ABERDEEN TEST CENTER, Md. – By October the Army will have decided whether to outfit a brigade’s worth of Abrams tanks with the Trophy active protection systems (APS) that the service has been studying for months.
The Army’s program executive office for ground combat systems (PEO GCS) has finished collecting information that will “tee up” a decision by Army leaders on whether to invest in the system, which can automatically detect, track and disable or destroy incoming guided munitions.
Over the months of characterizing several APS designs, GCS “fired a lot of rounds at some of those systems,” Maj. Gen. David Bassett, who heads PEO GCS, said Aug 15 during a live fire exercise at a range here.
“Today we understand their performance and I think we are very close to a decision on the Trophy systems. We are looking to make those decisions rapidly so we can spend the money next fiscal year in FY ’18, to get those key systems out to the field.”
GCS has completed the initial round of testing on Trophy to characterize its performance protecting Abrams. He expects additional testing leading up to an urgent material release in fiscal 2018.
Included in the Army’s fiscal 2018 budget request is $387.5 million for APS installation on Abrams – $249 million in the base budget and $138 million in overseas contingency funding (OCO). Another $444 million in base funding and $30 million in OCO will pay for installation of non-developmental active protection systems on Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
Within the OCO portion is funding for 35 APS kits for Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 87 APS sets for M1 Abrams in Europe to deter Russian aggression along NATO’s eastern flank. Production of the systems begins in fiscal 2018, with installation beginning in fiscal 2019 and continuing into fiscal 2020 and beyond.
“Clearly there is a desire out there to move quickly on active protection,” Bassett said.
Col. Glenn Dean, who led the characterization effort, said there is an existing requirement to provide APS capability to units in Europe as a direct response to the anti-tank weapons Russia has fielded along NATO’s eastern border.
“We have some requirements on the table to be able to deliver capability to Europe, but … I’m not yet in a position where I am ready to recommend what the material solutions look like.”
Three systems were tested during the characterization process, one each for Abrams, Bradley and Stryker. As the most mature technology of the three – and the only one funded through an urgent need statement – Trophy installation and characterization moved more quickly than for the other two systems.
Trophy was used in combat by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) during the 2014 war in Gaza, where its ability to stop incoming rocket-propelled grenades and other munitions was proven. During a visit to Israel, Bassett rode inside a Merkava IV tank while inert rounds were fired near the vehicle to demonstrate APS effectiveness, he told Defense Daily.
Trophy is made by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and is distributed in the U.S. by Leonard DRS, a U.S. division of Italy’s Leonardo.
Bassett said General Dynamics [GD] has spent its own research and development dollars to create a software package that allows Abrams to slew-to-cue to the direction of incoming fire. If Trophy is fielded aboard Abrams it will come with that additional capability, he said.
The Army is testing the Iron Fist APS made by Israeli Military Industries to protect Bradley while Iron Curtain, an APS developed by Virginia-based technology firm Artis for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is being tested for use on Stryker. While Trophy performed as advertised, the other systems are not as effective or as easy to operate as the manufacturers claim, Dean said.
“What we’re learning is things that claim to be mature in industry often are not as mature as claimed,” Dean said.
In all three cases, the Army sought to simply install the systems on each platform and then gauge its effectiveness against likely threats like rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles. What PEO GCS will deliver to Army leadership is not a recommendation but a data-driven analysis of the capability of each system, the level of protection each will provide its coupled platform and the impacts to the current capability of each vehicle, Bassett said.
“This is more about install it, characterize its performance and then tee up a decision for Army leadership to say ‘Is this something that is worth our taxpayer dollars and needed in our formations as we understand it?’” Bassett said. “What that does is it strips away all the vendor claims. Whereas you would see a fancy video of a shot on an active protection system that was carefully controlled, we told the vendors ‘Sit over there and we’re going to shoot at it. I didn’t say shoot near it. I said shoot at it.’”
Bassett also reported some “hiccups” in terms of both manufacturing and installation of Iron Fist and Iron Curtain on Bradley and Stryker. Army leadership will have a decision teed up for them about 60 to 90 days after Bassett had originally planned, but not that far behind a decision on Abrams.
Bradley was the most challenging, he said because the current A3 configuration cannot support Iron Fist physically or electronically. Fortunately, the Bradley is due for an upgrade to A4 configuration, which moves the turret ring forward and provides an automotive upgrade that in turn boosts onboard power generation.
“Without those improvements you can’t put active protection on a Bradley,” Bassett said.
The test vehicles are what Bassett called a “mixed configuration” that have some but not all A4 improvements. If the Army goes forward with Iron Fist, Bassett would like to field them on A4 so he would not have to field what Dean called “Franken-Bradleys.”