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Explosive reactive armor is that brick-looking stuff that the Soviets loved covering their tanks in during the last days of the Cold War: Kharkov Stronk! I admit not knowing much about ERA, but a quick check around various sources has impressed the following things on me: -ERA is, pound for pound, the most effective armor technology that exists. Nothing else even comes remotely close. First-generation Israeli Blazer ERA was estimated to have a mass efficiency (vs RHA) of 20-24 vs HEAT threats. That's insane. The very best modern steel laminates using ultra-high hardness alloys magically welded to high toughness alloys achieve a mass efficiency of 1.5. MEs of 3 are spoken of in hushed whispers for exotic material composite arrays. ERA must be mounted on something fairly stout, on account of the whole "explosive" thing, but even mounted to RHA, the ME of the entire array is on the order of 2.5-3.8, and better still for ERA mounted on top of something more sophisticated. ERA is stupidly cheap and stupidly light for how effective it is. -The most commonly available descriptions of how the Kontakt-5 "heavy" ERA works are probably wrong. Surprise surprise; commonly available articles about a technical subject are completely wrong. Robb Mcleod's article gives a more likely explanation on the basis of areal density vs. installation mass and coverage. Instead of an extremely heavy one-piece flyer plate that snaps the APFSDS penetrators, Kontakt-5 works by having two flyer plates that move in different directions; one slightly up and one slightly down, guillotining off the front portion of long-rod APFSDS penetrators.
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