an extremely thin embedded antenna for an armor - carrying vehicle utilizes a dipole driven element to the inside of the armor plate and a parasitically - driven dipole element on top of the armor plate , with the parasitic element providing appropriate forward gain and antenna matching characteristics such that there need be no aperturing of the armor plate in order to feed the antenna . in one embodiment , the bowtie antenna elements are elongated , extended or expanded by outboard antenna sections which are spaced from the distal ends of the corresponding bowties , with a meanderline choke bridging the gap between a bowtie element and its extended portion .