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A military patent filed 12 years ago but kept secret until now has been
unveiled by the German and British patent offices (DE 3715807 and GB 2329234).
The Franco-German Research Institute in Saint-Louis, France, designed a
protection system for tanks or helicopters that launches metal grids at incoming
shells or missiles to throw them off track. A patchwork of grids, each fitted
with coils, is mounted across the vehicle surface. Each grid is sandwiched
between coils of opposite polarity. When a shell or missile is detected by
radar, a high-voltage pulse from a battery creates opposing magnetic fields that
strongly repel the relevant grid, launching it to intercept the shell. Tests
showed that grids could intercept incoming missiles as far away as 100
metres.