IAV 2025: Trophy now able to intercept drones
Calibre has learnt that the Trophy active protection system (APS) can now intercept drones after a series of tests conducted by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems in 2024. A company representative shared details of the development during the Defence IQ International Armoured Vehicles (IAV) conference that is being held in Farnborough UK from 21st to 23rd January.
“The main challenge we are facing now is how manoeuvre forces deal with low altitude aerial threats. It can be simple drones that you can buy online, up to larger fixed wing types,” the Rafael representative explained.
“We asked ourselves, what can we do with the current system in order to deal with these threats? So, in the past year we carried out a number of tests that showed Trophy could successfully intercept drones and fixed wing UAVs using some software upgrades, and minor changes to the hardware,” he added. This means that the upgrade to counter drones could be applied to existing users of Trophy in the US and Europe.
In live fire tests, Rafael integrated a Trophy APS onto a test rig of a 30 mm turret and used it to intercept a large fixed wing jet-powered drone that was assessed to be between class 2 and 3 drone that approached from a near vertical dive. The update enabling the system to intercept drones is not the only update that has taken place in the past year.
“Trophy has fought in Gaza and in the North; in Gaza it was mostly short distance threats. In the North there were long-distance threats with ATGMs. In both cases, it [Trophy] dealt with them very well. We learnt that we needed to adjust and improve the system during the war.” The EuroTrophy representative speaking in the main conference at IAV said that Trophy has achieved a very high interception rate during the two conflicts in Israel. (Note: EuroTrophy is a joint venture set up by Rafael, GDELS and KNDS to market the Trophy system to European countries.)
“There were hundreds of systems in use, and we needed to update them quickly. We did all of this with the same hardware,” the Rafael representative said before adding that this is not all. “Trophy has a full development roadmap, we know where we would like to go. It will keep growing and add capabilities. In the near future, there will be more than what we have discussed.”
The EuroTrophy representative also said that the company is working with KNDS on Trophy solutions for the MGCS and other platforms that are being developed such as the ASCOD IFVs that have been unveiled in the past year. Moreover, we can expect to see Trophy integrated onto three European 8x8s, the EuroTrophy representative said.
The Rafael representative added that Trophy is a mission enabler, it provides commanders with a level of certainty about the level of protection that the vehicle carries. “If you talk to a commander from the battlefield, he will talk about how important it is to accomplish a mission, and Trophy is the key system that enables them to do this. If you lose 4 or 5 tanks from a battalion, you will stop and consider whether or not you can continue the mission,” the representative said, explaining the challenges that manoeuvre commanders must consider before combat.
There are a very large number of ATGMs now available to non-state actors, and state actors like Russia have very capable systems that would very quickly inflict sufficient casualties on a formation to imperil a mission. Adding an APS like Trophy therefore helps increase survivability and, as a result, certainty that the mission can be completed.
However, the representative emphasised that providing air defence against drones cannot be the job of Trophy alone for manoeuvre forces. “The golden triangle is to combine mobility, lethality, and survivability together in the best way possible. This principle works perfectly at a platform level, and it also works perfectly at a formation level – a division even,” the representative said. “If you want to protect the entire formation, then you need layered air defence including lasers, soft kill, hard kill, and control of the electromagnetic spectrum,” he said.
Tech profile: Trophy APS
Trophy is a combination of radars and explosive effectors mounted on the turret of the defended vehicle. When a threat is fired at the vehicle, the radars identify it and assess whether or not it is a threat to the vehicle. In both cases, the system generates a location to indicate where the threat was fired from and generates an option to engage the threat. If the missile or rocket is identified as a threat, then the system directs its countermeasure pedestal towards the target which then detonates showering the threat with explosively formed penetrators. This breaks the threat up and may detonate its warhead, but always at a safe distance from the vehicle. The countermeasure effector then reloads and is ready for the next threat. The entire process takes less than a second.
Calibre comment
Active protection systems are a key element of armoured vehicle survivability. Until now, they have primarily been integrated onto heavy platforms like MBTs, primarily because they are high value assets that need to be protected but also because they originally were the only vehicles with the payload to carry the system. This is changing, as the EuroTrophy representative indicated, and it will be integrated across many different platform types. Without an APS, the main armour of the vehicles would have to be able to defend against the threats in question. This is possible in some circumstances, but modern ATGMs can penetrate up to 1,300 mm of rolled homogeneous armour, which would dramatically overmatch the side armour of almost any vehicle. Even an RPG-7, which is a very common threat, would pose a significant risk to the side armour of modern vehicles. This is why capabilities like Trophy are so important to the future of manoeuvre forces.
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