Armour (British English) or armor (American English) is a covering to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from damage, especially direct contact weapons or projectiles [发射物] during combat, or from a potentially dangerous environment or activity (e.g., cycling, construction sites, etc.). Personal armour is used to protect soldiers and war animals. Vehicle armour is used on warships, armoured fighting vehicles, and some combat aircraft.
Armour has been used throughout recorded history. It has been made from a variety of materials, beginning with the use of leathers or fabrics as protection and evolving through mail [锁子甲] and metal plate [板甲] into today's modern composites [复合装甲]. Mail, sometimes called "chainmail", made of interlocking iron rings is believed to have first appeared some time after 300 BC.
Around the dynastic Tang, Song, and early Ming Period, cuirasses [上半身铠甲] and plates (mingguangjia [明光铠]) were also used, with more elaborate versions for officers in war. The Chinese, during that time used partial plates for "important" body parts instead of covering their whole body since too much plate armour hinders their martial arts movement. The other body parts were covered in cloth, leather, lamellar, or Mountain pattern [山文甲]. In pre-Qin dynasty times, leather armour was made out of various animals, with more exotic ones such as the rhinoceros. Lamellar armour is a type of body armour, made from small rectangular plates (scales or lamellae) of iron or steel, leather (rawhide [生皮]), or bronze laced into horizontal rows.
山文甲的甲片多为山字形金属片组合而成。"古用皮，谓之甲，今用金，谓之铠。" 胄zhòu: 盔，古代战士戴的帽子。
Barding (also spelled bard or barb) is body armour for war horses, especially as used by European knights.
During World War I, the stalemate of trench warfare during on the Western Front spurred the development of the tank. It was envisioned as an armoured machine that could advance under fire from enemy rifles and machine guns, and respond with its own heavy guns. It utilized caterpillar tracks to cross ground broken up by shellfire and trenches.
The armoured personnel carrier (APC) was devised during World War I. It allows the safe and rapid movement of infantry in a combat zone, minimising casualties and maximising mobility.
Combat drones [无人机] use little to no vehicular armour as they are not manned vessels, this results in them being lightweight and small in size.
DU (Depleted Uranium, 贫铀) is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme weight and density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government money on the cost of its disposal.
Rather than disposing of the radioactive waste, it is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan . The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been forcibly exported and spread in the environments of Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. https://www.wagingpeace.org/the-real-dirty-bombs-depleted-uranium/
The favored bullet of American tank gunners and pilots was the armor-piercing DU "penetrator," first used in combat in the Gulf war because of its remarkable density - not its radioactivity. Pentagon figures indicate that at least 860,000 DU rounds were fired, leaving behind a trail of radioactive toxic jetsam [残留物] that will remain contaminated for 4.5 billion years, a time span comparable to the age of our solar system. https://merip.org/1999/06/the-gulf-war-battlefield-still-hot-with-depleted-uranium/
六级/考研单词: armour, combat, construct, evolve, composite, elaborate, hinder, dynasty, exotic, bronze, lace, horizon, knight, trench, warfare, spur, rifle, utilize, carrier, devise, rapid, casualty, mobile, vessel, deplete, uranium, ammunition, missile, enrich, expertise, million, disposition, radioactive, rod, billion, import, bullet, gulf, trail, toxic, contaminate, span, solar