How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[The_Capt]

4 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

I think people have different ideas about what it means to "work". I am unaware of any technical limitation that would prevent it from working most of the time in Ukraine, or anywhere else, but it's not an invincibility shield. The US Army claims a 70% interception rate for the Iron Fist APS on the Bradley in their "challenging and rigorous testing" (their words,  not mine) and apparently consider that good enough to be worth it*

No one should expect APS to revolutionize warfare. It's one tool in the tool box.

* Interestingly, an earlier version only achieved a 50% intercept rate, which was deemed not good enough.

They definitely have different definitions.  I am also unaware of any technical limitations that do prevent it from working in Ukraine…because it has never been tested in Ukraine.  APS is but one tool, the question is how good is the tool?

My point is one of consistency. There seems to be two standards - one for stuff we want to work, and one for stuff we don’t like.  Which stuff depends on who is talking.

The burden of proof is on APS and frankly any and all point defence systems.  While I fully admit that they have value, the level of that value and how much it will fundamentally change conditions in Ukraine are not defined.  So if APS is a workable solution for ATGMs and drones, then why are they not on every vehicle we send to the UA?  It is fielded and mass produced technology. It has saved thousands of lives in Israel, it could save hundreds of thousands in Ukraine.  Especially if it can break this deadlock.  As a minimum, let’s get it tested in combat conditions in Ukraine so we can get more data. Same goes for those fancy 30mm guns. They exist…I saw the videos.  Let’s get them into the game and fielded. They can be tested and we can actually see their effectiveness.

Right now Ukraine needs capability that can break this deadlock and re-start either corrosive warfare or manoeuvre.  So if people want to bang on a drum let’s get these systems into theatre yesterday. In fact these systems were in play before this war even started. If “well they are buying more” is a good justification for various technologies. The what does “well they aren’t being used in the latest war” say?  Or are the Ukrainians somehow unable to operate these systems?

At least then we would have relevant performance data to pull from.

[Vanir Ausf B]

6 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

Right now Ukraine needs capability that can break this deadlock and re-start either corrosive warfare or manoeuvre.  So if people want to bang on a drum let’s get these systems into theatre yesterday.

Tactical wargamer me could not agree more, but... politics. And it's not just APS. What about the damn F-35? The whole reason it exists is to make AirLand Battle work against modern GBAD.

[Battlefront.com]

26 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

The burden of proof is on APS and frankly any and all point defence systems.  While I fully admit that they have value, the level of that value and how much it will fundamentally change conditions in Ukraine are not defined.

Then there is the cost benefit implications.  If APS has a 75% effective rate, but it costs $1m per vehicle and only for the heaviest of ones and only by sacrificing something the vehicle currently has... well... I'm going to say it's not worth it.  The reason is that statistics matter.

Which gets us into the larger bastard problem we have with the Ukraine war lessons, which is durability matters.  I'll remove all mention of any weapon and just go with a neutral analogy.

Generic Super Defense System has a real world (not test range) 75% chance of defeating the most lethal threat that comes at it. 

Scenario 1 - Low intensity COIN.  The vehicle sporting Generic Super Defense System might be in use every day and only be shot at by the most lethal threat once a month.

Scenario 2- High intensity Ukraine scenario.  The vehicle sporting Generic Super Defense System starts to approach its start line and within 20 minutes is attacked by no fewer than 10 of the most lethal threats.

 

In Scenario 1 the vehicle has a pretty good chance of making it 3 or more months before taking a hit.  In Scenario 2 it stands almost no chance of going more than 20 minute without sustaining any hits at all and a pretty good chance of being hit multiple times.

In Scenario 1 the effective defense rate may indeed be 75%, but in Scenario 2 it is effectively 0%.

Similarly, if something has a 99% effective rate and the enemy routinely uses a weapon/tactic combo that exploits that 1% test case, then what does the other 99% matter?  It's akin to a company touting it's body armor's capabilities against a number of different rounds at a number of different distances in a number of different situations, but the enemy uses a .50cal round and aims for the head.  The body armor is no longer contributing to keeping that soldier from being a casualty.

