We've Known This for Thirty Years

Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense shield continues to reveal itself to be an expensive mirage:

The system designed to defend American cities and towns against a nuclear attack by North Korea is “simply unable to protect the U.S. public” and will remain ineffective unless Congress exerts rigorous oversight, according to a new report.

The report, to be released Thursday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, recommends that the Obama administration halt the expansion of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, known as GMD, until its technical problems have been solved.

“The story of this system is a cautionary tale about how the lack of appropriate oversight of a politically charged missile defense program has led to a system in tatters,” said the report, written by three physicists with expertise in missile defense.

“Despite more than a decade of development and a bill of $40 billion, the GMD system is simply unable to protect the U.S. public,’’ the authors wrote.

………

The report notes that in “heavily scripted” flight tests that are “set up for success,” GMD interceptors have often failed to hit mock enemy warheads. In the seven most recent tests, interceptors destroyed their targets just three times, the report says -- a finding consistent with conclusions of the Pentagon’s operational test and evaluation office.

………

The report said members of Congress and Pentagon officials insisted on deploying and expanding the system at a rapid pace—at the expense of sound procurement and engineering.

“Repeatedly,” the report said, “the Pentagon has sacrificed quality, shortened engineering cycles and sidestepped acquisitions best practices to meet a deadline imposed by political rationales rather than technical realities.”

………

The physicists write that “the continued development of the GMD system without adequate oversight and accountability, and the continued fielding of interceptors without adequate testing, means the system is not even on a path to achieving a useful ability to intercept ballistic missiles.”

As if the F-35 weren't proof enough, it's clear that our defense industry  is completely dysfunctional.

After 30 Years and Billions of Dollars the Missile Defense Contractors Still Cannot Solder a Wire Correctly

Notwithstanding the myriad tough technical problems that are involved, one would think that the Missile Defense Agency would at least be able to make the manufacturers make the interceptors to spec:

Two serious technical flaws have been identified in the ground-launched anti-missile interceptors that the United States would rely on to defend against a nuclear attack by North Korea.

Pentagon officials were informed of the problems as recently as last summer but decided to postpone corrective action. They told federal auditors that acting immediately to fix the defects would interfere with the production of new interceptors and slow a planned expansion of the nation's homeland missile defense system, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

As a result, all 33 interceptors now deployed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County and Ft. Greely, Alaska, have one of the defects. Ten of those interceptors — plus eight being prepared for delivery this year — have both.

Summing up the effect on missile-defense readiness, the GAO report said that "the fielded interceptors are susceptible to experiencing … failure modes," resulting in "an interceptor fleet that may not work as intended."

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One of the newly disclosed shortcomings centers on wiring harnesses embedded within the kill vehicles' dense labyrinth of electronics.

A supplier used an unsuitable soldering material to assemble harnesses in at least 10 interceptors deployed in 2009 and 2010 and still part of the fleet.

The same material was used in the eight interceptors that will be placed in silos this year, according to GAO analyst Cristina Chaplain, lead author of the report.

The soldering material is vulnerable to corrosion in the interceptors' underground silos, some of which have had damp conditions and mold. Corrosion "could have far-reaching effects" because the "defective wiring harnesses" supply power and data to the kill vehicle's on-board guidance system, said the GAO report, which is dated May 6.

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Chaplain told The Times that based on her staff's discussions with the Missile Defense Agency, officials there have "no timeline" for repairing the wiring harnesses.

The agency encountered a similar problem with wiring harnesses years earlier, and the supplier was instructed not to use the deficient soldering material. But "the corrective actions were not passed along to other suppliers," according to the GAO report.

L. David Montague, co-chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel that reviewed operations of the Missile Defense Agency, said officials should promptly set a schedule for fixing the harnesses.

"The older they are with that kind of a flawed soldering, the more likely they are to fail," Montague, a former president of missile systems for Lockheed Corp., said in an interview.

The second newly disclosed defect involves a component called a divert thruster, a small motor intended to help maneuver the kill vehicles in flight. Each kill vehicle has four of them.

The GAO report refers to "performance issues" with the thrusters. It offers few details, and GAO auditors declined to elaborate, citing a fear of revealing classified information. They did say that the problem is different from an earlier concern that the thruster's heavy vibrations could throw off the kill vehicle's guidance system.

