Experts agree it might help save lives, so why isn’t it in the field?
Rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, are a favorite weapon of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are cheap, easy to use and deadly.
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.
Trophy 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.
And officials with the Pentagon’s 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.
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.
Col. Donald Kotchman, who heads the Army’s program to develop an RPG defense, acknowledges that Raytheon’s system won’t be ready for fielding until 2011 at the earliest.
Bold emphasis mine
Yap, so in the meantime our American solders will continue to die so Raytheon can milk their contract, when "Trophy is a system that is ready — today... "
2 comments:
Army says Israeli-made anti-RPG weapon unproven
By Kristin Roberts
Reuters
Friday, September 8, 2006; 5:56 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Army weapons buyer on Friday said an Israeli system billed as capable of knocking down rocket-propelled grenades has not been proven, and so will not be purchased and deployed to soldiers on the ground.
Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, deputy for acquisition and systems management to the assistant secretary of the Army, rejected a recent report by NBC News that the Army blocked a plan to buy the Israeli system called Trophy because it would hurt the Army's push to build a completely new system.
While Trophy has moved through testing stages already, the new system being built by Raytheon Co. under a $70 million contract will start to roll out in fiscal 2010 at the earliest.
Sorenson, however, said Trophy is both not ready and does not meet Army requirements. He said no existing system to defend against rocket-propelled grenades meets requirements.
"We do not want to put something out there that gives the soldiers a false sense of security," Sorenson told reporters. "We will not put anything out there that we have not seen as demonstrated to be capable of doing what it's alleged to do."
More than 2,500 U.S. service members have died in Iraq. Attacks involving rocket-propelled grenades have killed more than 100 soldiers, far less than the number killed by roadside bombs, Sorenson said.
The system being built by Raytheon is part of the Army's Future Combat System modernization program, projected to cost an inflation-adjusted $161 billion over the next two decades. It is intended to use advanced communications to link troops with a family of 18 light, fast, manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles.
Raytheon's weapon to protect against rocket-propelled grenades would be incorporated onto those vehicles.
Sorenson said that while Trophy may be available sooner than Raytheon's system, it was not designed to fit requirements of the Future Combat System. He also said the Army had other concerns about Trophy, such as unintended damage created.
Trophy was developed by Rafael, the Israel Armament Development Authority. A spokesman for Rafael was not immediately available.
A spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee did not immediately respond to a query about whether the panel was investigating the Army's contract decision.
(Additional reporting by Jim Wolf)
"anonymous" obviously did not read the whole article, or did not believe it.
It was a military expert on the OFT who said the Trophy system was 98% accurate. He seems to believe 30 test are not enough.
As retired military, I know not to trust those who deal with military procurement.
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