Strykers denied near-term active defense to protect Raytheon contract

[akd]

Army shuns system to combat RPGs

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

By Adam Ciralsky, Lisa Myers & the NBC News Investigative Unit

Updated: 10:16 p.m. ET Sept. 5, 2006

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.

Wednesday on “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams”: Did the U.S. Army stack the deck to favor Raytheon at the expense of our troops?

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

[elementalwarre]

one anti-AFV tactic is fire an RPG group, very possibly with one or more RPGs leading the rest. does trophy's shot column work against this?

fielding a trial seems reasonable enough logistically. how reliable/rugged/etc is trophy? aka how well would it scale up into large-scale use?

say there are too many friendlies/civilians/etc nearby so troops want to switch trophy off, or better to have it active only in an arc? is this ability part of trophy or can trophy be easily modified to do so?

i have no axe to grind. i'd just like to know more about the system before forming an opinion about it or its politics

[MikeyD]

This conversations going on in another thread as well.

One reason why Trophy isn't being purchased may be - which vehicle is it supposed to go on? Apparently Stryker's been pierced by an RPG only once in 3 years without loss of the vehicle (another vehicle got burned-out when an RPG ignited an externally stowed fuel jerrycan but that's another matter). Slat's working well on Stryker, and now Slat's being installed on M113s and even on the rear ends of TUSK Abrams (I believe). Bradley's already festooned with reactive armor boxes. The armored M1114 Humvee is so overloaded it can barely carry its own weight . That leaves Trophy for the M1117 AC?

Trophy sounds like a good solution to Israel's problems - namely long range ATGMs. And it may have been a solution to U.S. problems during the first year of the occupation before Slat arrived. And it may be a solution to the evolving threat two years from now (ATGMs in Iraq?). But not currently... in my humble opinion

[lucero1148]

Aren't Bradley's being outfitted for slats as well? The ones I've seen going up to Iraq look like they have brackets for holding the slats in place all around the vehicle. The slats weren't attached as they were being transported on trucks so I'm assuming the width of having them on would prevent them from travelling?

IED's seem to be more effective against Stryker's. The destroyed hulks of Strykers I've seen all had major blast damage. One vehicle had its floor blasted upwards and ruptured from a blast directly beneath the troop compartment. The rest seemed to be damaged from concussion and fire. How that came about I wouldn't know, I'm just going by what I could observe and surmise.

[gunnersman]

Sounds like another high tech tool with potential to be overcome by low tech ingenuity.

I'd be curious as well to know if it can take on multiple warheads at once from the same direction. And what is the reaction time against a projectile from a relatively close distance?

[hellfish]

They've run tests with two RPGs fired from different distances at the same time and it successfully engaged both.

[akd]

little update

The US Senate has ordered a reassessment of the “Trophy” active defense system.

Ran Dagoni, Washington 7 Sep 06 11:49

Several months after the US Army rejected Israel’s Trophy active armor system made by Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd. in favor of a US system made by Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) the Senate has instructed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield to bring in outside experts to reassess all US and non-US active defense systems.

Congressional sources claim that Senate decision is a slap in the face to the US Army. Other sources said the decision raised hopes that the Rafael would ultimately succeed in selling the Trophy in the US military market. Orders could amount to millions of dollars.

Yesterday, NBC aired an in-depth investigation into why the US Army preferred Raytheon’s active protection system, which will only be ready for operation deployment in five years, over the Trophy, which has already accumulated hundreds of tests.

The findings are unflattering. NBC claims that there was too close collaboration between the Army and Raytheon, including the presence of Raytheon staff in the Army team that rejected the Trophy.

“Globes” and “Defense News” published initial information about the affair in April.

The US Army rejected the Trophy despite successful tests of the system at the US Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia on March 30. The Army rejected the Trophy even though the Army lacks an alternative active protection system available for its Stryker 8x8 combat vehicles operating in Iraq, and which are vulnerable to attacks from RPGs.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on September 7, 2006

[Battlefront.com]

Interesting!

Well, I have zero doubt that Raytheon played a significant part in getting TROPHY killed off. Why GDLS (the US based partner for Rapael) wasn't able to counter that is probably also shrouded in the cloak of night, as most decisions are within the beltway.

But it could also be that TROPHY shouldn't be fielded. Meaning, the way the system was terminated might have been flawed, but there might be enough technical reasons to kill it despite the hankypanky.

