thedrifter
04-25-06, 11:35 AM
May 01, 2006
Super RPG threat
Pentagon officials say Army stalls on system that could defeat RPG-29
By Greg Grant
Times staff writer
The Army is forgoing a high-tech defensive system that can shoot down rocket-propelled grenades just as a powerful RPG that can penetrate even the thickest armor is starting to appear in Iraq.
The Army’s stance could pass up an opportunity to field the Trophy active protection system, which has been live-fire demonstrated by the Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation.
Instead, the Army is pursuing an alternative system that won’t be fielded until 2010 or later as part of the Future Combat Systems, Defense Department sources said.
“It is not as simple as grabbing something off the shelf and employing it,” said Army Col. Charles Cotteau, Army project manager for FCS Manned Systems Integration.
“If everybody has their own flavor of the week, we are bound for trouble,” he said.
The new enemy weapon that has surfaced in Iraq, the RPG-29, is a powerful anti-tank munition with two warheads. Sources said the Hezbollah terrorist group is smuggling the weapon into Iraq from Syria, which resumed arms purchases from Russia last year. Israeli intelligence sources confirmed that the RPG-29 was used by Hezbollah fighters in Israel in late 2005.
The RPG-29 is designed to defeat both explosive reactive armor, made up of metal boxes that detonate to disrupt the effects of incoming weapons, and slat armor — bolted-on cages designed to keep weapons from hitting a vehicle’s frame.
The new grenade packs two shaped-charge warheads.
The smaller one is designed to blow up the reactive armor or blow through the slats, clearing a path for a larger charge to strike the vehicle’s hull.
RPG-29s pose such a threat to American armor that the U.S. military has refused to allow the newly formed Iraqi army to buy any, fearing they will fall into the wrong hands, the top Iraqi ground-forces general told the New York Times last August.
Israel’s Trophy system is the only available armor system designed to actively defeat RPGs, according to Office of Force Transformation officials, who are charged by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to experiment with novel weapons, technologies and tactics.
The Trophy system has been under development in Israel for a decade, ever since guerrilla RPG attacks exacted a heavy toll on Israeli armored vehicles in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Officials said weapons such as the RPG-29 have forced the Israelis to look to high-tech means, instead of thicker armor, to protect their vehicles.
The Trophy system is composed of four radars, two launchers and a control unit. The radars pick up a threat up to 1,000 meters away and determine whether it’s a tank round, RPG or anti-tank missile. At the appropriate distance, a launcher fires oversized buckshot that shreds the incoming round or missile.
Over the past eight months, U.S. and Israeli engineers have worked to speed up its 2008 fielding date. The first Israeli Army Merkava 4 tanks will be equipped with Trophy in September.
Trophy stands alone
Office of Force Transformation officials began studying active protection systems two years ago as part of the Sheriff project, an effort to field a combat vehicle with an array of nonlethal and lethal weapons for urban warfare. After looking at active protection systems being considered by the Army, they rejected all but Trophy as either ineffective or technologically not ready.
In March, Army officials involved with active armor development said service leaders had forbidden them to talk about Trophy.
In an e-mailed statement, Army spokeswoman Maj. Desiree Wineland said, “The Army is looking at how to rapidly field the best available material solution to a valid requirement. We have an acquisition strategy that will allow us to field a best-of-breed APS solution across the Army — meeting the valid APS requirement, while at the same time supporting commonality and reducing the logistics and training impacts across the Army.”
But the near-term Future Combat System active protection system is not expected to begin production until 2010 at the earliest, said Col. Donald Kotchman of the Army’s Ground Combat Systems office.
He said the Army will give the systems first to Abrams tanks and the Stryker Mobile Gun System, vehicles that spearhead urban attacks.
In an e-mailed statement, Col. Wade Hall, transformation strategist at the Office of Force Transformation said, “OFT has forged a close, working relationship with both the Army Futures Center and the Army Test and Evaluation Command on Sheriff development. Government engineers are working diligently to find a solution to pressing joint operational need. In Trophy, we have found a credible APS system that can meet that need today. OFT’s objective is simply the fielding of experimental Sheriff/FSEP vehicles as rapidly as possible.”
