"Active Protection" Speeds UpArmies around the world have been spending a ton of time and money trying to figure out how to keep their fighting vehicles, trucks, and personnel carriers safe. Better armor is one answer. Another is to stop attacks before they ever hit. Several of these so-called "active protection" systems are making progress, both here and in Israel. Generally speaking, they all work in the same way, Defense News' Barbara Opall-Rome notes:
• A radar detects and identifies an approaching threat.
• Target information is transferred to a kill mechanism.
• The kill mechanism destroys the target at a safe distance from the vehicle.A few weeks back, Trophy, an Israeli active protection set-up, went through its first tests on an American Stryker vehicle. It's already being used to protect Israeli tanks against rocket-propelled grenades.
[In a] Feb. 28 test... two inert RPGs were fired simultaneously; one would hit the Stryker while the other was intentionally aimed for a near miss… Trophy was able to track the trajectory, discriminate among the two parallel targets, and determine which one would actually hit the Stryker before selectively unleashing its lethal countermeasures. The actual method used to destroy the targets is classified.
HUH?
Trophy Active Defense System (ADS) is marketed by General dynamics, based on a system designed in Israel by an industry consortium headed by RAFAEL, including IMI and IAI/ELTA. After evaluating several systems available in the world market, General Dynamics selected the system for further improvement and is offering a version of the system to the US Army and other customers. The system can simultaneously engage several threats, arriving from different directions, is effective on stationary or moving platforms, and is effective against short and long range threats (such as RPGs and ATGM). Trophy was designed to be effective in open or closed terrain, including urban area and can be operated under all weather conditions.It's a force field? Deployable to a rectangle in space? Between you (the target) and the weapon approaching?
"Shields up Mr Sulu"
Now there are those out there who want to know why Israel has pragmatic value as an ally. This is the second major contribution that Israel has made (Arrow software for the Patriot is another) in the last few years (altho they get a huge F for the way they have behaved with the Chinese) Some feel that pragmatically speaking the oil is more important ... so besides exploding humans .....(fill in the blanks), and repressive dictatorships (which we originally felt was a good idea).. I'm sorry, how many patents? How many irreplaceable developments?
4 comments:
Frickin' ingenuous. The Israelis have been the source of many many ideas, tactics and technologies to handle the 'insurgents' in Iraq and elsewhere. This comes from the many longs years of their own bitter war with their many murderous neighbors. The tiny Israeli state has been the source of more inventions and innovations than the entire Islamic world put together.
I understand the intentions here, that the Israelis do good things for us and we should reciprocate. But I'll direct us all to a comment by Jabotinsky who says that Isrealis should be no different from anyone else, that they are as good and as bad as anyone else, and they have the rights and duties of anyone else, the same rights to live regardless.
Jabotinsky founded the Israeli Defence Forces. He was a poet. He was a guy like any other.
"Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. ... We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. ... We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody's examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to." Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Instead of Excessive Apology, 1911.
Jabotinsky, eh..perjorative in a person to many (not to me).
The intention was not a quid pro quo demonstration, but instead to outline that there are some nations who are not just 'together'. We and the Israelis find ourselves on this nearly identical path today not because of us, and not because of them, but because of others who hate what we both share in common.
Can anyone imagine the Al Saud developing something on the edge, maybe past what we intended to do, or certainly in another unanticipated direction, and then LICENSING the production and further refinement and dvelopment to us?
Or for that fact, les francais?
Force field :) ?
"Defense Update understands that Trophy is design to form a "beam" of fragments, which will intercept any incoming HEAT threat"
The concept is not new, the costs and relative effectiveness have not justified fielding of earlier designs (the Soviets/Russians have used a conceptually similar system called Drozd for 20 years already).
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