Non-explosive reactive armor

When a projectile such as a shaped-charge jet hits the NERA's front metal plate, a high speed shock wave is generated within.

The program was largely of an empirical nature and was directed by Dr G.N Harvey, then assistant director of Research at FVRDE (who has been generally credited with the invention of Chobham armor) in collaboration with J.P Downey, who was responsible for its extensive series of firing trials.

In addition to having Chobham armour, the FV4211 was also the first main battle tank to have a hull made of welded aluminium plates to keep down its weight.

[i] In the early 1980s, NII Stali developed in conjunction with Uralvagonzavod a new turret for the late production T-72A with “отражающие листы” (Russian for "reflecting plates") armor inserts.

By September 1982, the cast turret codenamed 172.10.077SB entered low rate production[ii] and was then dubbed "Super Dolly Parton" by Western observers due to its prominent shape.

[12] Furthermore, the Staff of the French Army (EMAT) had high hopes in the EPC program which was to lead to the creation of the Leclerc main battle tank.

Under contract to the Technical Center of Land Weapons (CETAM) of Bourges, they developed the first configuration of what would later be named the PAC or Plaques Accélérées par Chocs (French for "Shock-Accelerated Plates") whose working principle and layout can be compared to Non-Explosive Reactive Armor (NERA).

Those tanks were known by the Iraqi Army as Al Faw and Enigma by NATO intelligence services because of its unknown nature at that time.