Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Military Machines International 10/2013

A recent email and accompanying photo sent in by Roland Groom referred to an example of the British Army's Warthog all-terrain tracked vehicle undergoing tests at Bovington (shown bottom) with the locally based Armoured Trials & Development Unit. The vehicle had been fitted with a full suite of the relatively new Tarian add-on armour produced by a local Dorset based firm. In laymen's terms the Tarian armour is essentially a hi-tech composite woven rope/cloth-like material with ballistic properties that can be formed into a netting that is arranged around the exterior of the vehicle and acts in the same way as conventional bar armour, which has been widely used in recent years on vehicles serving in Afghanistan for protection against RPGs. The Tarian armour has the advantage of being easier to produce and is substantially lighter than the conventional bar armour, thus increasing the payload ability of the vehicle it is fitted to. Also shown here is a Tarian-equipped Foxhound armoured patrol car, and by way of comparison a Warthog fitted with the conventional bar armour, both photographed at the Defence Vehicle Dynamics show this year.

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