Trophy

[shahadi]

My take-aways from the article are: (1) Active protective systems in general have real issues that have service members and crews with little confidence in the system, and (2) The army continues research in the tank's skin to find lighter yet stronger material.

Active protection systems aren’t perfect of course. Most notably, just like reactive armor, they only supply a limited number of total “shots” before they become dead weight and crews cannot readily reload them during a fight. In addition, the interceptors could be dangerous to nearby supporting infantry, critical to any armor operation, especially in dense urban terrain, as well as innocent bystanders.

"The real sort of Holy Grail of technologies that I’m trying to find on this thing is material – is the armor itself,” U.S. Army General Mark Milley told reporters at the National Press Club in July 2017. “If we can discover a material – and I’ve got a lot of research and development going into it – if we can discover a material that is significantly lighter in weight that gives you the same armor protection, that would be a real significant breakthrough.”

Other Army officials have suggested in the past there is an institutional reluctance to eschew any amount of passive armor plating in favor of active protection. Confidence in a system is an important, if intangible factor.

“There has to be a level of trust in whatever it is that you're trying [to use] to displace that passive armor,” U.S. Army Lieutenant General John Murray, Deputy Chief of Staff for Resource Management, told industry representatives in March 2017. He said at the time he wasn’t sure troops had that level of faith in active protection.

In terms of scenario design, the article asserted, "Nearly all … launchers are high-level threats to vehicles and rotary-wing aircraft (my emphasis) in the U.S. Army."

Thus, in light of the above assertion, in game ATGM's maybe hacked to target helos.