The point here is that the "75%" figure doesn't mean the same thing for different levels of threat exposure.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I can't remember if anybody posted this already.  Cripes, maybe I did!  Anyway, this is The Economist trying to make sense of what Russia's casualties (KIA/WIA) are really at.  It seems 500k is probable, as much as 750k possible:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/more-than-all-losses-since-world-war-ii-the-economist-calculated-russia-s-casualties/ar-BB1py1Rf

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Anybody know anything about this?  It's from a probable Kremlin sourced propaganda channel on YouTube that shows what appears to be a successful strike on a Ukrainian train loaded with military equipment:

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

It's been a while since I've posted anything about Russia's economic struggles, so I will fix that:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/china-stops-paying-russia-for-cargo-train-shipments/ar-BB1pFJC4?cvid=004ca2f2548c4b3f89b62fa5563161fc&ei=167

The short of it is that Chinese banks are starting to hold up processing payments for rail shipments to Russia because Russian rail companies are under sanctions and they fear being hit by US secondary sanctions.  Delayed payments means delayed shipments to Russia or, in some cases, cancellation because the payments were rejected.

Steve

[Carolus]

24 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

I can't remember if anybody posted this already.  Cripes, maybe I did!  Anyway, this is The Economist trying to make sense of what Russia's casualties (KIA/WIA) are really at.  It seems 500k is probable, as much as 750k possible:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/more-than-all-losses-since-world-war-ii-the-economist-calculated-russia-s-casualties/ar-BB1py1Rf

Steve

Incidently this lends some credence to the official Ukrainian numbers of Russian casualties (in the true meaning of the word 'casualties', meaning a combination of WIA, KIA and POWs, which unfortunately not everyone seems to do).

Unfortunately due to the abysmal medical system of the RA, I assume the WIA to KIA ratio is pretty low, which means that if the KIA numbers are ca. 150.000, the total casualty number is closer to the lower end of the estimate rather than the upper end. And if I understood the article correctly, that is how they arrived at their estimate: taking the KIA number they could find and assuming a KIA to WIA ration of 1:3 to 1:5.

And Russia is keeping that ratio low by recycling WIAs back into the frontline, which reduces their overall attrition (in a bonkers russian way of thinking).

Fortunately, due to the abysmal medical system, a lot of Russian WIAs will end up as permanently out of the fight.

Also lastly: if I understood correctly, the estimate in the article explicitly doesn't include the Mobiks from the DLPRs or the mercs. Which means that the UAF has has been grinding through an even bigger number than mentioned there.

 

[chrisl]

5 hours ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

I think the the idea is that its very much complicating the kill-chain on the vehicles, so its vastly more effort to destroy them than vehicles without the system. Especially when Hamas rely so heavily on shoulder fired rockets and atgms to deal with armour. 

 

I dont think really anyone is able to say what would happen with such a hypothetical. The IDF is a force built for its situation in Israel. I would hazard the assumption which is if the APS works again Kornets and other atgms (which there is evidence to support) then Merkeva would be doing better than a lot of other tanks on the battlefield in Ukraine, even with all the drones flying around currently. 

As for Capts point about Kornet, yes its a several decade system, its still entirely relevant and seen as a gold standard when it comes to the ability to penetrate MBTs frontally. There is really not much better than it when it comes to overall performance in an ATGM outside of very expensive things like Javelin. Its exactly what an APS system should be designed to protect you from, since your really not going to feasibly plaster enough conventional protection on a vehicle to stop those sorts of warheads reliably. (Certainly not a chance for anything outside of frontal armour)

Hitting and penetrating are very distinct capabilities and almost entirely independent.  It doesn't matter if it has the gold standard penetrator if it can't hit reliably for some reason.  And drones that can reliably make top attacks may have lousy penetrators, but if they only need to penetrate 30 mm and bypass the ERA, so what.

[Battlefront.com]

16 minutes ago, Carolus said:

Also lastly: if I understood correctly, the estimate in the article explicitly doesn't include the Mobiks from the DLPRs or the mercs. Which means that the UAF has has been grinding through an even bigger number than mentioned there.

Correct.  The estimates are for Russian citizens from Russian territories only.  All of the pro-Russian Ukrainians fighting on behalf of Russia are not counted, neither are the foreign mercenaries.  We know that the numbers from DLPR forces are massive.  It's been a long time since we dove into those estimates, but I'd easily stick another 100,000 onto the total figure.  Foreign mercenaries is likely in the low thousands I should guess.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

16 minutes ago, chrisl said:

Hitting and penetrating are very distinct capabilities and almost entirely independent.  It doesn't matter if it has the gold standard penetrator if it can't hit reliably for some reason.  And drones that can reliably make top attacks may have lousy penetrators, but if they only need to penetrate 30 mm and bypass the ERA, so what.

