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An itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie ABM Israel has a new defensive system for vehicles called ‘Trophy’, now under evaluation by the US military. I first heard of it yesterday when I came across a demo video on Fox News under the category ‘Nation’ (hurry and see it before it goes away!)
I did not uncover anything else about it until this afternoon. It appears the system is a tiny version of an anti-ballistic missile missile. The incoming RPG (or whatever) is tracked by radar and knocked out of action by what looks to me to be a kinetic energy impact kill to the head of the incoming round by a very fast little short range rocket.
What I find interesting in the Fox News video is the way the explosion plume spreads out as if the incoming hit a non-physical wall.
Also see this General Dynamics report.
Many thanks to one of our commentariat for figuring a way to link to the Fox News video!
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The Ruskies have been playing in this field for a while – automated point defense systems for armoured vehicles. They have tended to concentrate on gun based systems similar to the Phalanx and Goalkeeper systems used by NATO warships.
I’m always cautious about claims that a KE warhead can successfully be deployed against a fast target. The original UK Rapier missisle was claimed to be a “hittile” afterall…
I agree with Nick on this. Hitting something that is small, fast and has a short flight time is difficult to say the last and this is an area where consistency is needed. The British Army is currently developing electonic armour (sorry, no link) which can survive an RPG (or anti-tank round) with minimal damage. It’s supposedly light and has low power consumption.
er..
that should have said “difficult to say the least“
Well it’s more a shotgun or a sort of claymore. Since the vehicle is a little thing and not a big ship.
Russians started it with Shtora,Drodz,Arena
more here:
http://armor.kiev.ua/fofanov/
Look at the video. The seemed to do a reasonable job at taking out an RPG from a moving vehicle, and one of the military guys said that they aren’t interested in waiting for a perfect system.
I am not privy to enough detail to know how effective this system is under combat conditions… but I think it is a no-brainer that active defense will reach the point where battles between vehicles are fought by clouds of offensive and defensive smart weapons and the loser is the one who gets out-SMARTed.
This system looks pretty good from what I saw and have read so far. If anyone has any negative data, feel free to post it. Saying it can’t have happened because it hasn’t happened yet is not much of an argument one way or the other 😉
It is specifically stated that it is a missile. Apparently launched initially upwards from the top of the vehicle. Do you mean the missile blows itself into a shotgun like blast before impact? I could see that as a possibility.
Actually a correction. The video seems to show an anti-tank missile; the US military testing report says it tested against RPG’s.
The British Army is currently developing electonic armour (sorry, no link) which can survive an RPG (or anti-tank round) with minimal damage. It’s supposedly light and has low power consumption.
I’ve heard of this. The idea is to charge two layers of armor, one positive, the other negative. When a shaped charge hits it, the jet of metal completes the circuit, and the current vaporizes the jet. Rather clever, and it’s supposed to work fairly well… but only against shaped charges, and only on armored vehicles, not light stuff like Humvees. And pure kinetic rounds (such as DU) or HE will still kill the vehicle.
Beats the hell out of nothing.
Dale, the video? Could you post a specific link. The shotgun effect idea seems the most obvious way to go about doing this, but it is not ideal against dense, fast projectiles which will not be destroyed and more than likely not deviated by much.
I’m curious about how the vertical launch mode will affect time of flight. The interceptor will need extra time to get to the correct trajectory. I’ve certainly never heard of vertical launch being used for such a short range, time critical system before.
The best advice was contained in a 1950s British pamphlet issued to the armed services about nuclear warfare: “The best defense is not to be there when it goes off”.
Vertical launch is mentioned in the link within the article.
The video has no direct link. As I noted, you have to go to Fox News (www.foxnews.com) go to the videos (menu bar at top), go to ‘Nation’ (slider category at left) and look for the icon for this story and click on it.
The Israelis have long experience with vertically launched missiles such as the Barak used to protect Israeli as well as Indian and other ships against Exocet type missiles.
To get this to work on a Stryker it will have to be extremely compact and fast acting. If the testing proves that the system can do what it says it can do and it proves itself on the Merkava 4 it will be a big step towards making the new US Future Combat System and its UK equivalent the true lightweight fighting vehicles that they are supposed to be.
I’ve always been skeptical of those who say that Tanks are finished and that they are going to be replaced by some new kind of vehicle. This system could prove me wrong, but I’m not holding my breath. It will be years before the US government finishes the tests, even with the needs of the war on terror.
I don’t think they see this as an armour replacement, just an augmentation. The bits still hit you, it’s just that you’ve knocked out the warhead.
