Anti-Ballistic Airbag for RPGs

This proposal describes a protective system for military vehicles that can prevent (or mitigate) damage caused by incoming Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs). The system is applied to existing vehicles, and can be removed and reattached with a minimum of effort. A key advantage of this protective system, called Anti-Ballistic Airbag (ABA), is that it pushes the explosive energy of the RPG away from the vehicle, preventing the typical loss of life and severe vehicle damage caused by a RPG. Our concept, consisting of a rapidly inflating protective Kevlar-type bag, is the analog of the automotive airbag, which has been extremely successful at protecting vehicle passengers from severe injury in a vehicle crash. In the same way, the ABA makes use of the known timing and physics of an RPG to deploy a protective bag before it strikes the vehicle. The ABA is placed on the outside of the vehicle and can be deployed before the RPG strikes the vehicle and explodes.