Drones have completely screwed up some of the most basic concepts of armored vehicles.  The premise has always been that frontal armor should be first, side armor second, rear armor third, bottom armor fourth, and top armor fifth.  Roughly speaking of course.

This is mated with doctrine to keep the enemy from getting shots at anything but the frontal arc of the vehicles. Top attack AT weapons were the first to provide infantry with the sort of killing capability that aircraft enjoyed since WW2, which is the ability to target the top armor reliably.

UAS now has given infantry the ability to not only attack tanks in a general area of weakness, but at specific areas of exceptional weakness.  They are not routinely successful at doing so, but see my previous post about how the numbers work.  Let's run some numbers!

Let's say Country A's drones miss a critical spot on an Abrams 99 out of 100 times, but attack tanks 1000 times a month.  The result is the NATO country should lose about 10x Abrams per month at cost of $200m and a loss of 1 month's full production rate of new Abrams production.  On the other side, the UAS attacks cost $3m.  That's a massive cost disparity.

But it's more than that. 

Country A has the capability to produce 1m drones a year (imported and home made), which means it consumed only 1 day's worth of production to destroy 30 days worth of Abrams production.  That's also formidable ratio.  And yet, there's still more.

The 1000 hypothetical attacks a month would mean that roughly 29,000 drones for that one month's production were available to strike other targets.  On the NATO side, 0 Abrams from that month's production remain to strike other targets.

Now do this math over 24 months.  It means that the NATO country would would lose about 2400 tanks at a cost of roughly $4.8 BILLION while Country A would have lost a paltry $72m.

If this isn't scary enough, note that I offered the NATO country very favorable odds of 99% misses whereas the war in Ukraine says it's more 70-90% misses (it's even lower since the overall rate is not just about tanks).  And we just saw that a single company claims their AI assisted terminal strike capability cuts this to way below 50%.

 

This is the sort of thing people need to be thinking when they look at the threats out there.  Sex up the scenario any way you like and the Abrams comes out too far behind to be a sustainable option.  Unless, of course, someone can figure out how to knock drones down from 90% to something like 99.9% or be assured the enemy has radically fewer drones available to it.  Both of those goals are more hope than science.  Hope is not a good basis for defense planning.

Steve

[cesmonkey]

Update from Mashovets. It's long. I'm just going to quote the beginning.

https://t.me/zvizdecmanhustu/2029
 

Quote

Today's review

will be exclusively Pokrovskoe direction

Thus, during the week, we can observe a completely understandable and logical trend in the Pokrovsky operational direction - the command of the enemy group of troops (GT) "Center", despite the "external circumstances", is making simply titanic efforts to prevent the Ukrainian Armed Forces from consolidating along the barrier line, which runs along the Volcha, Kazeny Torets and Bychok rivers.

As part of these efforts, the enemy periodically changes the areas and directions of application of its main efforts, carries out numerous tactical regroupings of its forces and means and carries out a number of other measures, trying to increase the rate of advance of its forward units.

But, at the moment, they (in the sense of the rate of advance) are still such that they do not allow us to claim that they will be able to achieve success of operational significance in this operational direction in the near future.

At present, the enemy command, having obviously assessed the further prospects regarding the most convenient direction of action for its troops, has once again transferred its efforts to the section between the villages of Vozdvizhenka and Progress from the southern sectors of the Pokrovsk direction, that is, precisely to that small gap of land existing between the Volchya River and the Kazeny Torets River, where it is not necessary to force either the first or the second water obstacle under fire.

- The forward units of the enemy's 30th and 35th separate motorized rifle brigades (OMSBR) are attacking the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of the Lozovatsky "hamlet" almost non-stop, as well as on both sides of the Novoaleksandrovskoye Reservoir, located southeast of the village of Vozdvizhenka, trying to break through to the village itself from the south and southeast.

At the same time, part of the enemy's forces are trying to expand their penetration in the Novoaleksandrovka area towards the gap between the villages of Kalinovo and Baranovka.

- In turn, the forward units of the 433rd Motorized Rifle Regiment (MRR) of the 27th Motorized Rifle Division (MRD), obviously supported by part of the forces of the 15th and 55th OMRBs, are persistently attacking along the railroad leading from Avdeevka to Pokrovsk, Progress village.