FoxNews makes it really difficult to get at the video directly, but they do have an “email” link for each story, so I managed to get a URL that way. For those who want to see the story, go here.
Thank you for taking the trouble to dig out the link for that.
It appears to me that no countermissile is used- the incoming round just blows up before impact. This makes me suspect some sort of electromagnetic effect, perhaps a millimeter wave radar cranking up to megawatts for a few microseconds.
Slick trick if it can be deployed widely, and be resistant to countermeasures (the tinfoil hats on th eRPGs keep blowing off…)
Off topic slightly, I am sorry, but has anyone seen any videos of ‘Metal Storm’?
I’ve read a bit about it, but I have never seen footage of the prototypes in action.
Thanks Aubrey,
Two thumbs up! Let’s hope it works and protects Nato forces in future conflicts.
Hi Doug… See you in LA at the ISDC in a couple weeks I hope!
Yeah, I considered that… but it just seemed a bit too far out and there was talk of top launched counter measures.
I cannot see anything either, but a really small and fast rocket that burns all its fuel at the outset might be just too hard to see. Remember those rocket powered flechettes of the 60’s? They made a bit of smoke at launch but you certainly couldn’t see them once they got moving.
I’ve no doubt this can work against RPGs, but so can other, cheaper systems like slat armor and explosive-reactive armor. Also, potentially, the electronic system mentioned above.
I’d like to see if it has any effect on a long-rod penetration KE round, though. Most AT rounds fired from other tanks (at least modern western tanks) are non-explosive darts of depleted uranium. They’re quite fast, so I doubt the defensive system could even get the interceptor to the intercept point in time. Even if it did a KE round would be harder to knock out than an RPG round, since a damaged shaped charge won’t generate a plasma jet even if it’s substantially intact.
There are also some hyper-velocity KE missiles like LOSAT and an air-to-ground missile the name of which escapes me.
This kind of system seems pretty heavy and expensive to deploy against the threat that’s easiest to deal with. If I were a tanker I’d trade a system like this for anti-mine v-shaped bottom armor any day of the week.
Chris Harper – the http://www.metalstorm.com/ site has a video section, probably all the info you need.
The original ABM treaty was signed in the late 1960’s because it was thought that a solid state processor could not be devoloped that could perform the guidance calculations. By mid 1980’s, an Intel 387 processor was reputed to have more than enough horse power to do this. I suspect that the targeting electronics woul dnot be an issue for defeat of close quarters projectiles, I am amazed the electronics can be turned into precision mechanicl stimulus for steering the teeny-weenie ABM.
Here are more info , and a photo in a Merkava 3 and in a striker.
http://www.defense-update.com/products/t/trophy.htm
A link a few posts above says it’s auto-reloading and can defend against multiple rounds/attacks. I wonder how effectively. Impressive nonetheless.
The 1972 ABM treaty was signed because Nixon really wanted to get reeclected and he thought that doing something that would please the liberal would help. He beat Mc Goo but they hated him anyway.
At the time the US was developing the nuclear tipped Spartan/Sprint system which was theoretically aimed at stopping Chinese missiles.
The evidence indicates that at the time Nixon (and Kissinger) really did believe in Mutual Assured Destruction and Detente and all those silly things. Neither man had any understnading of computers or the revolution they would create. The only man at the time who did was the hippie guru Stewart Brand.
I think launching an anti-missile missile against a bog standard RPG would be quite possible. As far as anti-tank missiles go, the RPG as used in Iraq and against Israel is a very slow projectile. A mate of mine is a Royal Marine Captain who fought in Iraq throughout the initial invasion, and he said you can actually see the things in flight. If one has been launched from 1-2km away, you can sometimes see it coming and have a second or two to swerve out of the way. In missile terms, this is a crawl speed.
MAD still applies even now, its a question of how much money needs to be spent on defence for every $ spent by your opponent on offence. Turns out defence is just too expensive.
Also the tolerances are just not good enough. An ABM system capable of knocking out 95% of 2000 incoming warheads – which is pretty good going, and no mean feat- still means 100 nukes landing on your nation – enough to probably finish it as a major power.
…of course theres no reason not to develop the technology but I don’t think we’re out of the MAD age yet.
But for 2000 warheads you need a big player. And big money. An ATBM can be “economically viable” if there are many nuke missile players around with 10-100 warheads.
There seem to be some flights of fancy going on here. We’re talking about a defensive system that can mount on a Stryker or other light armoured vehicle that improves your chances of surviving against an RPG or similar threat from a enemy forces in irregular combat. If this system works as well as it *appears* to work, then I would certainly have a nice warm feeling about having it on my vehicle.
