Israeli<\/a>\u00a0tanker told me. \u201cIf you are only protecting yourself, the enemy will continue shooting at you.\u201d That doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019ll hit you \u2014 US testers fired at a Trophy-equipped tank\u00a048 times without a kill\u00a0\u2014 but why give them the chance?<\/p>\nTo intercept a threat, the Trophy system needs detailed data on its trajectory, which means it can figure out the point of origin. \u201cThe system will provide\u2026the exact location of the shooter,\u201d he said, and not just to you: The targeting data goes to \u201cthe other vehicles in the formation\u201d over a radio network. That\u2019s more than a nifty feature. It\u2019s a minor tactical revolution.<\/p>\n
![\"Marine](\"https:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/07\/Javelin-missile-fired-by-Marine-081208-M-0000C-001-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Since 1916, the biggest threat to tanks has been, not other tanks, but ambush by hidden anti-tank weapons \u2014 from repurposed field guns in World War I to specialized\u00a0panzerj\u00e4ger<\/em>\u00a0vehicles in World War II to shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles today. Tank designers have improved armor materials to diffuse the impact of explosions and installed \u201creactive armor\u201d that blows itself up to prematurely detonate incoming warheads. But without\u00a0some sort of breakthrough, more advanced threats require heavier armor, driving modern Western main battle tanks like the American\u00a0M1 Abrams\u00a0and Israeli Merkava north of\u00a070 tons.<\/p>\nThe promise of Active Protection is that, without adding much weigh (by tank standards), they can defeat a lot of threats, albeit not all. There are two ways to get enough energy to kill a tank:<\/p>\n
\n- kinetic energy, a solid armor-penetrating slug at staggering velocity, which requires a big main gun that will only fit on another tank; or<\/li>\n
- chemical energy, i.e. an explosive warhead, which is what everybody\u00a0but<\/em>tanks has to use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Current APS technology can\u2019t stop the solid tank rounds, but it can stop the lower-velocity explosive rounds used by enemy infantry and aircraft \u2014 traditional ambushers of tanks. An APS that pinpoints the shooter for immediate retaliation, potentially by the whole tank unit, could turn the tables even further by stripping away the defining advantage of the ambush, concealment.<\/p>\n
![\"Army](\"https:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/02\/M1-Abrams-with-Trophy-APS-9ed777416ebc9fe34bed41b570f3b181-1024x512.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
How Trophy Works<\/strong><\/p>\nSo how does Trophy work? In essence, an APS is a\u00a0miniaturized missile defense system\u00a0that goes on an armored vehicle. It requires multiple radars \u2014 carefully sited around the tank for clear lines of sight \u2014 to spot incoming threats from all directions. Then it needs a powerful computer to make sense of the data in a fraction of a second: You don\u2019t want your APS going off every time something fires a bullet or when a bird lands on the turret. Only if the computer decides there is a real threat does it send warning data to the crew and nearby vehicles.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s more, only if the computer decides there is a real threat and it\u2019s probably going to hit does it engage the \u201chard kill\u201d countermeasure to shoot it down. Ironically, Trophy fires a miniaturized version of the Explosively Formed Projectiles (EFPs) that have destroyed so many US and Israeli vehicles in the last decade. An EFP is\u00a0created<\/em>\u00a0in an explosive process \u2014 as the name says \u2014 but isn\u2019t an explosive itself.<\/p>\nCritics have liked Trophy to \u201ca shotgun blast. It\u2019s not,\u201d the Rafael official insisted. \u201cIt\u2019s a sniper shot\u2026. a small number of EFPs in a very small area, aimed at a specific point on the warhead itself.\u201d Rather than just blow the threat out of the air, Trophy tries to disable the threat so it doesn\u2019t detonate.<\/p>\n
![\"Rafael](\"https:\/\/breakingdefense.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2018\/03\/Trophy-components-2-e1520269838766-300x225.png\")
<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t always work: Some test videos online show incoming rounds going off in spectacular fireballs that mean at least some of the explosive material went off. But even if that happens, Rafael insist, there\u2019s less than a 1 percent risk that nearby troops or civilians will be harmed. While Israeli standard procedures call for infantry to keep well away from armored vehicles so they aren\u2019t run over, he said, in combat infantry often take cover behind a tank, and that tactic hasn\u2019t changed because those tanks have Trophy. In fact, he said, there are documented cases of Trophy intercepting an incoming missile while the tank commander had his head out of the hatch to look around, or in one case while he was actually getting out, and none of those crewmembers has been injured.<\/p>\n
The Israelis currently use Trophy on two models of their Merkava main battle tank, as well as on the heavily armored\u00a0Namer\u00a0troop carrier. But Rafael has tested it on much lighter armored vehicles, including the US Army\u2019s 8\u00d78\u00a0Stryker\u00a0in 2006 and 2010, the official said.<\/p>\n
In the current crash program, the US Army is only installing Trophy on the M1 Abrams heavy tank, while it\u2019s trying\u00a0rival systems\u00a0on\u00a0the lightweight Stryker and middleweight M2 Bradley. It would be more challenging in install Trophy on those smaller vehicles, the official acknowledged, but it would be possible.<\/p>\n
Having Trophy on all three vehicles would be a lot logistically simpler than having three different systems, the Rafael official pointed out. Because they\u2019re still R&D efforts, he argued, Trophy\u2019s rivals also lack its real-world track record and its established supply chain.<\/p>\n
Much of that supply chain for Trophy is in the US. \u201cWe could produce it locally in the US, because we are manufacturing today more than 50 percent of the system in the US,\u201d the Israeli exec said, before adding a very American comment: Trophy has\u00a0suppliers in 15 states.<\/p>\n
Fuente:<\/strong>\u00a0https:\/\/breakingdefense.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los sistemas de protecci\u00f3n activa (APS) para blindados como el israel\u00ed TROPHY (APS) han demostrado ser una eficiente alternativa, para hacer frente a la amenazas… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,11,29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}