American Army Rejects Trophy

The US Army is rejecting the Tropy System of vehicle defence against RPGs. Why are they rejecting it? Because defence contractor Raytheon has a $70 million contract to develop a similar system in 2011 or there abouts. Now the Raytheon people are good guys. I worked for them many years ago on the Air Traffic Control Route System that keeps track of aircraft between airports. They do good work. That system which was designed in the late 60s is only now being replaced.

The US Army did buy several Trophy Systems for test purposes.

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 RPG’s 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. Raytheon’s contract constitutes a small but important part of the Army’s 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.

I was always under the impression that having allies like Israel was a plus because of developments like this that got the job done quickly, saving the US Military time and money and American lives.

Good thing this is getting exposed.

I covered the Trophy System's use in the Lebanon War at Lebanon Operational Review and Intel Bonanza.

H/T Israel Matzav