Re: OT?: Iran tells West to be tolerant of Holocaust views

In message <1135261199.108991.178840@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
"rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx" <rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Jeffrey Turner wrote:
> >
> > From what I heard, Iran will be an importer of oil within 25
> > (maybe less). There's also the issue of the US, which keeps
> > threatening Iran, having depleted uranium munitions. Iran
> > ought to be able to armor its tanks with DU in order to offer
> > some protection. Since the US refuses to live up to its
> > responsibilities under the NNPT...
>
> I'm not impressed with depleted uranium as armour (apparently it's
> fragile, it vapourises into dust, its claimed benefit in munitions is
> its mass - it makes compact heavy shells) or even as offensive weapon
> (you could just use bigger ordinary shells, surely?)

In case you're really interested, and really that poorly informed...

In armour penetration, the dominating factor is not mass, but density.
DU scores very highly here. Furthermore, compared to its nearest rival
(tungsten alloys), its friability is an advantage - the leading point of
the penetrator does not expand so much before breaking off, so the
diameter of the hole that is created is smaller, which means that less
of the penetrator is abraded per unit penetration distance, so a
penetrator of given dimensions will perforate more armour.

As far as its use as armour is concerned: the effectiveness of dumb
armours (i.e. excluding ERA, electric armour, and similar) goes as a
positive power law (the actual value of the power escapes me ATM, but
think it's just under 1), with armour density, so yet again DU is a
very good choice. In this context, friability is not advantageous, so
in a practical armour you would probably use DU plates backed and faced
by a tungsten-steel alloy, probably with a ceramic layer in there as
well.

--
Nick Roberts tigger @ orpheusinternet.co.uk

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