Despite support in the highest level of the Pentagon, Army officials are balking at pressing ahead with sending experimental Trophy-equipped vehicles to Iraq.
OFT has fitted Trophy on its Sheriff vehicle, a modified Stryker to be deployed to Iraq with the aim of determining what works and what doesn’t in urban warfare.
To disperse crowds, the Sheriff has a “long-range acoustic device” — essentially a focused loudspeaker — and millimeter-wave radar beam. To fight snipers, it has a gun that can automatically train to the location of a gunshot, allowing operators within the vehicle to use infrared sensors to spot and even fire on a threat.
The OFT started tinkering with Sheriff in 2004, and the project got a boost a year ago when an urgent request arrived from Marine Corps and Army officers in Iraq. In April 2005, Army Brig. Gen. James Huggins of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, asked the Pentagon to deliver for testing 14 vehicles that are referred to by the Army as Full Spectrum Effects Platforms. A top U.S. Central Command officer also signed off on the critical needs statement, then-Maj. Gen. John Castellaw, who now has his third star and is chief of Marine aviation.
In January, the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell, the Pentagon body empowered to speed weapons to the battlefield, authorized $31.3 million to ready three Sheriffs for fielding to Iraq as quickly as possible, a decision endorsed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.
Testing, but not talking
On March 30, OFT conducted a live-fire demonstration of a Trophy-equipped Stryker at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. Testers fired two RPG-7s from 90 meters away at a Stryker that was moving at 23 mph.
The system tracked both rockets and determined the one from the right would miss. The launcher fired at the other one, disabling it within meters of the Stryker. Parts of the RPG continued forward and crashed into the vehicle without effect.
For their part, Army acquisition officials are discouraging any talk about Trophy. In fact, Col. John Koster, the Army’s program manager for the JRAC-funded effort, was the senior-most Army official to attend the Dahlgren demonstration. He declined an interview request.
The Army is pursuing its own development program that — if everything remains on schedule — would field an active defense system for armored vehicles around 2011.
Army officials remain tight-lipped about their apparent opposition to active protection-and-denial technologies on Sheriff, but Pentagon officials say the reason for the silence is simple: The OFT vehicle poses a threat to the service’s signature FCS program.
“Once troops start playing with Sheriff and see what Trophy can do, they might want to change FCS,” said one source.
Army officers say that is already happening, with troops returning from extensive combat in Iraq and starting to question or recommend changes to the FCS program.
Although Army officials contend they are committed to fielding an active defense system as part of FCS, they say it would be unwise to field any system that is less than 100 percent effective.
“The issue with any [active] armor protection system is the 60 percent solution is not acceptable,” said Maj. Gen. Roger Nadeau, the Army’s research and development chief.
But what worries Pentagon officials is that the Army knew about Trophy — 60 officers and FCS officials visited Israel for briefings, but not one asked for more information on the system. OFT stumbled onto the system last summer and immediately moved to negotiate a government-to-government technology agreement allowing American officers unprecedented access to top-secret data on the system.
To save time, OFT asked Israel to ship one of its three Stryker vehicles fitted with Trophy to the U.S. for testing.
That move shaved a month off of the program.
In testing over the past eight months, U.S. officials have proven Israeli claims regarding the vehicle’s effectiveness, which has been demonstrated with some 150 inert and live rounds.
Army officials, from senior officers to evaluators, contend they won’t clear Trophy for deployment. In fact, they want to retest the Stryker to make sure the weight of the various OFT add-ons doesn’t threaten soldiers.
Trophy fans say this is the wrong way to think about it.
“Trust me, the threat posed by the added weight is nothing compared to the threat from being hit by an RPG,” one source said.
Greg Grant is a staff writer for Defense News. Army Times staff writer Matthew Cox contributed to this report.
