# US Army Shuns System to Combat RPGs



## Bruce Monkhouse (5 Sep 2006)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14686871/

Experts agree it might help save lives, so why isn’t it in the field?


WASHINGTON - Rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, are a favorite weapon of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are cheap, easy to use and deadly.

RPGs have killed nearly 40 Americans in Afghanistan and more than 130 in Iraq, including 21-year-old Pvt. Dennis Miller.
“They were in Ramadi, and his tank was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade,” says Miller’s mother, Kathy. “Little Denny never knew what hit him.”

Sixteen months ago, commanders in Iraq began asking the Pentagon for a new system to counter RPGs and other anti-tank weapons. 
Last year, a special Pentagon unit thought it found a solution in Israel — a high-tech system that shoots RPGs out of the sky. But in a five-month exclusive investigation, NBC News has learned from Pentagon sources that that help for U.S. troops is now in serious jeopardy.
The system is called “Trophy,” and it is designed to fit on top of tanks and other armored vehicles like the Stryker now in use in Iraq.

Trophy works by scanning all directions and automatically detecting when an RPG is launched. The system then fires an interceptor — traveling hundreds of miles a minute — that destroys the RPG safely away from the vehicle.
The Israeli military, which recently lost a number of tanks and troops to RPGs, is rushing to deploy the system.

Trophy is the brainchild of Rafael, Israel’s Armament Development Authority, which has conducted more than 400 tests and found that the system has “well above [a] 90 percent” probability of killing RPGs and even more sophisticated anti-tank weapons, according to reserve Col. Didi Ben Yoash, who helped develop the system. Ben Yoash says he is “fully confident” that Trophy can save American lives.

And officials with the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation (OFT) agree. Created in 2001 by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, OFT acts as an internal “think tank” for the Pentagon and is supposed to take a more entrepreneurial — and thereby less bureaucratic — approach to weapons procurement and other defense issues, and to get help to troops in the field more quickly. OFT officials subjected Trophy to 30 tests and found that it is “more than 98 percent” effective at killing RPGs.

An official involved with those tests told NBC that Trophy “worked in every case. The only anomaly was that in one test, the Trophy round hit the RPG’s tail instead of its head. But according to our test criteria, the system was 30 for 30.”
As a result, OFT decided to buy several Trophies — which cost $300,000-$400,000 each — for battlefield trials on Strykers in Iraq next year.

That plan immediately ran into a roadblock: Strong opposition from the U.S. Army. Why?  Pentagon sources tell NBC News that the Army brass considers the Israeli system a threat to an Army program to develop an RPG defense system from scratch.

The $70 million contract for that program had been awarded to an Army favorite, Raytheon. Raytheon’s contract constitutes a small but important part of the Army’s massive modernization program called the Future Combat System (FCS), which has been under fire in Congress on account of ballooning costs and what critics say are unorthodox procurement practices.

Col. Donald Kotchman, who heads the Army’s program to develop an RPG defense, acknowledges that Raytheon’s system won’t be ready for fielding until 2011 at the earliest.  

That timeline has Trophy’s supporters in the Pentagon up in arms. As one senior official put it, “We don’t really have a problem if the Army thinks it has a long-term solution with Raytheon.  But what are our troops in the field supposed to do for the next five or six years?”

Kotchman, however, says the Army is doing everything prudent to provide for the protection and safety of U.S. forces and insists the Israeli system is not ready to be deployed by the U.S. “Trophy has not demonstrated its capability to be successfully integrated into a system and continue to perform its wartime mission,” he says.

That claim, however, is disputed by other Pentagon officials as well as internal documents obtained by NBC News. In an e-mail, a senior official writes: “Trophy is a system that is ready — today... We need to get this capability into the hands of our warfighters ASAP because: (1) It will save lives!”

Officials also tell NBC News that according to the Pentagon’s own method of measuring a weapons system’s readiness, Trophy is “between a 7 and an 8” out of a possible score of 9.  Raytheon’s system is said to be a “3.”
So why would the Army block a solution that might help troops? 

“There are some in the Army who would be extremely concerned that if the Trophy system worked, then the Army would have no need to go forward with the Raytheon system and the program might be terminated,” says Steven Schooner, who teaches procurement law at both George Washington University and the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s School.

Trophy’s supporters inside the Pentagon are more blunt. As one senior official told NBC News, “This debate has nothing, zero, to do with capability or timeliness. It’s about money and politics. You’ve got a gigantic program [FCS] and contractors with intertwined interests.  Trophy was one of the most successful systems we’ve tested, and yet the Army has ensured that it won’t be part of FCS and is now trying to prevent it from being included on the Strykers” that OFT planned to send to Iraq.

For families of soldiers like Denny Miller, any delay in getting help to the troops is unthinkable.
As Miller’s mother, Kathy, put it, “Do they have children over there? Do they have husbands or wives over there? They need to sit back and look at it maybe from a different angle. I just think it's ridiculous!”