That is, obviously, these enemy units and subdivisions have the immediate task of reaching the Timofeevka - Progress line, in order to provide support from the south for the "strike group" of the 30th and 35th OMRBs, which a couple of days ago resumed the offensive towards the Pokrovsk - Konstantinovka road.

It is not that the enemy managed to advance particularly deeply, even by tactical standards, but still he has made some progress:

- in the Lozovatskoye area, he obviously reached the Kazeny Torets River;

- and in the Vozdvizhenka area, he took up residence in a planting, somewhere 500-600 meters from the first buildings of the village.

 

[poesel]

10 hours ago, The_Capt said:

It was a matter of time.  A decent swarm algorithm and terrain hugging and we are essentially at a WMD. This, is the scary door.  When do autonomous unmanned swarms cross the line to WMD?  We do not have math for that. 

I have no idea what the official definition of WMDs is. But for me, it is about the indiscriminate killing of persons. If you happen to be in range, you die. No matter if you are fighting or not or whatever side for.

With current WMDs, you don't have a choice to make them discriminate targets. OTOH with drones, you do.

So drones are a WMD of choice. That is only slightly reassuring.

[FancyCat]

I wouldn't doubt Ukraine is a testing ground for stuff...but are we going to hear about it? If it's sensitive, it might even have western personnel near it, and while sure things leak and get discovered, surely tons we won't hear about till the war is over at least.

As for widespread deployment potential, what's the status of APS that's not Israeli tech/owned/made? Would doubt Israel would be prioritizing exports (and tbh with the way Israel is acting with regards to supporting Ukraine, I doubt the political will to provide this tech will occur should domestic demand decline) right now so we would need to rely on APS from other companies, this article seems to indicate that widespread deployment has only occurred with the IDF and deployment in other western militaries is occurring slowly and in testing phase (and the ending of the involvement of large deployments to the Middle East impeded faster development and deployment of APS in the West seems to me as the likely reason for this slowness, I think maybe the West got caught off guard by 2022 and is scrambling to get APS development moving?)

https://euro-sd.com/2024/01/articles/36065/active-protection-systems-an-overview/

According to this article, the West has been very careful in preventing tech falling into Russian hands. Captured Bradley's and Abrams aren't expected to have latest tech.

https://www.twz.com/land/first-confirmed-abrams-tank-variant-captured-by-russia-seen-with-inner-armor-exposed

Quote

“I have very minimum concern” about what Russia can glean from the capture, said the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Our ABV does not have the M1 Abrams current advanced turret and hull armor package that the M1A2 SEP V2 and V3 have. There is no gunner position and target acquisition systems and software in the ABV. There are no tank rounds. There is no battle command digital system and software.”

I'm no expert, would we put APS like Trophy onto tanks sent to Ukraine or is that tech that would be deemed too valuable to potentially be captured?

Edited July 12 by FancyCat

[The_Capt]

3 hours ago, poesel said:

I have no idea what the official definition of WMDs is. But for me, it is about the indiscriminate killing of persons. If you happen to be in range, you die. No matter if you are fighting or not or whatever side for.

With current WMDs, you don't have a choice to make them discriminate targets. OTOH with drones, you do.

So drones are a WMD of choice. That is only slightly reassuring.

So if Russia had access to fully autonomous swarms…who here thinks they would solely choose legitimate military targets?

Slightly reassuring indeed.

[Vanir Ausf B]

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

As for widespread deployment potential, what's the status of APS that's not Israeli tech/owned/made?

I'm no expert, would we put APS like Trophy onto tanks sent to Ukraine or is that tech that would be deemed too valuable to potentially be captured?

I think you answered your own question .

AFAIK the only non-Israeli APS in active service is on the South Korean K2 tank. Poland has them on order but there's no chance they end up in Ukraine.

EDIT: I was just reading up on Korean APSs and what do you know, Rafael is listed as a co-developer of the KAPS-2 APS system on the K2PL tank.

Edited July 12 by Vanir Ausf B

[ArmouredTopHat]

[kimbosbread]

19 hours ago, hcrof said:

Another problem (possibly my biggest problem) with APS is how fragile the radars are - both in the sense of physical damage but also presumably in the maintenance required. 

