Iraq Bomb Nails "Inviolable" Tank

For years, the British Challenger 2 tank has been considered one of the toughest armored vehicles on the planet. Only a fellow Challenger 2, during a friendly-fire incident in the early days of the Iraq war, had managed to get through its seemingly-impervious Chobham armor.

Until now. A Challenger "has been badly damaged for the first time by a roadside bomb in Iraq," the Telegraph is reporting.

*The 62-ton vehicle, which is among the best-protected tanks in the world, was hit by the device during a routine patrol in Basra.
Its driver is thought to have lost both legs during the attack and has been flown back to Britain for medical treatment, while another member of the crew suffered minor injuries.
*

The Challenger 2 was on patrol in the Hyall
Shuala area of western Basra when it was struck by the roadside bomb on
April 6, the day after four British soldiers were killed when their
Warrior armoured vehicle was blown up.

Professor Michael Clarke, from King's College's Defence
Studies centre, told the BBC that the tank's armor was ordinarily "inviolable."* *

*He said: "Most of the things on a battlefield are not much of a threat to a tank, usually.
*

*"This is worrying, because if there are many of these sorts of very heavy penetrative improvised explosive devices around in the area then no vehicle is safe." *

DANGER ROOM's David Hambling wonders if this is the work of an "explosively-formed penetrator," one of the the so-called "superbombs" that have turned up with increasing frequency in Iraq. The weapons -- closed associated with "shaped charges" -- are perhaps the deadliest arms in the insurgent arsenal.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson seemed to confirm that, with a non-denial kind of denial to the Telegraph.

He refuted that the tank "had been damaged by a new type of 'shaped charge' IED, which concentrates the force of an explosion.

"It is not some sort of escalation. We would dispute the fact that it’s a new bomb," he added. "It was an improved explosive device and the technology is at least 50 or 60 years old."

Shaped charges are go back, at least that far.

(High five: PB, JQP)