Chobham armour

Chobham armour is the informal name of a composite armour developed in the 1960s at the Military Vehicles and Engineering Establishment, a British tank research centre on Chobham Lane in Chertsey. The name has since become the common generic term for composite ceramic vehicle armour. Other names informally given to Chobham armour include Burlington and Dorchester. Special armour is a broader informal term referring to any armour arrangement comprising sandwich reactive plates, including Chobham armour.

Within the Ministry of Defence (MoD), Chobham usually refers specifically to the non-explosive reactive armor & ceramic composites, while Dorchester is usually in reference to additional armour packages, primarily composed of explosive reactive armour and spaced armour, although these are often conflated when in colloquial usage.

Although the construction details of the Chobham armour remain a secret, it has been described as being composed of ceramic tiles encased within a metal framework and bonded to a backing plate and several elastic layers. Owing to the extreme hardness of the ceramics used, they offer superior resistance against shaped charges such as high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) rounds and they shatter kinetic energy penetrators.

The armour was first tested in the context of the development of a British prototype vehicle, the FV4211, and first applied on the preseries of the American M1. Only the M1 Abrams, Challenger 1, Challenger 2, and K1 88-Tank^[1] have been disclosed as being thus armoured. The framework holding the ceramics is usually produced in large blocks,^{[citation needed]} giving these tanks, and especially their turrets, a distinctive angled appearance.