Ellie
Super RPG threat
Pentagon officials say Army stalls on system that could defeat RPG-29
By Greg Grant
Times staff writer
The Army is forgoing a high-tech defensive system that can shoot down rocket-propelled grenades just as a powerful RPG that can penetrate even the thickest armor is starting to appear in Iraq.
The Army’s stance could pass up an opportunity to field the Trophy active protection system, which has been live-fire demonstrated by the Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation.
Instead, the Army is pursuing an alternative system that won’t be fielded until 2010 or later as part of the Future Combat Systems, Defense Department sources said.
“It is not as simple as grabbing something off the shelf and employing it,” said Army Col. Charles Cotteau, Army project manager for FCS Manned Systems Integration.
“If everybody has their own flavor of the week, we are bound for trouble,” he said.
The new enemy weapon that has surfaced in Iraq, the RPG-29, is a powerful anti-tank munition with two warheads. Sources said the Hezbollah terrorist group is smuggling the weapon into Iraq from Syria, which resumed arms purchases from Russia last year. Israeli intelligence sources confirmed that the RPG-29 was used by Hezbollah fighters in Israel in late 2005.
The RPG-29 is designed to defeat both explosive reactive armor, made up of metal boxes that detonate to disrupt the effects of incoming weapons, and slat armor — bolted-on cages designed to keep weapons from hitting a vehicle’s frame.
The new grenade packs two shaped-charge warheads.
The smaller one is designed to blow up the reactive armor or blow through the slats, clearing a path for a larger charge to strike the vehicle’s hull.
RPG-29s pose such a threat to American armor that the U.S. military has refused to allow the newly formed Iraqi army to buy any, fearing they will fall into the wrong hands, the top Iraqi ground-forces general told the New York Times last August.
Israel’s Trophy system is the only available armor system designed to actively defeat RPGs, according to Office of Force Transformation officials, who are charged by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to experiment with novel weapons, technologies and tactics.
The Trophy system has been under development in Israel for a decade, ever since guerrilla RPG attacks exacted a heavy toll on Israeli armored vehicles in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Officials said weapons such as the RPG-29 have forced the Israelis to look to high-tech means, instead of thicker armor, to protect their vehicles.
The Trophy system is composed of four radars, two launchers and a control unit. The radars pick up a threat up to 1,000 meters away and determine whether it’s a tank round, RPG or anti-tank missile. At the appropriate distance, a launcher fires oversized buckshot that shreds the incoming round or missile.
Over the past eight months, U.S. and Israeli engineers have worked to speed up its 2008 fielding date. The first Israeli Army Merkava 4 tanks will be equipped with Trophy in September.
Trophy stands alone
Office of Force Transformation officials began studying active protection systems two years ago as part of the Sheriff project, an effort to field a combat vehicle with an array of nonlethal and lethal weapons for urban warfare. After looking at active protection systems being considered by the Army, they rejected all but Trophy as either ineffective or technologically not ready.
In March, Army officials involved with active armor development said service leaders had forbidden them to talk about Trophy.
In an e-mailed statement, Army spokeswoman Maj. Desiree Wineland said, “The Army is looking at how to rapidly field the best available material solution to a valid requirement. We have an acquisition strategy that will allow us to field a best-of-breed APS solution across the Army — meeting the valid APS requirement, while at the same time supporting commonality and reducing the logistics and training impacts across the Army.”
But the near-term Future Combat System active protection system is not expected to begin production until 2010 at the earliest, said Col. Donald Kotchman of the Army’s Ground Combat Systems office.
He said the Army will give the systems first to Abrams tanks and the Stryker Mobile Gun System, vehicles that spearhead urban attacks.
In an e-mailed statement, Col. Wade Hall, transformation strategist at the Office of Force Transformation said, “OFT has forged a close, working relationship with both the Army Futures Center and the Army Test and Evaluation Command on Sheriff development. Government engineers are working diligently to find a solution to pressing joint operational need. In Trophy, we have found a credible APS system that can meet that need today. OFT’s objective is simply the fielding of experimental Sheriff/FSEP vehicles as rapidly as possible.”