If you want to discuss other threats, then I would say this is the sort of defensive system which really gets the evolution of militarily interesting and useful anti-missile systems going.
The missile interception problem is primarily one of sensors, communication and processing speed. All are improving on the Moore’s Law curve. We are 24 GENERATIONS more advanced than we were with the systems of Nixon’s ABM treaty era.
So, let’s imagine what might be available in 2012, with technology 6 generations beyond what we now have.
In short range defense like this, there is an advantage to the defender. The attacker has to carry fuel for a long flight and must carry enough weight for a useful attack on armour. Larger size means a larger target; more mass means more fuel which means more mass. The defensive system needs to only have enough mass to damage the attacking projectile, not a tank; it need only have enough range to reach the attacking projectile at a ‘safe enough’ engagement range from the defended site; it can be quite small and burnout it’s fuel very fast for a high terminal velocity. Because of the mass difference, physics gives it the win on maneuverability.
So the next step is perhaps attackers who release lots of submunitions similar to the defensive projectile as counter-defense measures. And then we have clouds of smart projectiles fighting out a spacewar battle 50 feet out from your nose in a battle of maneuver lasting milliseconds.
Next step goes to the defender. Smart projectiles with maneuver engines launched by 3rd or 4th generation railguns. Since rail guns are going on board CVX around 2010 or so, lets give them a couple generations to mature, say 2020. Then the point defense get a hypervelocity kick and only carry fuel for attacking maneuvering swarm members. And in either this case or the other, the defender has an advantage in numbers since an attacking projectile can only carry so many small defenders of the same generation as the attackers.
I think we live in very interesting times.
Reminds me of the old rhyme: “and bigger fleas have littler fleas, upon their backs to bite ’em”…
Dale, a couple of things. This one looks to me like it’s probably just a variation on the Phalanx theme. Maybe quicker response, fewer or single rounds, updated technology. That one hit sure looked like shooting an apple to me. I kind of doubt the energy field or micro missile ideas.
The risk with that is of encouraging bigger warheads, the old S.U. concept of a near miss is fine if the boom is big enough.
I think the concept works best against guerilla style warfare where the offensive weapons have an pretty strong constraints on size, concealability and portability.
Phalanx works fine on a ship. I’ve stood beside one. It is big, and it throws a *lot* of depleted uranium slugs at very high velocity in a very short time. It’s a wall of U238 the attacking missile has to go through and it works on a numbers game. You can’t do that on a Stryker. You need a much better ratio of defensive rounds to attacking rounds.
And as you seem to indicate, making the warheads on the attacking round bigger doesn’t work unless you bio-engineer stronger and bigger Martyrs. And in any case, making them bigger makes them heavier, requiring more fuel, cutting down the maneuverability… and all the defender needs is to engage at a *slightly* longer range.
I wonder if they’ve tried taking out a cruise missle yet? Or an attack by one of the anti-armour submunition canisters from over head? This system is aimed at that threat, but I wonder if it shows signs of a way forward for a wider range of active defensive measures?
But do you? It seems to me that the better and faster you can acquire, tract, target and place ordinance on a threat, the closer you come to the mythical ‘magic bullet’.
This sure looked to me like a candidate for ‘magic bullet’ technology.
I really do enjoy your techno posts.
Taylor-
Spot on, re; your political analysis of the 1972 ABM treaty.
The political cover for the politicos derived from the technical research in the late 60’s to upgrade a Nike AAGM to an ABM. At the time, solid state technology was still in it’s infancy and the technical wizards, who had cut their technical teeth on Vacuum Tubes, could not forsee the pending advances in VLSI. By mid 1980’s, the new techno-types realized that reliable solid state guidance electronics were indeed viable. In 1987, Edward Teller published a book “Better a Shield than a Sword” which discusses a workable ABM system.
The benefit of even a partially functional ABM system is that counter measures cost weight which therefore reduces the payload that can be delivered, therefore gaining an “effective kill” even before launch. This reduces would be attackers to a scorched earth policy which then leads to the weighing of massive destruction to the attacker’s country whilst gaining little of the resourses of the conquered country with which to rebuild your wrecked economy.
This then reverts to a sort of MAD policy, but with the one important benefit that the “oops, I pushed the wrong button” scenario has a counter measure and nut cases like North Korea and Iran have more to consider.
What happens when someone simply chucks an RPG sized brick at a vehicle equipped with such an anti-missile missile ?
What is to stop the system from firing and killing or injuring nearby dismounted troops on foot patrol or any civilian bystanders passing through a checkpoint etc ?
There is a rather significant differencein ds/dt between a person, a brick and a missle.