The Pentagon is now trying to interest the Marine Corps in testing Trophy. But because of Army opposition, there are currently no plans to send the system to Iraq.


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## GAP (5 Sep 2006)

Sounds perfect for Canada....hmmm  

Why are we not looking at it for Afghanistan?


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## George Wallace (5 Sep 2006)

GAP said:
			
		

> Sounds perfect for Canada....hmmm
> 
> Why are we not looking at it for Afghanistan?



Expense.  We would blow our whole budget on one.


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## GAP (5 Sep 2006)

Even at $400,000 each time say 100 that's...um....let's see....1,2,3,4,.....$40,000,000 ....ah abscam money....


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## Cloud Cover (5 Sep 2006)

IMO, this is a no-brainer provided the thing actually works. We would need how many- a few hundred at most? Round up the unit price to 1million each, and make the total number of units 500. Thats 500 million to provide a measure of protection that doesn't currently exist.  500 million is not a large sum of money in overall government dollars. Fund it directly from the treasury board as an IOR and get it done.


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## tomahawk6 (5 Sep 2006)

The Israelis had TROPHY on their tanks it would be interesting to see if the system worked in Lebanon.
This subject came up in April. Might shed some light on this topic.

http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/42651.0.html


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## big_johnson1 (5 Sep 2006)

What's interesting is the next-gen Trophy system is being developed to intercept kinetic energy projectiles, aka tank rounds etc.. Systems like this and the Tactical High Energy Laser look like they'll be able to make the battlefield a lot safer (bet the Israelis wish they were a little further along with the THEL when the rockets started flying from Lebanon).

This link has a video near the bottom showing the Trophy system in action
http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=861


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## a_majoor (6 Sep 2006)

I can see two potential problems to an active system like Trophy (or Dozad/ Arena to name another two): target discrimination especially against clutter in complex terrain, and the danger to dismounted troops in the area when this goes off.

The enemy will also work on countermeasures as well, so we can consider the short term problem (lack of orders) as a political issue, and in the long term we will see a complex dance of measures and countermeasures.

At some point in time, there may be a tipping point where protection becomes so difficult or complex that it is no longer effective, a historical analogy would be the loss of body armour starting at the end of the 1500's, when it became obvious that no amount of armour could protect a soldier or cavalryman against firearms. Soldiers and cavalry continued to exist, but it took nearly 500 years for material science to make personal armour practical again.


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## Kirkhill (6 Sep 2006)

Or put another way - the cost of defence keeps increasing.  The cost of offence is decreasing (as PGMs become smaller, more effective and cheaper).


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## geo (6 Sep 2006)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The Israelis had TROPHY on their tanks it would be interesting to see if the system worked in Lebanon.
> This subject came up in April. Might shed some light on this topic.


The matter did come up in the news recently.  No IDF vehicle with Trophy installed got hit during the recent dust-up.... though wa all know that a bunch without the kit did get hit... a lot of squawking going on in Israel on the subject.


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## LakeSup (6 Sep 2006)

I wouldn't want to be a troop in a veh or on foot when that "wall of pellets" launches if I happen to be in the direction of the projectile.
Not to mention innocent bystanders in urban environments.  This is a non starter in the present environment.  Another concept that works well on paper and on (possibly ) the field test range with a single vehicle facing a single projectile but not in the real world.


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## geo (6 Sep 2006)

there are times when the system is useful and effective and there are times that it isn't.... 
t'would be nice to have the option to put the system online / offline instead of sticking your head between your legs & kissing your a$$ goodbye.


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## jbeach95 (7 Sep 2006)

Doesn't this remind anyone of the whole Dragon Skin vs. Interceptor body armour debate? The US Army refuses to replace its own Interceptor body armour with the better Dragon Skin armour produced by Pinnacle. (Maybe Canada should also be looking at acquiring this.)
http://Forums.Army.ca/forums/threads/38662.0.html

Seems like there's a pattern here.


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## geo (7 Sep 2006)

patterns.....
dealing with defence contractors & lobbyists?
Naw!
Say it ain't so


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## Old Sweat (7 Sep 2006)

It can also be defined as the NIH (not invented here) factor, which infests many if not most development and procurement programs, especially in arms-producing countries.


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## Kalatzi (7 Sep 2006)

Here's a link that you may find interesting
Hilights some work that NBC did looking at  the two systems and the acquistion process

http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/09/what_militaryin.html


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## Kalatzi (7 Sep 2006)

and heres another on the raytheon solution
S. Bakers' right it does use a different approach
http://www.defencetalk.com/news/publish/article_004897.php


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## tomahawk6 (29 Sep 2006)

Israeli discussion of this type of system with their recent experience in Lebanon.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1159193339758


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## GAP (10 Jan 2007)

Is US Army blocking use of Israel's anti-RPG weapons in Iraq?
January 5, 2007 at 1:25 p.m.
Article Link

Critics say the Army prefers to develop its own system to protect soldiers against insurgents' grenades.
By Tom Regan  | csmonitor.com

Israel has developed an anti-rocket-propelled-grenade (RPG) system, known as "Trophy," which could be used in Iraq to help protect US soldiers against one of the insurgents' most effective weapons. But NBC News reports that the US Army is balking at using Trophy, claiming that it not ready for field deployment, despite Israeli demonstrations to the contrary.

