A few weeks back, buzz was build­ing, fast, for Trophy, an Israeli “active pro­tec­tion” sys­tem that stops rocket-​​propelled grenades in mid-​​air. At the Naval Surface Warfare Center, demon­stra­tions of the vehicle-​​mounted defender a went well, with the Trophy’s four radars pick­ing out out RPG threats, and fir­ing a kind of buck­shot at the incom­ing shells. In Israel and here in the States, test vehi­cles were get­ting equipped. Fox News got so fired up, it declared Trophy to be a “top secret… futur­is­tic force field.” Which lead some com­menters on the lunatic fringe to cheer for the new “bar­rier of invis­i­ble energy frag­ments (per­haps light par­ti­cles charged by lasers).“
But all the heavy-​​breathing didn’t help the sys­tem, in the end. “The Army is pass­ing up [on Trophy] … to pur­sue an alter­na­tive sys­tem that wont be fielded until 2010 or later,” Defense News ace Greg Grant reports.
The Army won’t say why, exactly — only that “the issue with any [active] armor pro­tec­tion sys­tem is the 60 per­cent solu­tion is not accept­able,” says Maj. Gen. Roger Nadeau. But here’s a guess: What hap­pens when Trophy con­fuses a kid with a rock and an RPG-​​carrying insur­gent? How does that look on Al-​​Jazeera?
The free-​​thinkers at the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation — the folks who spon­sored the Trophy tri­als, and who are plant­ing the sys­tem on their exper­i­men­tal Project Sheriff vehi­cles — have an alter­nate the­ory, how­ever. The Army, in their view, is wor­ried that Project Sherriff and Trophy might com­pete with its mas­sive vehi­cle mod­ern­iza­tion pro­gram, Future Combat Systems.

The Army knew about Trophy some 60 offi­cers and FCS offi­cials vis­ited Israel for brief­ings, but not a sin­gle one asked for more infor­ma­tion on the sys­tem. The OFT stum­bled onto the sys­tem last sum­mer and imme­di­ately moved to nego­ti­ate a government-​​to-​​government tech­nol­ogy agree­ment allow­ing American offi­cers unprece­dented access to all the top-​​secret data on the sys­tem…
In fact, Army acqui­si­tion offi­cials are lob­by­ing [higher-​​up Pentagon] offi­cials to allow the ser­vice to remove the active pro­tec­tion sys­tem and the millimeter-​​wave active denial [pain ray] sys­tems that are at the heart of the [Project Sherriff] vehicle.

“Instead, the Army wants to field a Sheriff that eschews the active armor sys­tem for slat armor,” Grant notes. And that’s a big prob­lem. Because insur­gents in Iraq have started using a new, pow­er­ful RPG that shreds the cage-​​like defense.

The RPG-​​29… packs two shaped-​​charge war­heads: a small one to blow up the reac­tive armor or blow through the slats, clear­ing a path for a larger charge to strike the vehi­cles hull. [The weapon] poses such a threat to American armor that the U.S. mil­i­tary has refused to allow the newly formed Iraqi Army to buy them, fear­ing they will fall into the wrong hands, the top Iraqi ground-​​forces gen­eral told The New York Times last August.
There is only one cur­rently avail­able active armor sys­tem designed to defeat RPGs: Israels Trophy sys­tem, accord­ing to OFT officials.

UPDATE 12:55 PM: Last week’s Inside Defense had more on the Army’s active pro­tec­tion reser­va­tions. “It is not just about giv­ing [sol­diers] an APS sys­tem. How do the sol­diers work with it? How does it tie into the net­work? How do you know when to turn it on? When not to turn it on?” said Future Combat Systems pro­gram man­ager Brig. Gen. Charles Cartwright. “We could put some­thing over there … overnight but have I got the logis­tics to be able to sup­port,” the technology.

In recent months, ser­vice offi­cials — not directly involved in the devel­op­ment of APS tech­nolo­gies — have warned against wait­ing for a 100 per­cent solu­tion. During a March 28 Institute for Defense and Government Advancement defense acqui­si­tion sym­po­sium, Edward Bair — the Armys pro­gram exec­u­tive offi­cer for intel­li­gence, elec­tronic war­fare and sen­sors — spoke in detail about how acqui­si­tion reform could bet­ter sup­port the warfighter. Included in Bairs pre­sen­ta­tion was the term “Good Enuf,” at which time he explained that good enough today is bet­ter than opti­mum five years from now.

UPDATE 1:09 PM: Alabama National Guard LT and mis­sile defense engi­neer Jimmy Wu says some of the Army’s hes­i­tancy is legit. But only some.

The cloud of pro­jec­tiles from the active pro­tec­tion sys­tem is bound to hit peo­ple in addi­tion to its tar­get RPG. In addi­tion, in an urban fight, the RPG gun­ners will try to get inside the min­i­mum range of a Trophy sys­tem such that it does not have the time to shoot down the RPG.
On the other hand, there are sit­u­a­tions where the Trophy is use­ful. For exam­ple, dur­ing the approach march [eg, high­way con­voys], where every­one is under armor, the Trophy will min­i­mize losses from an RPG ambush.
Both sides have merit. However, if I was decid­ing, I would deploy the Trophy. By adding an off switch, the Trophy oper­a­tor can turn off the sys­tem when there are many peo­ple out­side the vehi­cle. Training is not a big fac­tor because the small fleet deployed is too small to cause future train­ing prob­lems. Supply should not be an issue either because of the small fleet. We need to encour­age exper­i­men­ta­tion on the bat­tle­field instead of quash­ing ini­tia­tives like the Sheriff.