The report and interviews with defense specialists make clear that problems with the divert thruster have bedeviled the interceptor fleet for years. To address deficiencies in the original version, Pentagon contractors created a redesigned "alternate divert thruster."

The government planned to install the new version in many of the currently deployed interceptors over the next few years and to retrofit newly manufactured interceptors, according to the GAO report and interviews with its authors.

That plan was scrapped after the alternate thruster, in November 2013, failed a crucial ground test to determine whether it could withstand the stresses of flight, the report said. To stay on track for expanding the fleet, senior Pentagon officials decided to keep building interceptors with the original, deficient thruster.

What sort of moron structures a multi-billion dollar multi-year defense system in such a way that there is absolutely no quality control?

To accelerate deployment, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld exempted the missile agency from the Pentagon's standard procurement rules and testing standards.

(emphasis mine)

OK, that kind of moron.

Why the hell is the MDA still operating this way? 

Rumsfeld has been "spending more time with his family" for about 9 years, so one would think that the pentagon would be able to correct at least one of his f%$#-ups in the interim.


H/T the hairiest Saroff, aka Bear who Swims.
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This is Just Plain Weird

One of the passengers on doomed Malaysian Airlines was found wearing an oxygen mask:

Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans has said that one of the 298 people killed in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane over eastern Ukraine was found wearing an oxygen mask.

He indicated that not everybody on board had died instantly when the plane was hit by a missile.

An initial report said flight MH17 broke up in mid-air after being pierced by objects at high velocity.

………
The Dutch public prosecutor has confirmed that an oxygen mask was found, although a spokesman said it was around the passenger's neck rather than their mouth. It had been secured with elastic and has been tested for DNA and fingerprints.

The plane had been flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on 17 July when it went down over rebel-held territory. Pro-Russian separatist leaders deny shooting it down with a missile.

Although 196 of the passengers were Dutch, the passenger with the oxygen mask was not, the prosecutor said on Thursday. Dutch media said the victim in question was an Australian and the family had been informed about the development.

Needless to say, the tinfoil hat crowd is going crazy over this.

I'm not sure if this means anything beyond some of the oxygen masks deploying before the plane broke up in mid air (confirmed from radar readings).

Still, this is f%$#ing weird.

This is an Interesting Concept

When one looks at doing more with less from a naval perspective, repurposing an existing hull for a new mission seems like a good way to get the capabilities that you need.

Case in point, Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard is shown a mockup of an LPD converted to a missile platform:

Among the many striking displays at the recent Navy League Sea-Air-Space Exposition was this marvel -- an amphibious warfare ship adapted for Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), with three times the radar size and missile capacity of current BMD vessels, as well an electromagnetic rail gun that can launch shells to the edge of space.

The concept from Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (HII) is based on the hull of the LPD-17 San Antonio Class, a component of the three-ship “Amphibious Ready Groups” that stage Marines at forward, sea-based positions. In this incarnation, HII has removed the Marine’s berthing, vehicles, helicopters and landing craft, and installed air defense equipment with greater range and capacity than any ship in the fleet.

Atop the superstructure is a massive S-band phased array radar, over 21 feet on each side. Compare that to the 12.5 ft. diameter of the SPY-1 radars aboard Ticonderoga Class Cruisers and Arleigh Burke Class Destroyers. For radars, larger size means greater range and better resolution and these arrays have three times the area of those which equip current BMD vessels.

Starting behind the superstructure and continuing along the periphery to the stern is a vertical launch system (VLS) with 288 cells to carry surface to air missiles (SAMs), Tomahawk cruise missiles or Vertical-launch Anti-submarine rockets (VLAs). For comparison, Ticos have 122; later Burkes 96 and earlier Burkes 90. So, that’s triple the average missile load to start, with plenty of room to install more. Plus, the ship is taller than the surface combatants, which means it can hold future missiles of greater length and range.

Forward of the superstructure, you see what looks like a standard five inch gun, the kind one finds on the Ticos and Burkes. But an engineer responsible for this design explains that’s not what it represents. In fact, it’s an electromagnetic rail gun.

Certainly, there is a lot of capability there.

The well deck of an LPD has a lot of volume, and assuming that the necessary power and maintainability issues can be resolved, it could be promising.

The potential inclusion of a rail gun is troubling though: It is precisely this sort of "bleeding edge" technology that creates the delay-price increase-quantity reduction death spiral.

Of course, this is just an industry proposal right now.

