April 18, 2006: U.S. armored vehicles are being forced, by the appearance in Iraq of more powerful PRG warheads, to install a high-tech defense system using radar and a blast of shotgun pellets or small rockets. There are several of these systems on the market. One of the more likely of these defensive systems, the the U.S. military may adopt, is the Israeli Trophy Active Protection System (TAPS).

In 2003, a major American advantage for American troops in Iraq was the fact that most U.S. armored vehicles were nearly invulnerable to the RPG anti-tank rocket weapon. RPGs are a Russian designed system that is found in hot spots the world over. The cheapest rockets, which can penetrate the armor of most tanks built thirty years ago, cost less than twenty dollars each. Nearly all the RPG rockets Saddam bought were these older models, since his main enemy, the Iranians, had older tanks that these RPG rockets could destroy or damage. But against the more modern armor on U.S. tanks and personnel carriers (like the M-2 and Stryker), Saddam's bargain basement RPG rockets were largely useless.

Russia pioneered the development of these anti-missile systems. The first one, the Drozd, entered active service in 1983, mainly for defense against American anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM). These the Russians feared a great deal, as American troops had a lot of them, and the Russians knew these missiles (like TOW) worked. Russia went on to improve their anti-missile systems, but was never able to export many of them. This was largely because these systems were expensive (over $100,000 per vehicle), no one trusted Russian hi-tech that much, and new tanks, like the American M-1, were seen as a bigger threat than ATGMs.

The Israeli TAPS uses better, more reliable, and more expensive technology than the Russian Drozd (or its successors.) For about $300,000 per system, TAPS will protect a vehicle from ATGMs as well as RPGs (which are much more common in combat zones.) One of the attractions of TAPS is that you can put it on trucks that are bullet proof, but not RPG proof. And then there's the problem of more powerful RPG rockets. These cost two or three times as much as the cheap, and less powerful, rockets used in Iraq, But these later models can penetrate the protection carried on M-2 Bradleys and Strykers. While the M-1 tank is still immune, the new RPG warheads have a better chance of hitting one of the known weak spots on the tank. The Israelis plan to fit some of their tanks with TAPS. But before they do that, they would like to sell a billions dollars worth to well heeled customers like the United States.