No. of Recommendations: 1
Except the Israeli system *is* now deployed. The Israelis developed a countermeasure system to protect their vehicles, capable of shooting down an RPG, before it hits the vehicle. Deployed in combat, saving Israeli soldier's lives, for several years now. The US Army wanted to buy it. But Raytheon's bought dogs in the government said "oh no, have Raytheon develop a knockoff of it, instead".
Some 15 years later, and who knows how much for "development", we are still waiting for Raytheon's system.
Quick Kill
There was some controversy when the United States Office of Force Transformation (OFT) planned to battle-test the more mature, but Israeli-made Trophy active protection system on several Stryker armored personnel carriers headed for Iraq in early 2007. The effort was scuttled by the US Army in favor of waiting for the Quick Kill system to be developed.[8] In 2006–2007, the Institute for Defense Analysis found Quick Kill to be relatively immature and had significant development risks. Important components such as the radar were not yet fully developed and testing of the system as a whole was on hold while the warhead was redesigned. They also found Trophy, which uses a shotgun-like kill mechanism, to be the most mature of the 15 systems they analyzed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_KillTakeaway, as with most other DoD programs over the last 20 years: doesn't expect anything to be developed and delivered on budget, or on schedule. We'll be lucky to see anything actually delivered, ever, regardless of how much we taxpayers pay for it.
Steve