This is Called a Brushback Pitch

The US has drastically scaled back its joint exercise with Israel, likely to prevent Netanyahu from launching an ill advised attack on Iran:

Seven months ago, Israel and the U.S. postponed a massive joint military exercise that was originally set to go forward just as concerns were brimming that Israel would launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The exercise was rescheduled for late October and appears likely to go forward on the cusp of the U.S. presidential election. But it won’t be nearly the same exercise. Well-placed sources in both countries have told TIME that Washington has greatly reduced the scale of U.S. participation, slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile-interception systems at the core of the joint exercise.

“Basically what the Americans are saying is, ‘We don’t trust you,’” a senior Israeli military official says.

The reductions are striking. Instead of the approximately 5,000 U.S. troops originally trumpeted for Austere Challenge 12, as the annual exercise is called, the Pentagon will send only 1,500 service members and perhaps as few as 1,200. Patriot antimissile systems will arrive in Israel as planned, but the crews to operate them will not. Instead of two Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense warships being dispatched to Israeli waters, the new plan is to send one, though even the remaining vessel is listed as a “maybe,” according to officials in both militaries.

The claim is that there are "budget" issues, but it's a brushback pitch directed at Benyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, who both seek to derive personal political gain from an attack.

I approve, particularly in the case of Netanyahu, who, if reports are accurate, is still driven by the need for approval from his nonagenarian revisionist father, and that's a level of crazy that ill serves both the security needs of Israel and the United States.

Amoral and crazy is a toxic mix, and Netanyahu has it in spades.

Trophy Active Protection System Has First Successful Combat Engagement

Here is some Video Pr0n from Rafael

Rafael's active protection system, Trophy, received its baptism of fire along the Gaza border, when it intercepted an RPG fired by Palestinian militants:

According to IDF sources, the Merkava tank was patrolling the border with Gaza, when a missile launch was detected by the tank's radar system. The Elta System's EL/M 2133 'WindGuard' sensors classified the threat as 'severe', alerted the crew and tracked the missile closing-in on the tank. As the RPG entered the system's kill-zone, Trophy fired at the missile, destroying it at a safe distance from the tank.

The "on patrol" bit appears to indicate that the tank was on the move when Trophy intercepted the RPG, which is particularly significant, since one of the tougher nuts to crack for such systems is the ability to work when the target is in motion.

I'm not clear on its ability to counter long rod penetrators, or EFPs, both of which through a slug at something in excess Mach 2, as opposed to the subsonic speeds of typical ATGWs and RPGs.

My only question is what excuse the US military, which is looking to smaller, lighter, and more mobile, forces will use not to buy the system.

They will come up with a justification, but the real reason is that retired generals don't get lucrative consulting gigs at Rafael, and they do from Raytheon.

Another Day, Another BMD Fail

Another test of the US ground based interceptor has failed.

According to the press release, "all the elements functioned well," but fail it did.

Still a few bugs in the system, I guess.

About Damn Time!

The Commercial, but the music is better than average

When I was working at BAE Systems on the FCS-RMV, one of the systems that we needed to place on our vehicle was the so-called "Active Protection System" (APS), Raytheon's "Quick Kill, a hit-to-kill interceptor intended to neutralize RPGs, ATGWs, and long rod KE penetrators.

One of the problems with this system, at least as if fed down to us doing the design, was that it never worked properly, which was surprising, considering that the Israelis had a system, Trophy, which worked, and was far less expensive than the APS.

Of course, because of the need for generals to find lucrative consulting gigs in retirement, Trophy was fought tooth and nail by the army, with their refusing to test the system on Strykers in Iraq.

Well, what goes around comes around, and with Raytheon basically dead, the US army will finally try out the system on a Stryker:

Next month a Stryker combat vehicle will arrive in the US equipped for testing the Israeli’s Trophy active protection system. The Army has pursued active protection for years, most recently abandoning the Future Combat System’s active protection system developed by Raytheon. We understand at least one M-ATV will also get the radar– directed system. The M-ATV integration is more challenging, given the vehicle’s design.

Seriously, it's been something like 6 years that the Pentagon has refused to test the system, instead holding out for a system that was never near ready because our defense procurement system is that broken.

<Facepalm>

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A better recruiting tool Osama never had

It appears that there is a company that carts around decommissioned missiles and jet cockpits to hospitals and the like, in order to amuse the children.