One illustrative example is the fact that they don't bother putting lots of shots in the APS because by the time you have blown up one or two incoming missiles your radars are likely wrecked anyway. This can be exploited by sending in (just) 2 drones: one claymore type anti-personnel drone that explodes just outside of the intercept range to damage the radar, then the second HEAT one can attack without risk of interception - kind of like a tandem charge attack. 

APS optimizes for a specific kind of threat, and as soon as the drone warhead is a rocket boosted metal rod, or explodes from a further distance, or is a ferrous slurry (jam), it’s not going to work as well. We already have programmable autocannon rounds, and I think we’ll see programmable warheads for drones shortly. Optimize for frag, penetration, burst distance. 

Trophy from my reading is really heavy- on the order of a ton. That’s just not practical for most vehicles. So you are back to point defense in something like a turret mounted shotgun/autocannon, with interceptor drones.

The point about trophy not having much ammo makes sense from the perspective of the radars getting messed up after a few defenses.

[ArmouredTopHat]

17 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

Trophy from my reading is really heavy- on the order of a ton. That’s just not practical for most vehicles. So you are back to point defense in something like a turret mounted shotgun/autocannon, with interceptor drones.

The point about trophy not having much ammo makes sense from the perspective of the radars getting messed up after a few defenses.

From my understanding, a lot of design process for Trophy was so that the system did not in fact splash its own vehicle. I think that's why the Russian Arena system is probably not around, check out that test footage I linked earlier, the Russian vehicle pretty much gets blanketed in the explosion. Trophy is a scalpel by comparison.

Trophy is heavy though, which is why you have programs like Iron fist which are meant for much lighter vehicles. We can anticipate potentially cheaper and lighter systems down the line as the technology matures as well. (The US are already looking to design an integrated system for M1E3 and we are seeing new generation APS coming down the line)

A lighter Iron fist variant is set for the US Bradleys and is now also supposedly featuring a drone protection layer as well, with a brigade of vehicles potentially due in service by 2025. The US seemed to of pretty rigorously tested the system in that time frame, alongside some clear lessons that are being learned from Ukraine. 

“Over the last two, three years, they have been able to mature it to the point that it’s much more reliable, demonstrated in most recent testing,” he said.

The system, in much more challenging and rigorous testing over the course of 2022, is now able to counter threats 70% of the time, he added.

The testing took place at both Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, and White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, from February to September.

“We truly tested the limits of the system,” Iglesias said. “We fired a lot more shots and, without giving details … we made it so a good amount of those shots were in what we call ‘an operationally relevant environment’ where you have other things operating; we go into areas where there are buildings and other vehicles in the area.”

Additionally, Elbit was able to recently demonstrate in Israel — using the existing Bradley and Iron Fist Light Decoupled configuration — the ability to counter drones while still maintaining the ability to target other threats like rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided munitions.

“That was a capability that wasn’t required as part of our initial requirement, but due to what we see in Ukraine there has been some interest in what we can do to protect our vehicles from UAVs,” Iglesias said.

As I mentioned before, it seems like APS can be tweaked pretty easily for anti drone work. I also found this quite relevant for Steve's concerns regarding friendly fire that indicates the Americans at least are asking the right questions. 
 

The report also said that senior noncommissioned officers, during a soldier touchpoint in September 2022, suggest improvements, such as giving the Bradley commander “the means to select and place protection zones in a standby mode as they load and unload dismount soldiers.”

The report also noted a recommendation that the system alert crew members on near misses so that they can locate and target the origin of the incoming threat.

 

Edited July 12 by ArmouredTopHat

[Battlefront.com]

11 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

APS optimizes for a specific kind of threat, and as soon as the drone warhead is a rocket boosted metal rod, or explodes from a further distance, or is a ferrous slurry (jam), it’s not going to work as well. We already have programmable autocannon rounds, and I think we’ll see programmable warheads for drones shortly. Optimize for frag, penetration, burst distance. 

Trophy from my reading is really heavy- on the order of a ton. That’s just not practical for most vehicles. So you are back to point defense in something like a turret mounted shotgun/autocannon, with interceptor drones.

The point about trophy not having much ammo makes sense from the perspective of the radars getting messed up after a few defenses.

Exactly.  Which is exactly why I'm so negative on Trophy which, at least today, means being negative on APS.  It's big, heavy, difficult to maintain, limited in terms of what it was designed to handle, puts out an traceable electronic signature, and... SUPER EXPENSIVE.

