methos

The powerpack deliveries are not behind schedule, the Indian Army just expected a much quicker availability. MTU promised a delivery date multiple years in the future (requiring 48 months to set up production lines, produce parts and then produce the first batch of engines), which the Indian Army did not anticipate due to lack of foresight/expertise in the subject matter.

The company used to be called MTU America before being renamed to Rolls-Royce Solutions America Inc. The management in the UK just didn't dare to rename the German brand, but all companies (even MTU's German locations) manufacturing them were renamed to Rolls-Royc Solutions. Not really a good idea given the brand recognition, but RR already did its best trying to kill even that...

Yes, patents can be declared classified and withheld frorm the public.

Since about a decade, Rolls-Royce Power Systems owns MTU, hence the MTU engines in the Eitan being called "Rolls-Royce engines". The Merkava 4's MTU powerpack could just as well be called a Rolls Royce. IMO it seems that a few years ago, some managers made the marketing decision to rename most MTU-branded companies but the core to various Rolls-Royce-branded companies. The brands MTU and Rolls-Royce are used interchangably for certain engines.

Both of them were given up. They are in the status "ceased".

It is a bit misleading, because they also compare different wavelengths at the same time. You can have cooled and uncooled thermal imagers operating in the LWIR spectrum, just as you can have uncooled and cooled MWIR systems. Given that they point out normal aspects of LWIR thermal imagers as advantages of the "uncooled" ones (at least in the captions of the images), the article seems to be a bit deceiving. This seems to be intentional, as the images are taken from studies that do not specify whether they are using cooled or uncooled thermal imagers. I.e. the image with the exhaust plumes comes from a US study ("Dual-Band Imaging of Military Targets Using a QWIP Focal Plane Array"). They took pictures from different studies, including ones conducting by the US Army.

The answer is pretty simple: Elbit is actively making deals. They are marketing their solutions, making offers and winning contracts. They have the required business backend/infrastructure and influence in the region to place bids and gain contracts - note that not every program is an open tender that is published publicly and allows any company to bid. When General Dynamics European Land Systems doesn't bid, it is hardly a surprise for them to not gain the contract. From GDELS position, what benefit does it have to be a primary contractor (and still having to buy turret & BMS from another vendor) versus being a subcontractor? I doubt that this is really the case; it is possible that the turrets are made in Israel and mated with Spanish-made hulls in Israel, but Sabrah isn't the only program where Elbit is the prime contractor offering hulls made by other companies. Elbit supplied the Piranha III with UT30 MK2 turret to Botswana and the Pandur 2 with UT30 MK2 turret to Ghana. The hulls were made by GDELS in Austria (Pandur 2) and Switzerland (Piranha III). The turrets were made by ESL in Vienna, Austria - a subsidiary of Elbit Systems. The vehicles never were shipped to Israel. For the Pandur 2 with UT30 MK 2 turret sold to Indonesia, the hulls were made in the Czech Republic by Tatra Defence Vehicles while the turrets supposedly were made by an Elbit Systems subsidiary in Brazil. Again Elbit Systems acted as prime contractor without the vehicles being shipped to Israel at any point of time. The sale of the VBTP-MR Guarani to the Philippines was also contracted to Elbit Systems, which only provides the turret/RWS once again. The turret/RWS is made in Brazil, the vehicles are not shipped to Israel. Not really. They are not the OEM of any of these deliveries, they are just adding a small subset of their own components to an already OEM-provided solution. It was not. Aside of the fact that none of these vehicles has an APS and thus it is irrelevant to the decision.

The plan to license produce the 9K120 Svir existed 1986-1988. A draft for an official contract was supplied by the Soviet Union to the GDR in 1987, after they earlier suggested in 1986 for East Germany to license produce Svir. In mid-1987, the decision (on East German side) was still not finalized with it being considered in the Central Planning Committee. Here is an excerpt of a 1987 protocol available in the German Federal Archives: Back then, the decision was still pending in part due to the only potential customers (ČSSR and Poland) not having purchased the license for the T-72S yet, so the Ministry of National Defence supported the Soviet proposal to (at first) cooperate with the ČSSR: I haven't seen any post-1988 reference to this deal, so I suppose ybny 1989-1990 the program was already dead (due to no T-72S production in the ČSSR).

