The Army has an urgent operational need to equip armored vehicles in Europe with active protection systems (APS) and is actively searching for ways to fund the effort.
“This is a program the Army is actively pursuing,” an Army spokesman confirmed this week to Defense Daily.
Army officials have not yet released details of the scope or timeline of the program, but senior service officials have been briefed on the need to procure non-developmental APS equipment for Stryker wheeled vehicles and M1 Abrams tanks.
The effort is independent of the urgent upgunning of 81 Strykers in Europe from a 12.7mm machine gun to a 30mm turret, the Army spokesman said. Both are part of a larger program to modernize the Army’s Strykers to a configuration relevant for the deterrent role they are playing in Europe.
The Army already has an operational requirements document (ORD) and a mission needs statement for vehicle self-protection, which form the official basis for the APS requirement, according to briefings to service officials.
To equip the first unit by fiscal year 2019, which the Army has established as its goal for expediting a non-developmental system to the field, the service will need an operational needs statement. That document could be used to initiate an urgent mission requirement process, an abbreviated acquisition construct specifically designed to rush gear to the field.
The Army has been pursuing an APS capability for combat vehicles since at least 2008 when it took stock of available systems and found none that were sufficiently mature and were safe enough for dismounted troops.
That was still the case in 2011 when a live-fire Defense Department evaluation of available APS found that none were mature enough for fielding, according to Army briefings. DoD found that in operational settings the APS pitched by industry did not perform as advertised and were not deployable.
Two years later, the Army relaxed the active protection requirements for its now-defunct ground combat vehicle, but APS was still considered an unreasonable risk. In the ensuing years, Army officials and counterparts in both Canada and the United Kingdom determined APS was not ready to field.
More recently, the battlefield and potential threats have resulted in an expedient need for APS, though Army briefings from 2015 say the challenges of fielding off-the-shelf systems remain. To rush the needed protective systems to the field, the Army has decided to introduce vehicle survivability sets in phases, according to Army documents.
That effort, dubbed modular active protection system (MAPS), is the only such program currently funded and seeks to establish a baseline vehicle protection suite common to the combat vehicle fleet. The Army is pursuing the new effort to expedite APS to the field in parallel to MAPS.
The Army recently awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT] $8.5 million in contracts to develop an open-architecture controller to coordinate systems that protect armored vehicles from incoming enemy rockets.
The seemingly minuscule outlays are part of a larger program to protect vehicles from proliferating shoulder-fired ordnance without weighing them down with armor or having to develop platforms from the ground up to contend with specific emerging threats. Lockheed Martin is developing the MAPS central processor.
Emerging battlefield conditions have shortened the timeline to integrate APS on vehicles vulnerable to modern rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles.
Officials now are focused on identifying non-developmental APS capabilities and fielding them as retrofit kits to Strykers and Abrams tanks as soon as fiscal year 2019, according to Army briefings. The Army then plans to monitor the system’s performance to identify capability gaps or unacceptable risks and fold that into future APS improvements.
There are a few APS capabilities available, though Army documents identify two by name: the Trophy APS built by Rafael and fielded by the Israeli Defense Forces; and the Iron Curtain system developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Iron Curtain uses an active-scan C-band radar to detect and track incoming rocket-propelled grenade rounds, then deploys a distributed hard-kill countermeasure to disable the threat without detonating its warhead. Army briefings by the service’s Acquisition Support Center identify Iron Curtain as an appropriate APS for the Stryker.
The basic Trophy model is in current use by Israeli combat brigades on Merkava IV tanks and has effectively performed in combat since its introduction in 2009. The system provides 360-degree protection from all incoming anti-armor threats. Rafael also offers a lighter version small enough for use on tactical wheeled vehicles. The system can defeat RPGs outright, but needs sufficient base armor to protect against ATGMs, according to Army briefs.
Trophy Light Vehicle (LV) made an appearance at the annual Association of the United States Army’s confab in Washington, D.C., in October aboard an Oshkosh [OSK] mine-resistant, ambush protected vehicle (MRAP).
That Trophy is in production and battle tested are both pluses for the Army, though the system may have problems with the Army’s Fuse Board, Army briefings say. The Fuse Board determines whether ordnance can be deployed with minimal risk to friendly forces.
With an urgent operational need established, it falls to the Army to find funding for APS systems in the its already constrained budget. Several options have been floated to find cash for the systems, though none are without risk, according to Army briefings. The most immediate option being considered is using research, development, technology and engineering funds available through a partnership with TARDEC.
Another option is to use war funding and pull from overseas contingency operations (OCO) funding in fiscal years 2018-2019 or a Long-Range Investment Requirements Analysis for an APS system in that year’s program objective memorandum (POM).
A riskier tack is trying to fund the requirement through a combination of OCO and requesting funds directly from Congress, according to the briefings.