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Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA)

Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) refers to a type of reactive armor for military vehicles, predominantly used for tanks and armored personnel carriers (APC), that breaks up a competing projectile upon impact in order to protect the vehicle from being penetrated and keep the crew inside safe. ERA was first designed in Soviet Russia in the late 1900s. ERA became the subject of memes and internet discourse in 2022 and 2023 amid the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, starting with threads on 4chan's /k/ board. At first, the memes made fun of the Russian military and its typical use of ineffective, dangerous and inferior ERA to the Ukrainians. Later, in early 2023, ERA memes were made about the Ukrainian army putting ERA on seemingly everything following the military's acquisition of German-made Leopard 2 tanks from Poland. The memes spread to /pol/ and Reddit's /r/NonCredibleDefense sub where ERA bricks were used as an exploitable, being edited onto image macros and meme templates along with Ukrainian soldier-coded Flork of Cows characters. ERA was also called "Cope Bricks" in reference to Copium and Cope Cages.