US Army shuns system to combat RPGs - NBC News

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 Millers 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.

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, Israels 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 Pentagons 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 RPGs 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. Raytheons contract constitutes a small but important part of the Armys 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.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Trophy
• Anti-RPG
• Israeli
• Weapons
• Defence

[subjectzer0]

just like dragon skin.. the army is on bed with us companies that dont have the best technology. this shit disgusts me... capitalism before the country. money over lives.

[saskel2000]

the only sensible answer here. The army doesn't care about troop safety so long as it stays within a small percentage. Everything else is bureaucracy and profiteering for control interest groups

[dotdotv]

Well, here it is, 2011, where are you Ratheon??

[XxXPenrdXxX]

@vhagler that what I was thinking too also shrapnel is bad but isn't that bad an explosion alone can kill people

[commnter10]

It must have been between 2000 and 2003, there was a news report on it, like on 20/20, 48 hours, or 60 minutes. An inventor created an airbag which absorbed a very high percentage of a bomb blast. The military was not too interested in it. Sure, it won't work against a whole pile of artillery shells, but would work against alot of smaller explosion. This was before IED became a common term in the news. This guy had invented the airbags for armored limous and other cars.

[vhagler]

@commnter10 Air bags that would stop IEDS. Haha that is laughable, you must not know what getting hit by an IED is like. If that technology could work the Army would be all over it because it's a lot easier to outfit HMMVVs with airbags than retrofit them to handle the weight of armor.

[vhagler]

This is a bunch of bullcrap. That trophy system looks like it would work to stop the RPG from hitting the vehicle but the explosion that occurs at a distance outside the vehicle would be more deadly. By exploding the RPG away from the vehicle it enables anyone outside of the hatch to be hit with schrapnel. Troops on the ground would risk being hurt. Troops would either turn the system off or would still be exposed to the blast. Good job army for not wasting money on this system.

[LevTrotsky1917]

New RPG like the RPG 30 can defeat trophy according to Russian military.

[staffsgtamous]

@subjectzer0 dont forget that they also wont replace the M4 over the proven and reliable HK 416. Since contacts with colt is cheaper than HK.

[TruthApple88]

Perhaps the Americans have finally realised their pot of Army gold has a bottom?

[commnter10]

They did the same thing with the airbags. A guy invented airbags to protect against roadside bombs. Extremely effective. Ignored by the Army.

Don't forget it was Army hiearchy b.s. that prevented the use of smoke at Omaha Beach. That was not an operation to be proud of, all the b.s. about our brave troops storming ashore attacking the enemy. They were murdered by the Army brass who wouldn't use such things as smoke and flailing anti-mine equipment on tanks.