The US Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia has successfully tested the Israeli Trophy Active Protection System for tanks and armored personnel carriers (APCs). Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd., the system’s developer, predicts that the Pentagon will equip its Stryker 8x8 combat vehicles serving in Iraq with the armor.
The US has two armored divisions in Iraq, and equipping them with the Trophy armor will cost an estimated $300-400 million. The Trophy is one option for protecting US platforms under development as part of the US Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, which means that potential sales of the Trophy could reach billions of dollars.
For the purpose of the test, a month ago, the IDF Ground Forces Command sent a Trophy-equipped Stryker (one of three purchased for testing by the IDF) to the US Naval Surface Warfare Center. A US Air Force C-130 Hercules cargo made a special trip to collect the Stryker for the test.
The Trophy system was tested in late March at testing grounds at Dahlgren, Virginia, before representatives of countries with military units in Iraq, and senior US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps officers and Pentagon officials. During the live-fire exercise, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG-7) were fired at the Israeli Stryker. The Trophy destroyed one RPG shell in flight, and a second shell was diverted off course, rendering it no threat and was ignored by the system.
Rafael representative Col. (res.) Didi Ben-Yoash, who heads the project’s business development and attended the live-fire exercise, said the Trophy was “a revolution in armor protection.”
The Trophy, unveiled by the IDF a year ago, combines two main systems: a radar built by Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. (IAI) subsidiary Elta Systems group, detects threats; and a Rafael-designed system destroys incoming threats in flight. Rafael claims that the Trophy can protect armored fighting vehicles against all types of anti-tank rockets and missiles.
The two conceptual innovations incorporated into the Trophy are 360-degree protection of the tank or APC, which eliminates the need for adding armor plating, which can double a tank’s weight, restricting its mobility and maneuverability; and to provide protection from new threats from the side and top in low-intensity combat, compared with frontal threats of the past. Frontal protection was the rationale behind development of Israel’s Merkava tank, in which the engine is in front. In low-intensity combat in populated and urban areas, threats to armored fighting vehicles can come from every direction and angle.
Rafael believes that the US wants to install the Trophy on all Strykers operating in Iraq: two brigades of 300 Strykers each, at an estimated cost of $350,000-500,000 per Trophy. Rafael can therefore expect $300 million in sales, and this is only the first stage in marketing the system.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on April 16, 2006
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