Below the Turret Ring: Hardkill APS Overview

The blog Below the Turret Ring has posted a rather lengthy piece explaining the various types of active protection systems available for armored vehicles. Below is the first couple paragraphs, please click on the article headline to to the blog and read the entire piece.

Hardkill APS overview

Active protection systems (APS) have been an important topic when it comes to enhancing the protection of modern combat vehicles since a number of years. Combat in Iraq, Yemen and in Syria has proven the vulnerability of main battle tanks (MBTs) to handheld and/or guided anti-tank weaponry. While many people pretend that active protection systems are a rather new development, many can be traced back to the 1980s and 1990s. One of the earliest APS was tested in 1969 in Germany – that’s 48 years ago! The first APS adopted in military service was the Soviet Drozd system from 1977/1978, that was fitted to a number of T-55 and T-62 tanks. According to unconfirmed rumors Drozd was used in Afghanistan.

A more commonly known APS is Trophy, which has received huge orders by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and was adopted on the Merkava 4M MBT and the Namer armored personnel carrier (APC). Aside of the hardkill active protection systems, which actually destroy incoming threats using countermeasures, there is also the less popular category of softkill systems such as the MUSS, which has been adopted on the Puma and is being tested by the British Army.  (click here to read full piece)