Given where combat is now, not to mention where it is headed, APS needs a radical shift in its fundamental tech before I'd consider it even remotely worth pursuing.

Steve

[sburke]

1 hour ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

 

 

[Battlefront.com]

12 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

The system, in much more challenging and rigorous testing over the course of 2022, is now able to counter threats 70% of the time, he added.

See my previous analysis as to why 70% might as well be 0% when talking about a near peer conflict.

8 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

“That was a capability that wasn’t required as part of our initial requirement, but due to what we see in Ukraine there has been some interest in what we can do to protect our vehicles from UAVs,” Iglesias said.

Yeah, well, that comment right there says a lot.  None of it good.  Fist, they didn't anticipate the UAV threat despite them being a recognized part of the battlefield for some time now.  Second, they are still treating Iron Fist as primarily a defense against traditional AT weapons and not UAS.  Nobody should have phrased anything like "some interest".  It should have been "we're screaming at the top of our lungs we need better protection from UAVs".

Steve

[kimbosbread]

As has been pointed out, how will drone defense system work for logistics? Doesn’t matter if your überfuturepanzer is invincible; it’ll run out of fuel and ammunition pretty quickly. Is the answer air-mobile logistics, and a corresponsingly lighter force that can be sustained this way?

I also want to remind everybody that smart little spider mines are as much or more of a threat to vehicles and soldiers than flying drones, and defense against these is really really different.

[ArmouredTopHat]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

See my previous analysis as to why 70% might as well be 0% when talking about a near peer conflict.

My counter point would be you could argue protection notions for vehicles before had similar principle. ERA / Chobham armour or whatever protection scheme you used for a vehicle was never going to be fool proof, but the trade off of spending a bit more money to protect an expensive vehicle is evidently worth it. Trophy and other APS systems certainly push that cost trade off closer to a limit, but the base principle still applies. The drone issue might overturn that cost ratio to the point of irrelevance, that is something I genuinely dont know and needs to be addressed. 

 

6 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yeah, well, that comment right there says a lot.  None of it good.  Fist, they didn't anticipate the UAV threat despite them being a recognized part of the battlefield for some time now.  Second, they are still treating Iron Fist as primarily a defense against traditional AT weapons and not UAS.  Nobody should have phrased anything like "some interest".  It should have been "we're screaming at the top of our lungs we need better protection from UAVs".

Very fair point. I am a little baffled there was not more talk of this prior in certain circles when Ukraine was not even the first conflict to feature civilian drones dropping grenades on people. Even with loitering drone munitions produced by the military the assumption seems to have been they would not be in quantities large enough to matter. 

I think you are right in that we might see a much greater emphasis on APS being directed towards such munitions, or featuring ways to kill drones that dont feature explosions. Iron fist supposedly features an EO jammer / dazzler. I wonder if this might be what they intend to use on the drones? Would that even work on an AI guided munition? ( I would figure so but I am not an expert)

I found some neat information below that goes a bit more into detail on the different methods of hard kill and their pros / cons should anyone want a nice read. 

Quote

The key difference between Trophy and Iron Fist is their kill mechanism. I will be addressing that, as I lack both the expertise to offer a great explanation on the varying sensor systems, nor the patience put together any kind of real speculation (on mobile, inebriated, no power)

Trophy utilizes explosively formed fragments to intercept an incoming projectile. In a very, very general sense, you can think of it like a claymore mine insofar as its using explosives to throw little bits of metal towards a target in one particular direction.

Pros:

• EFFs produced have a highly concentrated killing zone, focusing destructive power against missiles and RPGs.

• Small killing zone also means potentially reduced collateral damage.

• Individual charges for the APS can be simpler, and thus probably less expensive.

Cons:

• Technically limited range, as the EFFs are formed at the point of detonation on the vehicle. As best as I can tell, this is in all practical cases a non-issue.

• As it exists now, each launcher can only fire one charge at a time. This leaves a potential vulnerability to salvo-fired weapons or decoys.

• Small EFFs are not massive enough to have any real chance of stopping kinetic energy threats.

Iron Fist uses small blast-effect charges which are launched towards a target. It is essentially just a grenade with a combustible body geared towards producing a powerful blast close to the target.

