classified-- not layered amor ( though there were some layered components) British Chobham was two generations ago.
Nobody is that stupid to share their latest technology with anyone ,allies included. For example, the radar absorbing stealth panels on British F-35's ,will be imported directly from Lockheed Martin based in US and not manufactured under licence in Britain. They won't give the ingredient to the Brits to replicate
 
Back
Top