East Germany took part at the so-called "T-72 co-production" which basically was limited to East German producing a handful of T-72 parts (drivetrain components, optics including laser rangefinder) and supplied them to the ČSSR and Poland (although apparently not at all times). There were plans to increase the co-production with the T-72S in 1986-1988, resulting in East Germany acquiring a license for the 9K120 Svir missile & its guidance systems. The plan was for the ČSSR to acquire the full production license of the T-72S (and also Poland, but at seemingly at a later time) and East Germany supplying the FCS, laser rangefinder and missile guidance system.

Ah, yes. You are right, my bad. I've checked defense-update.com again. It seems they have removed the statements about Plasan being involded in the Eitan. You can still see that their last article about Plasan's armor solutions is tagged with "Eitan": https://defense-update.com/tag/eitan

This was claimed by Defense Update or Defence Blog some time ago in an article covering the Eitan. Plasan's current company presentation video includes a very short look at a CAD model of the Eitan, seemingly regarding the installation of the KE protection, showing that the company is involved in that. Note that also the filelr of the add-on armor is marked in green. I'd say that Plasan's core activity is mine protection, given that this has been the majority of its business is related to that. They are producing a wide variety of survivability solutions including metallic armor (perforated armor, spaced armor), spall liners, belly armor plates, roof armor and recently presented their own ERA solution (called "A-ERA", Advanced ERA). They have competed for contracts for "heavier armor" (not tank armor, but below that) - just not so successfully. For many programs (multiple Piranha 5 models, GDELS Ajax, ASCOD 2, Bradley, BVS10, JLTV, M-ATV etc.) they managed to secure contracts for mine protection kits but failed to gain the contracts for ballistic armor (with Tencate/Integris, Permali, etc.) winning armor contracts. You are again creating theories on patents, yet the number of patents is not an indicator of R&D effort spent. There just is more available to patent. Neither does a patent imply that the patented technology is used. I'd again like to point to the fact that patents for armor technology used by the developing nation are usually related to OSPEC and thus classified. The outward appareance of the Eitan's side armor is not coherent with SLERA or NxRA. The only known "SLERA" (and I am not sure if this is actually SLERA or hybrid armor) is that used on the Merkava, produced by Elbit Systems. This armor is has a distinctive appearance due to the many small bolts used to held the rubber/elastomere sheets in place. The Eitan lacks those bolts and instead has just rows of large ERA containers. The closest thing to it visually is L-VAS, which is hybrid armor (ERA placed in spaced steel armor): Or Nimda's M113 N2000 upgrade using ERA from Rafael: I think you either misunderstand the concept of SLERA or the patent (or both). The patent just is an "umbrella" patenting a layout/concept to layer armor plates; it doesn't implay anything about the resulting armor being SLERA nor does it even specify any specific armor array. It just about layering non-energetic/inert plates (steel, plastic, ceramics, etc.) and energetic plates (this could be NERA, ERA, SLERA, NxRA or other stuff). The exact type of armor is not specified by the patent so that it can cover multiple types! You are just projecting your own theories and not sticking to the actual text. The 4S24 turret ERA container from the T-72B3 and T-80BVM would be covered by most of the patents claims. Do you call that SLERA? (just pretend that the 4S24 modules are inserted) There is one row visible, not two. Just watch the installation process. To the bare steel hull, a back plate is attached and a spaced armor module (front plate) with one reactive tile. SLERA is a scientific description of the technical construction, not an industry term. Aside of the fact that we don't know anything about the supposed multi-hit capabilities (Armor Shield-KE and L-VAS also place the ERA tiles behind thick armor plates, but are not any more multi-hit capable than conventional ERA), this is not the summary of SLERA. _____ SLERA is self-limiting, as the name implies. It keeps the detonation of explosives completely localized, thus not throwing larger plates (and technically not needing any subdivision into plates/boxes). You can make SLERA without any sort of external plates or passive armor layers, just by using less explosive or different materials in lieu with the explosive filler of a conventional ERA sandwich.