Steve

[elementalwarre]

hmm. googling finds

- TROPHY reportedly weighs 1/3 of a stryker's slat armor, or 1/5 of reactive armor

- RPG-29's meant to penetrate reactive or slat armor, aka an active standoff defense seems to be the next counter

- the tactic i wrote of multiple RPG's means even with RPG-7, firing a group at the same point is a way to penetrate armor that would withstand a single RPG. not multiple at different points on the vehicle but multiple at the same point, most accurately done by firing from the same point. will TROPHY defend against that?

again, i don't know arming range, fire control, maintenance, etc so no opinion. just noting what google finds

[akd]

Originally posted by elementalwarre:

hmm. googling finds

- TROPHY reportedly weighs 1/3 of a stryker's slat armor, or 1/5 of reactive armor

- RPG-29's meant to penetrate reactive or slat armor, aka an active standoff defense seems to be the next counter

- the tactic i wrote of multiple RPG's means even with RPG-7, firing a group at the same point is a way to penetrate armor that would withstand a single RPG. not multiple at different points on the vehicle but multiple at the same point, most accurately done by firing from the same point. will TROPHY defend against that?

again, i don't know arming range, fire control, maintenance, etc so no opinion. just noting what google finds

Not sure I understand the first part, but tandem warheads are defeated by active defense systems like Trophy.

If trophy is able to defeat multiple simultaneous RPGs from different directions, I don't see why it couldn't defeat multiple warheads from the same direction. Furthermore, it would be near impossible to coordinate firing two RPG-7s at the exact same point simultaneously (or in succession, for that matter).

Another news bit:

Tank system may be ready in months

By YAAKOV KATZ

A tank missile defense system, developed by the Rafael Armament Development Authority will be ready for installation on IDF tanks in "several months" if the Treasury decides to fund the purchase of the system, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

In addition, Rafael is currently hoping to gain from a Senate decision ordering US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to bring outside experts to assess the need for and use of tank defense systems for the US Army. The order from the Senate came following an NBC in-depth investigation into why the US Army had decided to purchase Raytheon's active protection system, which would only be ready in five years while the Trophy was already operational and ready to be purchased.

NBC claimed that there was too close an alliance between the US Army and Raytheon and that Raytheon staff were members of an Army team that had rejected the Trophy.

Rafael's Business Development Manager Didi Benyoash said Thursday that the Israeli defense company was conducting "advanced negotiations" with the Pentagon over the purchase of several models of the system to be used in trials on armored vehicles operating in Iraq.

"We will be ready to supply the system in a number of months if we receive orders to from Israel or the US Army," Benyoash said. In March, Rafael conducted a successful experiment of the Trophy for the US Army in Israel. "The war in Lebanon proved that active-protection systems are the only real way today to protect tanks," he added.

While Rafael was hoping to gain from the Senate's decision, Benyoash claimed that the Israeli defense company had "absolutely nothing" to do with the NBC report that exposed the close and possibly illegitimate relationship between Raytheon and the US Army.

The Trophy system creates a hemispheric protected zone around armored vehicles such as the Merkava tank, which operated prominently in Lebanon. The system is designed to detect and track a threat and counters it with a launched projectile that intercepts the anti-tank missile.

The IDF has asked the Treasury for a budget boost following the war in Lebanon amounting to NIS 10 billion. A part of the money, a high-ranking officer said, would be allocated to install active protection systems like the Trophy on IDF tanks.

[Battlefront.com]

Well, no doubt Rafael is going to be beating the drum for the local media and the US Senate. So I take this stuff with a pinch of salt.

My concerns about TROPHY are:

1. Cost - these things are expensive. They can go only on a few, select vehicles. While that is good for the vehicles they are on, it is an enormous amount of money that could be spent elsewhere. Sure, no price can be put on the lives of the people in uniform, but there are plenty of other life saving things that the military isn't funding that could be funded. And don't even get me started about how underfunded the home services are for returning and wounded vets.

2. Robustness - I've seen this mentioned in a few places, but no details. The concern is, as is, Trophy can be damaged from normal use, like brushing against tree branches or side swiping something. The cage currently on the strykers acts like a big bumper and even if it breaks it is easy and cheap to fix.

3. Safety - Nothing I've read has convinced me that this thing is safe to use for vehicles carrying infantry, nor driving around in populated areas. The "gamey" player in me would try to trigger TROPHY just as some school kids were walking by it.

4. Maintainence - how survivable are these things when not on the test range?

I'm not saying TROPHY isn't as good as the makers say it is, but I haven't seen anything yet that tells me there is nothing to be concerned about. The cost thing... that's still a big one.