They actually have filed for a patent for their business model, "Business Promotion Via Mobile Interactive Aviation Museum," yet another indication that our IP system is badly out of whack.

Of course, that's just one bad patent out of hundreds that are granted every month by the over worked USPTO, which would ordinarily not merit much comment.

What does merit comment is the fact that they are donating dummy missiles for demonstrations that the bigots opposing the 51 Park Islamic center are holding.

Israel's Iron Dome Completes Testing

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Launcher

Israel has completed tests on its Iron Dome defense system, successfully intercepting rockets and mortar targets:

Iron Dome is developed and produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. During the final testS in Southern Israel, Iron Dome successfully engaged salvos of live rockets and mortar shells. With participation of teams from the IAF Iron Dome air defense battalion, the system repeatedly engaged rocket salvos and mortar shells in increasingly complex scenarios.

The system demonstrated effective detection and intercept of targets above and below cloud cover, while maintaining "keep-out zones" for integration with air traffic over the protected area. Iron Dome detected, tracked and selectively engaged only those targets presenting a threat to the area being protected. This feature - unique to the Israeli active defense system - is attributed to the multimode radar (MMR) and battle management and weapon control (BMC) system developed specially for the Iron Dome.

Obviously the first two locations for deployment would be on the Gaza border, near Sderot, and the Lebanese border.

Then again, it may not be deployed, because it is so damn expensive:

Yet, the IDF is reluctant to buy it, grumbling over the cost of each Iron Dome intercept, estimated at nearly $50,000, compared to the estimated $500 cost of a Palestinian rocket. Press reports put Iron Dome development costs at $250 million, with each battery costing about $50 million.

Truth be told, I think that the number for a Katyusha or Kassam is a bit high, and the mortar round is probably under %59.

There are also rumors that the system was actually developed for export to Singapore, with defense to be conducted by installations of land based Phalanx Gatling guns. (See also here for more on export customers, as well as a potential co-installation with Spike-NLOS SSMs, which I assume are for counter-battery fire)

Once again, we have missile defense running into a very simple brick wall: It's something on the order of 100 times more expensive than the threat it is intercepting.

Sorry, But the Numbers Do Not Work

The USAF is looking at an air launched missile to intercept ballistic missiles during boost phase. (paid subscription required, but you can find a shorter version here)

Raytheon is pitching something called the Network-Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCADE), a, "two-stage missile with an extended-range Amraam solid-fuel rocket motor as the first stage, a separation joint, and a second stage with a divert attitude control system and guidance-unit electronics and an AIM-9X seeker."

It's unclear to me what the range would be, but an AIM-9X (Sidewinder) missile seeker head does give us an idea as to the maximum speed of the missile: about Mach 2.5, about 850 m/s, because of the hemispherical seeker head at the front of the missile. (see picture of AIM-9X forebody courtesy of Wiki)

Beyond that speed, the drag, to say nothing of the heat generated, would be excessive.

It's why higher speed radar guides missiles have a conical or ogival nose cone.

Well, if we work with the basic information for the launch performance of a Minuteman ICBM, 2 Gs at launch, this gives you 42 seconds until the ICBM is flying faster than the interceptor.

In reality, the time for the ballistic missile to reach mach 2.5 would be less, as acceleration increases as fuel is burnt.

This is not a viable interception time unless you know exactly when and where the launch is occurring, and you are close enough to make the intercept within 30 seconds from launch, about 25 km.

Also note that the Minuteman is an old missile, and newer designs, such as the now retired LGM-118A Peacekeeper, flew out faster, and were ejected from the silos with an expulsion charge at a not insignificant speed, so the interception time is realistically far less than 30 seconds.

This really does not sound to me like a viable platform.

I Say "Meh"

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Pretty pictures, though

In a final gasp on a dead program which has consumed billions of dollars and incurred billions of dollars in cost overruns, Boeing's Airborne Laser (ABL) finally shot down a missile in the ascent phase:

The target was a liquid-fueled short-range ballistic missile. It was tracked within seconds and shot down within 2 min. during a Feb. 11 test off the coast of California. Photos below show infrared of that event.

There were other targets, "solid-fuel Terrier Black Brant sounding rockets," which were lased, but not destroyed.

My guess would be that the other targets were not destroyed because they couldn't be destroyed, a solid fuel rocket motor casing is much harder to burn through than a pressurized liquid fuel tank, because the casing has resistance to heat, and resistance to burn through as basic functions.