An no, no one claims this as an anti-satchel charge defense. That is why tanks do not travel without infantry.
What about a modern version of a spring loaded British WW2 vintage Projector Infantry Anti-Tank (PIAT) ?
“What about a modern version of a spring loaded British WW2 vintage Projector Infantry Anti-Tank (PIAT)”
Are there many of them in Baghdad?
The scrapping of the propsed upgrade of Nike Hercules to Niike Zeus was a disgarace – an American TSR2.
PIAT was crap. Short ranged, difficult to “span” and generally very difficult and dangerous to get into a position for a “kill-shot”.
Watching them, Watching Us has a point though. The fundamental flaw with almost all anti-missile systems is that they can be overwhelmed by multiple simultaneous attacks. This is common-place in Iraq. The “chicken wire” additional armour added to Warrior and Bradley AFVs will detonate a RPG at a safe distance but is one shot protection. The nut-jobs in Iraq use co-ordinated salvos to scupper these vehicles.
As I see it, this is just one more reason to fight this scum from the air. Something like a double place F-16 with the observer watching a very hi-rez magnified view of the action should be able to direct cluster bombs or something like Brimstone onto the bad guys. Such an approach certainly got that Hamas Cleric outta his wheelchair for the first time in years..r
I’m not sure why people are bringing ABM into this discussion. This is point defense for RPGs, folks. It doesn’t have a prayer of working against a ballistic missile.
As far as satchel charges go, they don’t work against modern armor. The amount of explosive in an RPG round would be far too small do damage a tank or APC except for the fact that it’s shaped in such a way that it creates a supersonic jet of copper plasma at a single point. This requires the warhead to go off at exactly the right distance from the target, and a bad angle can ruin the effect.
I can’t find the link now, but in the early stages of the Iraq war a US Bradley APC was attacked by a suicide bomber. Spread himself all over the APC but didn’t do any damage at all. You can destroy a tank with a big enough (unshaped) bomb, but successful IEDs require 3-5 105mm artillery shells, not something you’ll be carrying around on your back.
Watching Them,
The injury of surrounding infantry is the same problem you get with ERA.
Uain Thanks for your kind words.
Actually firing an RPG is a bitch, You need to be a qualified contortionist to get it right. And the sights are crap. And it makes one hell of a noise, unlike an M-72 LAW.
The bad guys fire them in bunches because that’s the only way they can hope for any kind of a hit, ERA, Slat armor or whatever.
The ability to rapidly intercept an incoming round be it an RPG or a Sagger or a TOW is a big step forward.
I got a briefing from the 82nd Airborne on LOSAT a few years ago. Its a pretty hot system, gives nearly an ‘instant kill’ and anyone who can use a Play Station or X Box can probably be trained to use it without too much trouble. BUT, it’s mounted on an unarmored hummvee and it’s got a limited field of fire, essentially it can only kill what’s in front of it or a few degrees to either side.
“Are there many of them in Baghdad?
Posted by Dale Amon at April 8, 2006 10:17 PM “
Exactly the same number as there are anti-missile missile systems. Zero.
However such devices are easy enough to construct in a garage workshop, probably even easier than in WW2 times, due the wider variety of elastic bungees etc which are now available.
If anyone does start to deploy such expensive anti-missile missiles, then it only seems logical that in a war of attrition like in Baghdad, someone will eventually discover the point at which the radar system is set to ignore things as being “too slow” to be an RPG, and will either throw, or use a bungee catapult or make their own version of a PIAT, to hurl RPG shaped charge warheads at a target without setting of the anti-missile system.
The PIAT was crap, but so were the early Bazookas, and Panzerfaust etc. but even so, many AFVs have been destroyed with both weapons, because of the bravery or fanaticism of their operators.
Alternatively, as suggested before they could hurl dummy objects just fast enough to trick the AMM system to kill dismounted troops or civilians.
Taking a bit of the rocket propellant out or adding ballast to the RPG round so that it travels more slowly, might also be possible at the expense of decreased range. How many RPG attacks are conducted at extreme range anyway ?
If such Anti Missile Missile systems ever do become standard issue for major armies, then seems equally likely that smarter RPGs will be developed to try to counter them.
Surely using any such AMM systems in a battle with a technologicaly equal enemy would be a disaster, since the “always on ” radar would instantly give away your position to Electronic Warfare teams, and attract artillery fire or air strikes onto your vehicle ?
There is not ultimate offense or defense. There is only staying one or more steps ahead.
And if ds/dt is not good enough, then you add IR sensors, vision sensors, apply Moravec’s sensor fusion algolrithms. After all, with everything getting half the size every 18 months, you’ve got no problems evolving smarter and smarter detection systems.
