saddamsnightmare
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One of my military driving instructor has been on several tours into the sandbox and has been hit 4 times by IED's. Once in a Piranha/Stryker, once in a Leopard A2 MBT, and once in an MRAP Cougar and I cant remember what he was inside the 4th time. But 3 out of the 4 hits the vehicle they were in was NOT able to leave the hotspot on its own power or help. Effectively all 3 vehicles was scrappers. His latest hit was in an MRAP Cougar which was able to drive away from the blast and limb its way back home with not a single scratch on any of the occupants, but minor bruises etc.There have been MBTs sent sky high with buried IEDs, killing everyone, and this was many years ago. Shaped charges or simply enough of a charge will defeat anything. It is pure folly to believe any armor offers total protection.
Chobham is the laminar armour construction used on the Challenger tanks, not sure what the American's call their variant or the germans theirs. But I was under the impression that the "sandwich" nature of the laminar armour would actually work as a deterrent against shaped charges etc, as some of the individual layers was NOT made of metalic layers and thus would not melt or burn by the molten metal stream.Even the Chobham armor on a tank like the M1A2 can be defeated. HEDELTA, on this list, drove an M1A1 in Iraq and was hit by an IED that destroyed the tank. Maybe, he'll chime in with his own war story.
It is actually a secretCeramic layers combined with high mass layers. It disperses the molten jet of copper/etc on impact as well as resisting the actual force of the impact.
It's not a secret, just difficult to get right.