This is completely irrelevant, because the chemical laser technology, the a chemical oxygen iodine laser (Coil) is not really deployable. It involves expensive, toxic, and environmentally unfriendly fuel.

Additionally, the range of the system appears to be inadequate: (paid subscription required)

Last year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates squelched hopes of producing a design that incorporates lessons learned from the flying prototype. Criticizing the range of the system, Gates told lawmakers that “ABL would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to be able to try to use its laser to shoot down a missile in the boost phase. . . . If you were to operationalize this, you would be looking at 10-20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate.”

This implies to me that the range is something under 300, based on nothing more than games I played with Google™ Maps™.

Additionally, there were failures in subsequent tests:

Analysts are still investigating the cause of a “beam misalignment” during a third engagement, which was executed within 1 hr. of the liquid-fueled target shootdown and without landing or replenishing the chemicals on board ABL. O’Reilly says the misalignment prompted a safe shutdown of the system earlier than planned. Although the destruction of this target—a second Terrier Black Brant—did not take place, test objectives were met, he says. They were “to negate a threat-representative short-range ballistic missile in the boost phase followed by the high-energy engagement of a second target to demonstrate the capability to engage multiple missiles on a single mission.”

Also note that this is not the first intercept of a missile by an airborne laser, that happened in 1984, so the idea that this is a technical breakthrough that can be build on is delusional.

Additionally, a relatively simple countermeasure, an ablative coating much like the one that was used on the X-15 A2 tends to mitigate a lot of the potential for damage, as does going with more robust solid rocket technology.

The real reason that this is irrelevant though is because technology has largely passed it by, with the Army testiong Northrop solid state laser in the 100 kW class, it becomes cheaper to go with electrically powered lasers, because if we are seeing 100 kW today, it's likely that we will be seeing the 1 mW of the ABL in 5 years.

The chief of staff of the Air Force, when he isn't being a bigoted anti-gay idiot, also notes that this is simply not a technology that can be reasonably deployed (scroll down, the bigoted hand wringing over DADT is in the first few paragraphs):

Rep. Michael Turner, ranking member of the HASC strategic forces subcommittee, raised the recent success of the Airborne Laser in shooting a target. He asked if that would lead the Air Force to increase its commitment to directed energy weapons. Schwartz poured a fair amount of cold water on the Boeing program, calling the ABL test “a magnificent technical achievement” but “this does not represent something that is operationally viable.” The future “coin of the realm” is solid state lasers, Schwartz said, not the chemical laser that Boeing built.

H/t my brother, Daniel "Crescent Lands" Saroff for sending me the link to the first article.

Another Day

Another test failure from our missile defense program:

The Air Force says a missile-intercept test failed when a long-range missile launched from California missed a target missile launched from a Pacific island because of radar problems.

Missile Defense Agency Looks to Liquid Fuel for Land Based Standard Interceptor

Because the MDA is looking at ground basing, where the interceptor does not face the naval prohibition against hypergolic (liquid propellants that ignite spontaneously in each others presence) propellants, they are looking to integrate liquid propellant into the next generation kill vehicle. (paid subscription required)

Because the motor is completely throttlable, it allows for extended range, since the vehicle can coast and reignite the motor for terminal maneuvers, and it can perform more effectively at shorter ranges, because it can have a higher thrust for a shorter flight.

The downside is cost, complexity, and issues with storing the fueled missiles and propellants.

China Makes Missile Defense Test

China recently claimed to have successfully tested a mid-course ballistic missile defense system. (also here)

There are also murmurs of a sea based variant. (scroll down)

This raises a number of questions, most notably how the PLA defines "success", my guess is that this means the interceptor passed within lethal distance of the target.

The technology could be hit to kill, but given the fact that the Chinese have successfully miniaturized nuclear warheads, my guess would be that it would armed with a nuclear warhead, either a sub kiloton neutron warhead, as was used in the Sprint, or a larger warhead as used on the Spartan (it was a 5 mt W71) that kills thermally, but I'm pulling these guesses out of my head, and they should be considered in no way authoritative.

Nuclear warheads make targeting easier, you do not have to get a as close, or pass off to a terminal seeker as you do in hit to kill, and they eliminate many of the problems with decoys, since they get everything within a fairly large radius, making decoys moot.

