10 décembre 2019 | International, Terrestre
By: Jen Judson
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has picked two active protection systems to evaluate next fall for possible applications on a variety of ground combat vehicles.
A Rheinmetall and Unified Business Technologies team received an $11 million contract from the Army to provide its StrikeShield APS system for the evaluation. And a DRS and Rafael team received a similar contract to participate, the Army confirmed to Defense News.
After evaluating two active protections systems — StrikeShield and Rafael's Trophy VPS — in a 2018 demonstration, and determining neither were the right fit for an interim APS capability for the Stryker combat vehicle, it appears the door is opening back up for that capability.
It is likely the solution the Army is evaluating from DRS and Rafael is Trophy VPS, Rafael's lighter version of its Trophy APS system that is being fielded on Abrams tanks.
The Army found interim APS solutions for both its Abrams tanks and Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, but the service has struggled to find one for the Strykers. The service moved quickly over the past several years to field combat vehicle protection against rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank-guided missiles while it develops a future system.
The service's new evaluation effort — conducted through the its new Vehicle Protective Systems (VPS) program office — will begin in October 2020 at Redstone Test Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
“It provides a pathway to potential utilization of the system on vehicles in the current Army vehicle fleet as well as vehicles fielded in the future,” according to a Rheinmetall statement issued earlier this month.
The Army will evaluate StrikeShield “as part of a larger effort to characterize APS performance against a wide variety of anti-armor threats,” Rheinmetall's statement read. “This significant contract award represents the first funded APS testing the Army will undertake of the StrikeShield system.”
Rheinmetall and UBT funded the previous evaluation of the system for Stryker at the invitation of the Army.
Based in Unterluess, Germany, Rheinmetall has been pushing to get its active defense system in front of the Army and under consideration for integration into U.S. combat vehicles for several years. The company seemed poised to be selected as the interim solution for the Stryker prior to the Army's demonstration last fall.
The Army also considered Herndon, Virginia-based Artis Corporation's Iron Curtain APS for Stryker through a more extensive evaluation, but decided in August 2018 not to move forward in fielding it to Stryker units.
The new round of evaluations considers limited characterizations focused on platform agnostic testing to garner additional data on hard-kill APS, the Army told Defense News in a written statement.
The APS will be installed on a vehicle agnostic test riq, the service said, to inform APS considerations for “multiple ground combat platforms.”
“The results of this activity will be leveraged to inform the Army's approach to future hard kill APS acquisitions,” the service added.
While the Army has looked and, in some cases, acquired APS for the Stryker, Bradley and Abrams, it is also considering what protection systems are needed for its armored multipurpose vehicle, mobile protected firepower capability and Bradley's future replacement, the optionally manned fighting vehicle (OMFV).
The evaluations are scheduled to start at the beginning of fiscal 2021 and will last roughly six months.
10 juin 2024 | International, Terrestre
On Wednesday, June 12, 2024, Peter Fragiskatos, Member of Parliament for London North Centre, and Arielle Kayabaga, Member of Parliament for London West, will provide an update on Canada’s military assistance to Ukraine on behalf of the Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence.
16 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre
By: Aaron Mehta   WASHINGTON — Overall nuclear warheads in the world decreased in 2019, but broad modernization efforts by the biggest nuclear countries — along with a degradation of arms control agreements around the world — could mean a dangerous mix for the future, according to an annual report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI. The organization estimated that at the end of 2019, nine countries possessed a total of 13,400 nuclear warheads, down from the 13,865 estimated in SIPRI's previous report, which in turn was a drop from 14,465 the year before. The reductions were primarily due to numbers dropping under the New START nuclear agreement between Russia and the U.S., which experts largely expect not to be renewed at the start of the new year. Russia is the largest holder of nuclear warheads, according to SIPRI's numbers, with 6,735 total, of which 1,570 are deployed. The U.S. follows at 5,800, with 1,750 deployed. The two countries account for over 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenal. The United Kingdom (250 total, 120 deployed) and France (290 total, 280 deployed) are the other two nations believed to have deployed nuclear warheads. China (320 total), India (150 total), Pakistan (160 total), Israel (90 total) and North Korea, (30-40 total) round out SIPRI's list. Both the U.S. and Russia are engaged in expensive, widespread modernization efforts of its nuclear arsenal. America is upgrading both its legacy nuclear warheads with new designs, as well as updating its fleet of nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and ICBMs. Earlier this year, the Pentagon deployed for the first time the W76-2, a low-yield variant of the nuclear warhead traditionally used on the Trident submarine launched missile, and early design work is being done on another new submarine launched warhead design, known as the W93. Russia, meanwhile, has spoken openly about developing hypersonic weapons that could be nuclear equipped and has invested in novel weapons such as the Status-6, an underwater drone that could be equipped with a nuclear warhead. Moscow has also vocalized new deployment plans for its weapons and on June 2 made official a policy that it may use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack. Those investments by the world's two nuclear superpowers come against a backdrop of the collapse of numerous arms control agreements. 2019 saw the formal end of the Intermediate Range and Shorter Range Missiles (INF) treaty, and in May the U.S. announced its intention to withdraw from the Open Skies arms control verification agreement. The last major arms control agreement between Russia and the U.S. is New START, which is set to expire in February of 2021. In recent weeks the U.S. has announced its intention to start negotiations on a new arms control agreement that would include China. However, Chinese officials have repeatedly and categorically denied that it would be willing to join such an agreement, and experts largely view any efforts to create a trilateral nuclear arms control pact as a New START replacement are non-starters, leading to widespread agreement among analyst that New START is likely doomed under the Trump administration. “The deadlock over New START and the collapse of the 1987 Soviet–US Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate Range and Shorter Range Missiles (INF) Treaty in 2019 suggest that the era of bilateral nuclear arms control agreements between Russia and the USA might be coming to an end,” said Shannon Kile, Director of SIPRI's nuclear disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation program. “The loss of key channels of communication between Russia and the USA that were intended to promote transparency and prevent misperceptions about their respective nuclear force postures and capabilities could potentially lead to a new nuclear arms race.” https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2020/06/14/nuclear-modernization-speeding-up-as-arms-control-on-the-brink-report/
18 août 2023 | International, Terrestre
A recent image shared on the social media platform, Twitter, depicts a British Challenger 2 tank outfitted with a makeshift 'cope cage' covering its turret.