Bottom line, the NBC report left the impression that everybody in Iraq would be safe if the Army accepted the system. This is so wrong it is hard to know where to start. First, the main threat is IEDs and snipers, not RPGs. All TROPHY does give the insurgents more buck for their bang. Second, only a tiny fraction of the vehicles in Iraq can be outfitted with this device. There are literally tens of thousands of vehicles that are at risk, but at $300k a pop to buy the system, plus probably a similar amount to field and maintain it, there won't be many out there. Therefore, the US Army would be better off IMHO trying to find some better means of defeating RPGs.

Steve

[Winnie]

Some good points Steve.

This TROPHY system might work well but it really is pricey for the difference its likely to make. I think someone might have mentioned before that, of late, only about 3 STRYKERS were penetrated by RPG fire, which means that the slat armour and reactive armour is doing a good enough job already. These existing meathods are cheap, effective and are easy to repair/replace.

To replace these well functioning defence measures with this additional defence system, which costs a small fortune, would probably be high cost maintaince and has the chance of technical failure, seems to be a poor usage of money. And also, is this thing prone to being taken out by small arms fire or something of higher calibre? Is it going to withstand a smaller calibre AP round at a critical point or would it fry it?

As was previously pointed out, IED's pose a greater threat then RPG's atm anyway. Wait until the price comes down a bit and get a bulk buyers discount i guess

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Bottom line, the NBC report left the impression that everybody in Iraq would be safe if the Army accepted the system. This is so wrong it is hard to know where to start. First, the main threat is IEDs and snipers, not RPGs. All TROPHY does give the insurgents more buck for their bang.

True for insurgents in Iraq, but that was not the case for the Israelis against Hezbollah, and may not be true when fighting anyone better armed than the Iraqi insurgency in the future, like Syria. It seems RPG-29s are very rare in Iraq and rather common in Lebanon.

[Battlefront.com]

Winnie,

I agree with the RPG threat in Iraq being low now, but whenever someone starts putting RPG-29s into Iraq in large numbers we might notice an increase in problems since the slat armor on Strykers, nor reactive armor on Bradleys, can defeat them.

Vanir,

True, the IDF would likely have benefitted from TROPHY, even though most of the problems were caused by ATGMs, not RPGs. The tests discussed were about RPGs, so I'm not sure if there is much difference in defensive performance against them. Probably little to no difference.

The main point I made about cost is still relelvant. The IDF is a lot smaller, but so too is its budget. What they could have done was outfitted a smaller number of vehicles and used them as the tip of the spear. That would have worked well, I think. But then what? If the IDF stayed in Lebanon it would likely face the same sort of problems as Iraq; inadequate protection for all but a tiny amount of its force.

Steve

[Vanir Ausf B]

I'm not sure the cost is really that prohibitive. At $400,000 a pop the US could outfit 5000 vehicles for 2 billion. That's chump change. I don't know how much of their fleet the Israelis are planning to outfit, but with 10 billion more dollars I suspect they will put it on everything that can carry it.

[Aacooper]

This type of system is the way of the future, hopefully a smarter choice than piling the armor on.

[Battlefront.com]

Vanir,

I don't think you've been following the Pentagon budget process lately The "self funded" war in Iraq has stretched all resources, including the checkbook. The military has been cutting funding to redirect the money into mundane things like bullets and bombs. True enough, $2 Billion is chump change for a war that many experts think will wind up costing $1 Trillion minimum, but it is a pretty big chunk of money that would require cuts elsewhere. And I think they've already cheaped out on health care and mental health for returning soldiers, so I guess they'll have to go after the in theater Pizza Huts and Burger Kings next. Obviously Raytheon's FCS dohicky is not on the chopping block

Let us say that the US did spend a wad of money on 5000 vehicles. I don't have an exact count (had one a long time ago), but the number of vehicles in Iraq numbers in the 10s of thousands. So even this huge amont of money would protect only a fraction of the total force.

And then there are the other potential (and I stress POTENTIAL) problems that the NBC report didn't address.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Aacooper,

You are completely correct. Active Defenses is the way to go, not thicker or smarter armor. The question, as I see it, is TROPHY the future or simply something that gets us to it?

Steve

[rudel.dietrich]

History has taught us thousands of times that for every vaunted super weapon or super defense there will ALWAYS be a counter.

