Strykers with anti-RPG slat armor in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON: A decade after the Trophy anti-missile system entered fight service on Israeli heavy tanks, producer Rafael says it’s constructing an equally efficient model at half the load – for a buyer it may possibly’t disclose.
Rafael has beforehand stated they’d gotten the load of Trophy VPS down 40 p.c under the unique model, largely by intelligent design and changing 2010-era electronics with a lot lighter fashionable variations. But now, land programs VP Michael Lurie advised me, the US Army has independently streamlined the combination equipment it makes use of to put in Trophy. If you mix Rafael’s lighter VPS with the Army’s lighter integration equipment, Lurie stated, you chop weight in half.
That, the corporate says, makes the brand new Trophy Vehicle Protection System appropriate for the 8×8 Stryker: the Army’s calmly armored 20-plus-ton automobile that’s to date defeated makes an attempt to put in the form of lively safety programs used on 60-plus-ton Israel Merkavas, US M1s, and (most lately) German Leopard IIs. After rejecting Artis’s Iron Curtain system in earlier exams, the Army will try out Rafael’s new Trophy Vehicle Protection System and rival Rheinmetall’s ADS late this 12 months.
For a Stryker, Lurie advised me, “the entire thing collectively can be lower than a ton.”
Getting weight down is vital, particularly as a result of lively safety programs need to go on prime of the automobile to get a transparent view, each for the sensors – usually radar, however Trophy has added an electro-optical eye as nicely, and the interceptors – principally mini-missiles that shoot down incoming anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. Smaller autos have much less room on prime and fewer weight to counterbalance any heavy objects put in on their roof. So what matches on a 60-plus-ton heavy tank just like the M1 received’t match on a Stryker a 3rd as heavy.
Trophy Active Protection System parts on an Israeli Merkava most important battle tank.
Yet it’s lighter autos, with lighter armor, that the majority want lively safety – since there are such a lot of extra sorts of anti-tank rounds that their armor can not cease. In reality, even when an lively protection system blows up an incoming warhead earlier than it strikes the armor, there can be fragments and blast results which may bounce off a full-size tank however nonetheless do substantial injury to a lighter automobile.
How nicely does Stryker VPS deal with this so-called “residual penetration”? “I can’t speak numbers on the telephone,” Lurie stated, “however the residual penetration is manageable with the Stryker.”
Well, what does manageable imply? Will the crew survive however the automobile be totaled? Or will the Stryker have the ability to shrug off no matter shrapnel will get previous Trophy and proceed with its mission?
“It can shield a Stryker crew to a really, very excessive degree,” Lurie advised me. “The system protects your entire automobile… entrance to finish,” he stated, so it ought to stay intact and drivable. (I didn’t ask particularly whether or not unarmored exterior parts like sensors and radio antenna would survive intact, however these are notoriously susceptible).
Overall, he stated, as a result of the sensor high quality, software program, and interceptors are the identical, Stryker would get “the identical … lively safety” as a tank.
What makes Lurie particularly assured is that this Trophy VPS system is now not a lab experiment or developmental product: It’s at present being constructed on a manufacturing meeting line. However, the shopper has requested Rafael to not disclose who they’re or another particulars. (My guess is it’s the Israeli Defense Force itself in a usually hypercautious mode, or maybe a key Arab ally, however that’s pure hypothesis on my half).
Lurie says Rafael will proceed to work on lowering Trophy’s weight, however he doesn’t count on any extra main decreases. Instead it’s focusing extra on upgrading Trophy’s capabilities – together with making it appropriate with the US Army’s forthcoming Modular Active Protection System. The Army needs MAPS to plug-and-play parts from totally different distributors – a radar from this one, an interceptor from that one, a jammer from the opposite – so it may possibly improve quickly with out being tied to anybody contractor similar to Rafael.
“MAPS is an efficient strategy, the appropriate strategy,” Lurie stated. Once the US finalizes the MAPS structure, he expects to have the ability to make Trophy appropriate with a modest funding in “a number of months.”
