Challenge: Armour Up! Modular Lightweight Armour for Land Vehicles

Challenge Statement

The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) are seeking innovative solutions for lightweight protection materials (armour) for land vehicles that can withstand and recover from multiple ballistic/blast events before requiring replacement.

Background and Context

Armour on land vehicles is one of the last barriers to protect the mounted troops from hostile attacks. Current armours undergo significant deformation during ballistic/blast events, negatively impacting the armour’s ability to absorb the energy of subsequent impacts. In addition to the armour integrated within the vehicle, modular “add-on” armour is used to bolster the vehicle’s ballistic/blast resistance, and to protect against specific threats. This add-on armour is considered sacrificial, and must be replaced following a ballistic/blast event. While the replacement of damaged add-on armor is challenging, time consuming, and costly, failure to replace it increases the vulnerability of the vehicles and reduces their operational capability.

Adding additional or thicker add-on armour increases the weight of the vehicle, reducing the vehicle’s capacity to carry other payload (personnel, weapons, supplies) and/or its mobility and maneuverability. New, lightweight, and robust add-on armour systems need to be developed to improve the protection of the land vehicles against a variety of threats.

Desired Outcomes

The goal of this challenge is to develop light-weight, add-on amours for land vehicles that absorb energy and recover their shape, post-impact, while retaining their ballistic properties, thereby reducing the urgency for replacement. Innovative new design concepts and technologies are sought that include, but are not limited to the following characteristics:

• Ability to withstand and recover from multi-hit impacts;
• Protection against different kinetic and chemical energy threats including improvised explosive devices (IEDs).