See some of my earlier discussion on where it goes.
The most entertaining and stimulating thread I’ve come across in a while – thank you all.
Also approach this with a military attitude. In a war of attrition, you expect to lose some. The goal is simply to make sure the enemy loses men and material faster then he can replace them.
A good example of this is the method america used to neutralize the threat of the Tiger Tank in WWII. A Tiger could, on the average, take out Sherman’s at about 3 or 4 to 1. The American answer was to make sure they flooded the battle field with enough cheaply mass produced Sherman’s. With massive production capacity it does the job. A bit hard on american tanks crews in the ‘Ronsons’, but effective enough.
Likewise with enemy Martyrs. There is a finite number of them. You simply have to keep up a kill ratio that is favourable to our side. It will vary with the thrust and counter thrust of offsense and defense, but our side has more resources and can stay ahead of that game most of the time.
So what happens when you sniper up, machine gun.those nice little plastic radar boxes on the side?
How about a first volley of RPG, just anywhere above, near the vehicle to exhaust the supply of the vehicles missle.
Kinda depends on if you can resupply RPGs more easily than the other side can resupply vehicles.
If ‘the other side’ was one of those atrophied euromilitaries, my money would be on the side tossing RPGs… but you’re going to need to throw a hell of a lot of RPGs to have a comparable effect on the US military- they just have too much stuff, y’know?
… I’m not sure why people are bringing ABM into this discussion…..
Eric-
Some years ago there was a TV series called Connections. The one I recall started with some Saxons in Olde England sitting around a fire pit in their smoke filled hovel and illustrated through time how this problem lead to the development of the chimney flu which evetually lead to the development of the jet engine. I suspect a similar path of discovery, driven by the ABM development, has lead to this RPG defense system.
My question pertains to the anti-RPG guidance. Today’s ABM system being developed in the USA uses guidance electronics both on ground and in the missle. I wonder if this weapon has on-board guidance or if the electronics reside on the armored vehicle, solve the equation for the RPG trajectory, and send the kill vehicle to that point. I suspect the problems to be solved are very similar to an ABM system and differ more on their scale than on their technical aspects.
Uain,
Sorry, I didn’t realize that’s where you were going with that.
The technology for point defense against ballistic missiles is already past this system. In fact, the US has a couple cruisers off the coast of Japan that have been equipped with the SM-3 in an attempt to keep the North Koreans from scaring the Japanese into producing nuclear weapons. The article is a little dated; by now they’ve had several successful tests. The system is “theater defense”, which I guess is somewhere between SDI as Reagan envisioned it and a true point defense.
I’m not sure they could stop a Russian Topol-M, which was designed to get around this kind of system, but I’ll bet they wouldn’t have any trouble with a small number of the SCUD variants North Korea produces. I’m not sure exactly what “small’ means for the purposes of that statement, though. 2, 20, 100? I doubt anyone knows.
Years ago I had some involvement in the US Navy’s Aegis program. A perfect example of what you can do with lots of money, really smart people, and the knowlege failure could mean death for the Navy people involved. It’s quite an impressive system.
South Africa’s Avitronics (now owned by SAAB) has been working on a similar system for a few years, which is also reputed to be very effective.
Called the LEDS, or Land Electronic Defence System, it consists of laser and radar missile approach warning sensors linked in to a number of countermeasures aboard the vehicle turret. Options include multi-spectral smoke, active signature decoys, or a hard-kill option similar to that seen in the Israeli system.
The hard-kill countermeasure involves the relatively small Mongoose 1 projective, which destroys the incoming warhead purely through kinetic energy. The mathematics behind this are predictably phenomenally complex, but evidently doable by reasonably-priced processing power small enough to fit into a combat vehicle.
As for response time, it certainly is incredibly fast. I was able to view a non-armed working demonstrator once, and was encouraged to take a photo of the system’s sensors with my camera’s flash on. By the time I had released the button, the system control panel had already identified the direction of the ‘threat’, swivelled the Mongoose launcher to face me, and subsequently dismissed it as a false alarm. Very quick indeed.
Of course, there will always be a danger to dismounted infantry from this system. However, this system in particular is specifically designed to be as safe to dismounted infantry as possible (hence the use of pure kinetic energy for destruction rather than a proximity detonation), and it could be argued that dismounted infantry are already vulnerable to RPGs and ATGMs that impact on the side of armoured vehicles anyway.
It’s technology like this that will ensure the tank remains an integral part of the world’s militaries for decades to come. Rumours of its demise are always greatly exaggerated.