Electric armour
armor system utilising electric charge to diffuse projectiles
Electric armour or electromagnetic armour is a type of reactive armour proposed for the protection of ships and armoured fighting vehicles from shaped charge and possibly kinetic weapons using a strong electric current, complementing or replacing conventional explosive reacting armour (ERA).
Overview
Electric armour is a newer reactive armour technology. This armour is made up of two or more conductive plates separated by an air gap or by an insulating material, creating a high-power capacitor. In operation, a high-voltage power source charges the armour. When an incoming body penetrates the plates, it closes the circuit to discharge the capacitor, dumping a great deal of energy into the penetrator, vaporizing it or even turning it into a plasma, significantly diffusing the attack.
Another version of electric armour uses layers of plates of electromagnetic metal with silicone spacers on alternate sides. The damage to the exterior of the armour passes electricity into the plates causing them to magnetically move together. As the process is completed at the speed of electricity the plates are moving when struck by the projectile causing the projectile energy to be deflected whilst the energy is also dissipated in parting the magnetically attracted plates.
Advantages
Weight
A key advantage of electric armour is its lighter weight. Whereas ERA can add 10 to 20 tons of weight to a tank in explosives, electric armour could be effective with as little as a few tons of weight, significantly reducing the load on the tank and allowing its weight capacity and engine power to be used elsewhere.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Electric armour” as armor system utilising electric charge to diffuse projectiles. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q11660553. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Electric armour” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.