Missile Defense Agency Looks to Liquid Fuel for Land Based Standard Interceptor

The US Navy forbids hypergolic fuels, liquids where the fuel and oxidizer ignite on contact with each other, for shipboard use, but since the US MDA is looking at ground baseing, they are considering liquid fuels for these interceptors.

Basically, because you can throttle liquid fueled rocket motors, it means that you can, for example, shut down at some point in the intercept, and restart the motor for improved kinematics for the end game, or to extend range, etc.

I still see missile defense as a big hole that people are dumping money into, particularly hit to kill.

Well, At Least they Know that They Can't Find their Ass with Both Hands

There are only two reasons for the US Army's Missile Defense Chief to want to give this to the Navy:

The chief of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command would prefer the Navy assume oversight and execution of the budding mission to base SM-3 Block IB ballistic missile killers ashore in Europe for protection against an Iranian attack. “Today, we have a number of priorities that we have trouble meeting outside of missile defense,” Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell says, including providing weapons for the wars abroad. The Pentagon plans to field in Europe the Block IB interceptors designed for use on Aegis ships by 2015, and later the longer-range Block IIAs. The Army has 10 years’ experience in operating land-based missile defense architectures abroad through the Patriot PAC-3 and now the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (Thaad) system, but Campbell says his command is strapped for resources.

The first is that they think that the system will fail, though the Navy's Standard Missile has had a much better record in test than the Army's systems, and the second is that he legitimately believes that the Army would screw this up to the degree that it would harm his career.

Me, I go with the 2^nd hypothesis.

It's actually a good thing. The first step to getting out of a hole that you have dug yourself in is to realize that you are in a hole.

OK.......Count Me Dubious

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Slat Armor


TARIAN


RPG-30


RPG-30 in Action

There are a number of systems to deal with RPGs and similar threats, such as the US and Israeli active protection systems that shoot down incoming rounds, the slat armor used to predetonate HEAT rounds (shown, top), the cloth based TARIAN armor also used to predetonate armor (shown, Bottom), and now Textron has come up with the Tactical Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) Airbag Protection System (TRAPS), which uses sensors to detect an incoming round, and than uses an airbag to detonate the warhead far enough away from the hull to minimize damage. (no pictures, sorry)

There are a number of reasons that I am dubious.

The first is that it combines all the disadvantages of a passive system (single use) with those of an active system (expensive sensors), and also because it would appear to be particularly vulnerable to the tandem round system used in the RPG-30. (bottom 2 pictures)

I would also note that it does seem to suffer the same problem as all such systems developed under the Aegis^* of the Pentagon:

The progress of TRAPS has not been as fast as one might expect. It was first unveiled at an Army trade show back in October 2006, after spending $3.5 million in Pentagon cash the previous year. Phase II testing is still to take place, and an operational system will be some way down the line. Janes notes the timing of the latest tests –- Textron is bidding to be part of the Army’s new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program.

It's running late, and it appears to be over budget.

U.S. Looking at Israeli Iron Fist APS

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From Wiki

It looks like the US military is far less sanguine over Raytheon's Active Protection System (APS), Quick Kill, because the military folks at the AUSA convention were all over the Israeli Iron Fist APS, made by Rafael.

It is similar to, but appears to be a somewhat more capable system than the other Israeli APS, IMI's Trophy system, in that it can engage KE rounds as well as ATGMs and RPGs.

The concept is somewhat different than both Raytheon's and IMI's, with the blast intended to take out incoming missiles and sabot darts, as opposed to shot, which means that the sabot is not actually destroyed, but made to yaw prior to impact, which would reduce penetration.

When one considers that the Israeli standard infantry fighting vehicle is the Namer, which is based on the Merkava chassis, and weighs in at 60T, as versus 40T for the Bradley, the 20T Stryker, and the 20-30T FCS replacement, it may be of somewhat more limited utility.

A sabot yawing 15° or so off the normal may not prevent penetration of the thinner armor, but on the plus side, using of a non-fragmenting charge means that the potential to injure troops operating closely to the vehicle is significantly reduced.

Background here, here, and here.

Word of New Russian SAM System

RuAF General Alexander Zelin is saying that Russia is looking at developing the S-500 air defense system, and that it should have significantly improved capabilities over the S-400 (NATO designation SA-21 Growler) currently in deployment with Russian forces.

Not much in the way of specifics beyond it having a 600km (!) range, which implies that it has the kinematics to perform anti-IRBM duties too.