Pros:

• Blast minimizes fragmentation, and thus reduces potential for collateral damage.

• Energy of the blast is (at least claimed to be) capable of intercepting KEPs such as APFSDS projectiles.

• In theory the system is effective out to as far as its sensors can detect a threat and lob the countermeasure. Again, this doesn't seem to be of huge value for the time being.

• Launchers generally have multiple charges loaded, allowing the system to better deal with multiple near-simultaneous threats.

• Because the countermeasure does not produce a blast at the vehicle, it can be mounted just about anywhere on the platform without the need for protective backing screens. This, in turn, means a single Iron Fist launcher can protect a platform over a full 360°.

Cons:

• The individual countermeasures are probably more complex and costly that Trophy's.

Hopefully others can add to this list and give more insight. That's the broad strokes though.

Edit; Also, Iron Fist has seen some export success. The US adopted a limited number for use on Bradleys, and the IDF themselves are using the system on some APCs. There are a few other foreign customers as well (Spain and the Netherlands iirc)

While this is speculation, I suspect the more high profile success of Trophy in actual combat has helped drive it's more widespread (or as widespread as we can get in 2023) adoption. That said, evidently the next generation of APS for IDF Ground Forces will likely be some combination of the two. This has been suggested in the past, in the form of merging Iron Fist's countermeasures with Trophy's sensors, but IMI shot the idea down, as apparently the partnership with Rafael was based on unfavorable terms.

 

[ArmouredTopHat]

12 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:

As has been pointed out, how will drone defense system work for logistics? Doesn’t matter if your überfuturepanzer is invincible; it’ll run out of fuel and ammunition pretty quickly. Is the answer air-mobile logistics, and a corresponsingly lighter force that can be sustained this way?

I also want to remind everybody that smart little spider mines are as much or more of a threat to vehicles and soldiers than flying drones, and defense against these is really really different.

This was talked about previously, but its likely going to be a combination of factors that will include drone interceptors, a greater degree of redundancy on logistical systems (including unmanned / drone logistics) and greater efforts to detect and kill the drones with jamming / APS / Point defence of some sort. 

Ultimately the goal will be doing what you can to mitigate damage to your own logistics while destroying the opposition. It wont be pretty either way. For the whole spider mine concept, while we are a little far away from having viable systems in place, such munitions are indeed a terrifying concept. 

Edited July 12 by ArmouredTopHat

[Battlefront.com]

7 minutes ago, ArmouredTopHat said:

My counter point would be you could argue protection notions for vehicles before had similar principle. ERA / Chobham armour or whatever protection scheme you used for a vehicle was never going to be fool proof, but the trade off of spending a bit more money to protect an expensive vehicle is evidently worth it. Trophy and other APS systems certainly push that cost trade off closer to a limit, but the base principle still applies. The drone issue might overturn that cost ratio to the point of irrelevance, that is something I genuinely dont know and needs to be addressed.

I disagree.  Please re-read my analysis again.  Defensive systems can no longer be rated on a per-shot basis.  It has to be rated per-attack, with the attack potentially consisting of dozens of individual "shots".

I'll illustrate this a bit clearer using Chobham and ERA.

Since WW2 it has been known that the tank that gets off the first shot has a huge advantage.  The point of Chobham and ERA, as well as other systems, was to buy a tank a "second chance" in the event that the enemy got off the first shot.   A huge assumption was made that the MBT would identify what shot at them and respond with a one-shot-one-kill gun system.  This then removes the threat of a second attack.  Maneuver would also be an appropriate response as would calling in for support.  The CRITICAL point here is that all of this was designed to survive ONE attack.

APS works under exactly the same presumptions.

The problem with things like UAS is that even the first shot has a pretty good chance of killing no matter what the defenses are.  But even if that isn't the case, the UAS may come with friends and that means instead of having to defend against *ONE* hit, the MBT now has to be concerned about potentially 10s of hits before it is able to respond.  And then there's the other rub... respond against what, exactly?  Nothing.  There is nothing a MBT can do to counter a threat that is not within LOS.  Maneuver also means nothing because the MBT can move all it wants and the UAS will most likely find it.

Now on top of that we still have the cost disparage where an already super expensive and unsustainable platform is now slated to be even more expensive and unsustainable.  Which is an argument to drop APS even if it were more effective.

As always, this returns us to TheTankIsDead™ discussion which we should probably avoid

Steve