Why doesn’t the M1 Abrams use Frontal ERA on the lower front glacis

[ThatSEPguy]

The Arat 1 panels are thin enough to not have an effect on the frontal profile of the M1 Abrams while making it much stronger against modern threats without increasing the weight a significant amount 

[Roman Alymov]

[ThatSEPguy]

23 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

The SUPER abrams lol 😂 

[Tim Sielbeck]

Or Abrams with Ukrainian TUSK.

[ThatSEPguy]

3 hours ago, Tim Sielbeck said:

Or Abrams with Ukrainian TUSK.

Wouldnt Ukrainian tusk be nizh and arat 1?

[Tim Sielbeck]

I don't know enough of what is available to Ukraine as far as equipping vehicles like that.

[Stuart Galbraith]

On 8/20/2024 at 7:07 PM, ThatSEPguy said:

Wouldnt Ukrainian tusk be nizh and arat 1?

I dont know anything about Arat 1, but yes, any upgrade programme they were undertaking prewar (Most notably T64BM and AMT) seemingly received Nozh or Nizh or whatthehellever.

Strange stuff, western armour experts were saying prewar it cant possibly work the way its claimed.

 

[Mighty_Zuk]

On 8/13/2024 at 9:02 PM, ThatSEPguy said:

The Arat 1 panels are thin enough to not have an effect on the frontal profile of the M1 Abrams while making it much stronger against modern threats without increasing the weight a significant amount 

You can go about it in many different ways. 

My opinion? If you take a hit, it'll damage not only the ERA but also the standard armor. Then you have to replace 2 things. But without ERA, you're only replacing one thing. 

If the added bonus protection from ERA is really important, the desired solution is then to change the base armor itself.

But overall I think it was a mistake to make armor on the Abrams non-modular. I prefer the Merkava approach in this aspect. If it's damaged, you can just replace the whole block much more quickly, and let specially trained personnel with better equipment repair or recycle these while you're set on another task. Thankfully the trend is definitely in that direction.

One more thing I don't like about ERA and why I think manufacturers capable of higher quality products also don't use them too much - is the false sense you get from using them.
If it's not damaged but you think it may be - you're overly cautious.
If it's damaged but you think it's not - you're overly confident.

Combat soldiers need to balance caution with confidence. And I think a type of armor that's gone in one hit is definitely not going to help with that. An APS which has multiple shots, and more passive armor types - do help, as they have multi-hit capability. 

One of the downsides of the Merkava's armor layout is that externally it may appear busted. But at least most of that surface there can still take some more hits.