Included in an Army request to shuffle $916 million in fiscal year 2016 dollars among accounts is $27.8 million to fast track the purchase and installation of active protection systems (APS) on combat vehicles.
The reprogramming asks for an increase in “combat vehicle improvement programs” from $344.4 million to $372.2 million in the current fiscal year. While that line item covers a variety of vehicle performance and systems enhancements, the $28 million jump is earmarked for non-developmental automatic missile shields for medium and light vehicles.
“Funds are required to rapidly acquire Active Protection Systems (APS) for the Stryker and Bradley systems to defeat or mitigate threats to survivability,” the reprogramming request reads.
APS have been on the Army’s wishlist for years, but the major effort has been to develop piecemeal a modular active protection system (MAPS), which is an ongoing program of record. The urgency to field a non-developmental stopgap technology was heightened as a result to Russian anti-tank capabilities demonstrated in Ukraine and Syria.
APS in general provides “hit-avoidance” capabilities that defeat or destroy enemy anti-armor munitions. The Army is interested in both “hard-kill” systems that fire physical countermeasures at incoming threats and “soft-kill” technologies that spoof or fry the electronic circuits of guided missiles.
The reprogramming describes in detail two non-developmental APS systems. It calls for $16.8 million to study the reliability of the Iron Curtain missile shield designed by Artis under a DARPA development program and its ability to protect Stryker wheeled vehicles specifically from rocket propelled grenades (RPG).
Iron Curtain is a “downward-firing” APS designed specifically to defeat RPGs and would be a new-start program for the Army. The funding would support procurement of two prototype systems “for the installation and characterization that is required to assess its suitability and for integration onto the Stryker vehicle platform,” the reprogramming document says.
The estimated total cost of this effort is $31.2 million with $16.8 million from shuffling fiscal 2016 funding and another $14.4 million set aside in fiscal 2017. The fiscal 2017 funding is included in the FY 2017 budget request.
Another $11 million from fiscal 2016 funding will be directed to purchase, integrate and test Israeli Military Industries’ Iron Fist non-developmental APS for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The system would be supplied through General Dynamics [GD]. Iron Fist can defeat anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) and RPGs.
The systems use a gimbaled launcher with a “hard-kill” interceptor, meaning it fires physical projectiles that strike and destroy an incoming missile. The new-start program has a total cost of $26.3 million with $11 million from fiscal 2016 and the remaining $15.3 million included in the fiscal 2017 budget request. Funding will procure four prototypes along with A-kit installation hardware and B-kit system hardware and assess their suitability for integration onto Bradleys.
Another $15.3 million has been set aside in fiscal 2017 for integration and testing of the Trophy APS onto the M1A2 Abrams tank. The system was developed by Israeli defense firm Rafael and sold in the U.S. by DRS Technologies.
“These efforts will include installation and characterization of potential solutions, which will inform a strategy for the Modular Active Protections System (MAPS) program of record,” the reprogramming document says.