US Army Inspects Israeli Active Protection Systems for its Combat Vehicles

The Army is currently characterizing three APS systems on Abrams tanks, Strykers and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, including Rafael's Trophy and IMI System's Iron Fist

US Army Inspects Israeli Active Protection Systems for its Combat Vehicles

The Rafael Trophy installed on the LAV III (Photo: Rafael)

The US Army is speeding up development work on its future Modular Active Protection System (MAPS) for combat vehicles.

As the service works on expediting interim solutions for combat vehicle Active Protection Systems, officials are simultaneously ramping up some of the first MAPS tests using soft-kill countermeasures. There is also a plan to begin using the first prototypes of a common controller toward the end of the year. Once the common controller is available, the Army will begin “layered testing,” mixing both soft-kill and hard-kill countermeasures, Col. Glenn Dean told Defense News.

The Army is in the process of bridging near-term, off-the-shelf APS characterization work into the MAPS effort and then into a long-term program of record – the Vehicle Protection System (VPS) – in 2018.

The Army had previously looked at a number of off-the-shelf systems, but each time the service examined a possible capability, it was determined the system was not ready for combat.

The Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) decided to do more work on MAPS in parallel with the interim APS solution efforts. The idea is not to scrap the interim solutions when MAPS comes online. Since MAPS is being developed as an open architecture system with a common controller, the best technology from off-the-shelf APS systems the Army is examining now could feed directly into its own program, according to Dean.

“We said if the off-the-shelf systems perform adequately and the impacts to the platform are acceptable, you potentially have a path to field something very, very soon and eventually you can fold in the technology that you are developing, so it gives us a path,” Dean said. “And if you are not happy with the off-the-shelf performance, you haven’t lost anything and the MAPS program and VPS have gained a tremendous amount of insight into what are the challenges going to be ahead applying that technology.”

The Army is currently characterizing three APS systems on Abrams tanks, Strykers and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles. The three systems are Israel-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ Trophy, the Israel-based IMI System's Iron Fist and US-based Artis Corporation’s Iron Curtain. 

 

[Source: Defense News]