 Trophy works by scanning all directions and automatically detecting when an RPG is launched. The system then fires an interceptor — traveling hundreds of miles a minute — that destroys the RPG safely away from the vehicle.

[The Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation] subjected Trophy to 30 tests and found it is "more than 98 percent" effective at killing RPGs. Officials then made plans to battle-test the system on some Stryker fighting vehicles headed to Iraq this year.

But the US Army blocked that testing. Why? Pentagon sources tell NBC News – and internal Army documents seem to confirm – that Army officials consider Trophy a threat to their crown jewel, the $160 billion Future Combat System (FCS). Under FCS, the Army is paying Raytheon Co. $70 million to build an RPG-defense system from scratch.

NBC also reports that the Army told Congress that Trophy is unsafe, does not have an autoloader (the Army suggested this would mean a soldier would have to get out of his or her vehicle to reload Trophy, this exposing themselves to enemy fire), and that Israel had not integrated it into their military. But NBC went to Israel and discovered that none of these points were valid. 
More on  link


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## daftandbarmy (10 Jan 2007)

Yet another good reason for friendly infantry to stay away from their initmate support tanks!


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## Command-Sense-Act 105 (10 Jan 2007)

And another thing for the crew to remember to disable in the "heater off, speakers off, gun safe, COAX safe, MG safe, MBGD safe (or all 4 clear, depending on your SOP and threat level - don't need another UNPROFOR fuel bladder/MBSGD incident), *Anti-Missile safe* (or clear), gun over back deck, hydraulics off" routine when going into a Running Replen!


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## CougarKing (7 Nov 2007)

I am surprised such a system even exists, though the concept is similar to Phalanx for warships, but at a smaller scale.

http://www.defense-update.com/products/t/trophy.htm

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=1370706


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## Thorvald (7 Nov 2007)

From the http://www.defense-update.com/products/t/trophy.htm link:



> Another worry is collateral damage, he said. “In a tight urban area, the Trophy system may take out the RPG, but we may kill 20 people in the process,” Sorenson said. “That is a concern we have that we haven’t fully evaluated.”



Hmm, gotta love that statement... ouch comes to mind.


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## Maclimius (7 Nov 2007)

This technology isn't a new concept. The Russians experimented with an active protection system in the late seventies to eighties before scrapping it due to high collateral damage. Ironically, it was used during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.



> Drozd ("thrush" in Russian) is an active protection system developed in the Soviet Union, designed for increasing tanks' protection against anti-tank missiles and RPGs. It is considered the world's first operational active protection system, created in 1977–78 by A. Shipunov's KBP design bureau as Kompleks 1030M-01.
> 
> Drozd uses 24.5 GHz Doppler radar to detect incoming rounds travelling between 70 and 700 m/s (to avoid engaging small arms or other faster projectiles). Its computer determines when to fire a 107 mm projectile. When the incoming round is at 7 m range — the Drozd fragmentation warhead detonates, spreading 3-gram slugs to destroy the incoming round. The Drozd system was relatively complex, requiring a radar array and two launch tubes on each side of the tank turret, and a large electronics package on turret rear.
> 
> ...


Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drozd

And of course the Arena APS developed in response to Chechnya.


> he Arena Active Protection System (APS) is an active countermeasure system developed at Russia's Kolomna-based Engineering Design Bureau to protect armoured fighting vehicles from shaped-charge projectiles. It uses a millimeter-wavelength doppler radar to detect incoming warheads, then fires a defensive projectile, timed to detonate immediately above the target and spray it with a stream of splinters thereby defeating the threat.
> 
> The dangerous zone is relatively small, 20–30 meters around the tank, allowing for infantry to operate nearby. When the system is triggered, a warning signal is activated, to warn nearby personnel to keep distance or take cover. However, it should be noted that a HEAT projectile hitting any target creates shrapnel flying from the impact zone.
> 
> ...


Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_Active_Protection_System


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## Greymatters (7 Nov 2007)

CSA 105 said:
			
		

> And another thing for the crew to remember to disable in the "heater off, speakers off, gun safe, COAX safe, MG safe, MBGD safe (or all 4 clear, depending on your SOP and threat level - don't need another UNPROFOR fuel bladder/MBSGD incident), *Anti-Missile safe* (or clear), gun over back deck, hydraulics off" routine when going into a Running Replen!



Are you refering to the one carrier that was reported as 'self-ignited due to electrical fault' or is this a different incident?


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