Chobham
This article deals with Chobham as it relates to NationStates. For more general information, see the Wikipedia article on this subject.
Chobham armour was first developed for the Roudland Chieftain MBT during the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. Since then, it has been revised twice; second generation Chobham was brought out with the Challenger 1 in 1989, and has been the dominant battle armour in the Alliance since that time. In 2006, the SRLC began an extensive restructuring programme, including the purchase of BMP-3s from Kegmenistan, and the development of a new Scorpion MBT. In response to this, Chobham Industries offered its armour for the new tank. Super Rome accepted, and work was begun on Chobham's third generation.
More a refinement of the armour, generation 3 Chobham is now slightly easier to manufacture, install etc. Its protective properties are still the same, and it still reigns supreme among the other tank armours in the Alliance. In response of the Super Roman adoption of the armour, Chobham Industries offered the new armour package, albeit in a heavier form, to Roudland and Gothria. They both accepted, and the armour is currently being deployed across Gothria's 2,000, and Roudland's 6,000 Challengers, as well as Super Rome's Scorpion Urban and MBT variants.
There are now two forms of Chobham; the heavier package deployed on Challenger 2s is still named Chobham, whereas the slightly lighter (for manoeuvrability and speed) version for Super Rome is called Dorchester-Chobham. The two packages differ only slightly; Chobham incorporates the base plate armour, ablative combat blocks and steel slatted shielding. All this makes the armour very heavy, and since Chobham was designed for the Challenger 2, it has proved difficult to adapt it for Scorpions without losing some urban manoeuvrability etc. Therefore, some of the heavier protection has been stripped away, but the base plates remain; the ablative anti-missile blocks have been lessened in size, though their effectiveness has not been diminished unless multiple missiles are launched at short intervals. Similarly, there is less slatted shielding, and even less so on the Scorpion Urban, where the quad-tracked design made it difficult to avoid armour clashing with tracks etc. In essence, the only real difference between Heavy Chobham and Dorchester-Chobham is the ability of the heavier variant to withstand multiple anti-tank blasts during major cavalry engagements; since this is not the role of the Scorpion, it is of little consequence. The Scorpion can now perform its roles with some of the best protection of any armoured vehicle in the Alliance; in tests, Scorpions have withstood two direct APFSDS rounds at a distance of 1200 metres (fired from a Great Wrightland Leopard 2).