It is not made by Rafael, but by Plasan. Rafael only supplies the turret (including its protection). The armor - mine protection, KE protection and RPG protection - are delivered by Plasan. Also there seems to be a tendency in calling armor NxRA/SLERA, when it often isn't.

The boxes are IIRC hybrid ERA (ERA placed in spaced armor array). The armor at the driver's hatch is installed a bit later (in the timelapse video of the Eitan manufacturing released by the Israeli MOD) but more or less the same: The only real difference seems to be the backplate.

You are missing the point here. If the patent describes classified armor technology (which is what I would presume to be the case for the Merkava 4's armor in the year of its DOI) or concept used in this armor, it would remain under a protection status, meaning that Rafael would not be allowed to patent it in other countries unless these agree to also withheld the patent from the public until the protection period is expired. This is basic OPSEC and I am pretty sure that Israel has such rules. This is how it has been the case with NATO armor in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I.e. you'll find something like this: a patent accepted by the patent office in 1974 but only released to the public 45 years later. I've seen similar cases of patents that were registered in multiple countries but withheld from the public until the expiration of the protection period. If one checks out the original documents, one'll see that the front page usually is stamped "SECRET" or "CLASSIFIED" in such cases. And this is not some sort of highly detailed description of a secretive armor layout or an exact listing of the materials used - it is about stuff like properly attaching a backplate to a frontplate in a sandwich arrangement or how to dampen the impact to reduce the deformation of a multi plate array. Fundamentals basically. If you look at other West-German patents from the same period, i.e. 1972-1978, you'll still find dozens of patents describing multi-layered armor such as e.g. a Blohm & Voss patent about ceramic armor that was published in the same year that it was applied for. Why isn't that classified? Because the patented ceramic armor array wasn't used, hence it wasn't classified. In the same way, Rafael's patents on ERA (you call it BRAT, but later BRAT variants weren't actually produced by Rafael and BRAT isn't patented by it) provide so much information, because Israel doesn't use this type of ERA and it hence isn't classified in Israel. BRAT was designed by ARL, Rafael was a supplier for the initial batch (BRAT A0) as urgent operational requirement. It does not. It describes a range of physical characteristics, into which KEW-A1 (and a dozen other APFSDS rounds) nearly fall. KEW-A1 and DM43 have a 26 mm penetrator diameter (not 25 mm) and it has a muzzle velocity of 1,740 m/s (not 1,800 m/s). In so far, there is not even an indirect mention of DM43/KEW-A1. The patent only mentions one test round specifically, i.e. a 8 mm diameter and 135 mm length, reaching a muzzle velocity of 1,400 m/s. While this is likely a scaled down test round, one should not draw any direct performance conclusion from scale tests, as the performance of many armor systems is directly tied to penetrator size. E.g. Swiss tests with ceramic armor (Ceramic Armor Materials by Design, article "Initial tests on ceramics in composite armor" by W. Lanz) showed a mass efficiency in excess of 5 against scaled-down longrod penetrators, but using 105 mm APFSDS ammo, the mass efficiency was reduced to 2.5 and 3.2.

The fact that this patent was published to the European patent office in 2004/2005 makes it IMO unlikely that is referencing any actually used armor. Patents are patents, not a proof/disclosure for technology being used. I.e. patents that describe actually used armor arrays are typically withheld from the public and therefore typically limited to national patent offices (at least this was the case with British, German and US patents during the Cold War) to prevent potential adversaries from gaining intel on your own armor technology. I'd also note that the slide form the Orlite presentation regarding "common materials in use" can be referring to materials used in all their products and may not specifically referring to armor materials, as it mentions numerous other/non-armor applications. The presentation includes slides covering everything from air scoops, fairings, fuel tanks, structural parts of aircraft bodies, ceilings, cashworthy seats to radoms. Still, nice work overall and there probably is some level of truth behind your theories. Going from "the typical penetrators have a diameter of 6-25 mm and a length of 100 - 600 mm and a muzzle velocity between 1,000 and 1,800 m/s" to "it stops KEW-A1" is a bit of a stretch.