How thick is modern MBT armor (DR 2000)?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

s. If an Abrams is less than DR 2000, then DR of the starship can go down too.

The DR of an Abrams is generally set at about 1680 and double that for Shaped Charge weapons. This is equivalent to 24 inches of Rolled Homogenous Alloy (steel). RHA is DR70 per inch (25mm). The best steel armor is provably 20% better.

Titanium is probably about the same DR per unit of thickness bit only 60% as dense.

You can get higher DRs per unit of weight but most of those armor types are made of materials much less dense than steel. Steel is around 8 gm/cc while a ceramic as dense as glass would only be around 2. Even tough forms of stone are under 3.

Sppacecraft armor might use a lot of spacing too so thickness would be even greater.

If you like your hull thicknesses of 8" to 12"'re going to need a semi-exotic material (and probably just make up your DR numbers). An iridium composite might be about as good as you can get without superscience and iridium has a density around 20.