Despite support in the highest level of the Pentagon, Army officials are balking at pressing ahead with sending experimental Trophy-equipped vehicles to Iraq.
OFT has fitted Trophy on its Sheriff vehicle, a modified Stryker to be deployed to Iraq with the aim of determining what works and what doesn’t in urban warfare.
To disperse crowds, the Sheriff has a “long-range acoustic device” — essentially a focused loudspeaker — and millimeter-wave radar beam. To fight snipers, it has a gun that can automatically train to the location of a gunshot, allowing operators within the vehicle to use infrared sensors to spot and even fire on a threat.
The OFT started tinkering with Sheriff in 2004, and the project got a boost a year ago when an urgent request arrived from Marine Corps and Army officers in Iraq. In April 2005, Army Brig. Gen. James Huggins of Multi-National Corps-Iraq, asked the Pentagon to deliver for testing 14 vehicles that are referred to by the Army as Full Spectrum Effects Platforms. A top U.S. Central Command officer also signed off on the critical needs statement, then-Maj. Gen. John Castellaw, who now has his third star and is chief of Marine aviation.
In January, the Joint Rapid Acquisition Cell, the Pentagon body empowered to speed weapons to the battlefield, authorized $31.3 million to ready three Sheriffs for fielding to Iraq as quickly as possible, a decision endorsed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.
Testing, but not talking
On March 30, OFT conducted a live-fire demonstration of a Trophy-equipped Stryker at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. Testers fired two RPG-7s from 90 meters away at a Stryker that was moving at 23 mph.
The system tracked both rockets and determined the one from the right would miss. The launcher fired at the other one, disabling it within meters of the Stryker. Parts of the RPG continued forward and crashed into the vehicle without effect.
For their part, Army acquisition officials are discouraging any talk about Trophy. In fact, Col. John Koster, the Army’s program manager for the JRAC-funded effort, was the senior-most Army official to attend the Dahlgren demonstration. He declined an interview request.
The Army is pursuing its own development program that — if everything remains on schedule — would field an active defense system for armored vehicles around 2011.
Army officials remain tight-lipped about their apparent opposition to active protection-and-denial technologies on Sheriff, but Pentagon officials say the reason for the silence is simple: The OFT vehicle poses a threat to the service’s signature FCS program.
“Once troops start playing with Sheriff and see what Trophy can do, they might want to change FCS,” said one source.
Army officers say that is already happening, with troops returning from extensive combat in Iraq and starting to question or recommend changes to the FCS program.
Although Army officials contend they are committed to fielding an active defense system as part of FCS, they say it would be unwise to field any system that is less than 100 percent effective.
“The issue with any [active] armor protection system is the 60 percent solution is not acceptable,” said Maj. Gen. Roger Nadeau, the Army’s research and development chief.
But what worries Pentagon officials is that the Army knew about Trophy — 60 officers and FCS officials visited Israel for briefings, but not one asked for more information on the system. OFT stumbled onto the system last summer and immediately moved to negotiate a government-to-government technology agreement allowing American officers unprecedented access to top-secret data on the system.
To save time, OFT asked Israel to ship one of its three Stryker vehicles fitted with Trophy to the U.S. for testing.
That move shaved a month off of the program.
In testing over the past eight months, U.S. officials have proven Israeli claims regarding the vehicle’s effectiveness, which has been demonstrated with some 150 inert and live rounds.
Army officials, from senior officers to evaluators, contend they won’t clear Trophy for deployment. In fact, they want to retest the Stryker to make sure the weight of the various OFT add-ons doesn’t threaten soldiers.
Trophy fans say this is the wrong way to think about it.
“Trust me, the threat posed by the added weight is nothing compared to the threat from being hit by an RPG,” one source said.
Greg Grant is a staff writer for Defense News. Army Times staff writer Matthew Cox contributed to this report.
Ellie