Seizing the initiative: tanks take active protection system advances on board

摘要

A practicable system for the active protection of tanks was put forward at the US Army Picatinny Arsenal as long ago as 1955.rnHowever, it is only now, half a century later, that an active protection system (APS) is approaching deployment on a Western tank -this being the Trophy APS developed in Israel by Rafael and currently undergoing operational trials on Merkava Mark 4 tanks.rnHowever, there are now several other APSs at an advanced stage of development, if not yet in service. Their development began in the 1970s and 1980s, but for a time more attention was paid to 'soft kill' systems, following the introduction of such systems on aircraft. These systems were initially confined to the automatic deployment of smoke but then evolved into decoy systems employed against the widely used anti-tank guided missiles with optical guidance and against laser-designated munitions.