Ballistic efficiency of lightweight cage armor systems

Cage armor systems similar to the ones used today have been in use since the 1960s and are still being used extensively on many armored vehicles to offer protection against mainly a number of RPG-7 shaped charge warheads. Nevertheless, many misunderstandings still exist up to this day as well as regarding their working principle as regarding their actual efficiency. This article will start by exploring the origins of the current cage armor systems and by explaining the working principle behind them. This will be followed by the development of a methodology to calculate the efficiency of two lightweight cage armor systems (polymer net and inertial distributed weight system) as a function of impact conditions for a specific RPG-7 shaped charge warhead. It will then be applied to these two cage armor systems in order to calculate their overall ballistic efficiency as a function of the compound impact angle.