[dan/california]

I don't think anyone is suggesting it for Humvees. But unless the army is going to totally rewrite their tactical manual they would make a lot of senses on M1s. Let them continues to do what they do best, systematically blow the bleep out of the bad guys. Next priority would be Bradleys, and then Strykers. Some one said something in another thread about about not encouraging vehicles that aren't tanks to act like them. But for the actual tanks, that are going to be at the tip of the spear the next time some ^&^&$&^&^$&*(*)()&( government has got to go, they make a ton of sense.

The other huge issue is the U.S. desperately needs a breakthrough in mine detection. I''m not sure how much the money thrown at that has accomplished so far.

All you can really hope for is that the counter to your counter will be painfully expensive for the other side to field. If ATGMs had to be fired in much larger groups it would make the guys using them a lot harder to hide.

The fact that Rumsfeld should be impeached for some combination of treason and incompetence is another issue.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by dan/california:

I don't think anyone is suggesting it for Humvees. But unless the army is going to totally rewrite their tactical manual they would make a lot of senses on M1s. Let them continues to do what they do best, systematically blow the bleep out of the bad guys. Next priority would be Bradleys, and then Strykers. Some one said something in another thread about about not encouraging vehicles that aren't tanks to act like them. But for the actual tanks, that are going to be at the tip of the spear the next time some ^&^&$&^&^$&*(*)()&( government has got to go, they make a ton of sense.

The other huge issue is the U.S. desperately needs a breakthrough in mine detection. I''m not sure how much the money thrown at that has accomplished so far.

All you can really hope for is that the counter to your counter will be painfully expensive for the other side to field. If ATGMs had to be fired in much larger groups it would make the guys using them a lot harder to hide.

The fact that Rumsfeld should be impeached for some combination of treason and incompetence is another issue.

Light vehicles need it more than any vehicle on the battlefield.

A Abrams is much harder to kill than a Humvee or APC.

And with the types of wars America is typicaly fighting these days it makes alot of sense to arm your ligher vehicles with something that has a good chance of making them unable to be hit.

[akd]

Let's not forget about this bit:

Originally posted by elementalwarre:

hmm. googling finds

- TROPHY reportedly weighs 1/3 of a stryker's slat armor, or 1/5 of reactive armor

All that weight could be redirected towards mine/IED protection. Any active defense system would hopefully result in a vehicle that has higher survivability to RPGs/ATGMs and IEDs.

[MikeyD]

A semi-rhetorical question (because its probably outside of this forum's expertise) - How is TROPHY powered? I assume it's got an on/off switch somewhere. Does it run off its own generator? Is it hooked up to the vehicle's electrical power? Does the vehicle need to have its engine running to produce power for the weapon? How much current does it draw? Does it produce an easily trackable electronic signature? ("I'm reading four TROPHY signatures off the starboard bow Captain!" ).

[BeauCoupDinkyDau]

Trophy promo vid...

TROPHY

[akd]

err...point, counterpoint?

Army dedicated to protecting soldiers

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army has slammed a television news report over its decision on procurement of a weapons system to counter rocket propelled grenades.

The U.S. Army News Service reported on Sept. 10 that the Army's deputy for acquisition and systems management Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A, Sorenson too, issue with an NBC News story that said the Army is not buying the Israeli "Trophy" system that could protect soldiers and their transport from RPGs after manipulating data in favor of Raytheon's competing "Quick Kill" system.

Both technologies can launch missiles to intercept RPGs in flight. While "Trophy" is six months ahead of "Quick Kill" it has limitations. Sorenson was particularly concerned that the NBC report implied that the Army refused to field an acceptable foreign-made combat system that would save lives.

Sorenson said that Israel's "Trophy" system is not a "produceable" item, adding that the Israelis have been developing the Trophy system for more than a decade. Sorenson commented, "If this thing was ready to go, my question would be, why wasn't it on the particular tanks that went into Lebanon?"

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism...3-104018-1251r

ISRAEL SUCCESSFULLY TESTS TROPHY IN WAR

TEL AVIV [MENL] -- The Israel Army employed a new electronic counter-measures main battle tank protection system during the war against Hizbullah in Lebanon.

A defense official said the Armored Corps used the Trophy tank protection system during the 33-day war in Lebanon. The official said four Merkava Mk-4 MBTs were equipped with Trophy, manufactured by Rafael, Israel Armament Development Authority.

"The tanks were not struck by the missiles and Trophy was part of the reason," the official said.

The Trophy was designed to detect the approach of anti-tank guided missiles rocket-propelled grenades and fire a projectile to intercept the incoming weapons. In 2006, the system was tested in both Israel and the United States.

http://www.menewsline.com/stories/20...r/09_13_4.html