Mysterious 'Forcefield' Tested on US Tanks

An anonymous reader writes "Not too long ago General Dynamics announced a successful test of their new Trophy Active Defense System (ADS). The Trophy ADS generates something similar to a force field around one half of a vehicle as a direct reaction to incoming fire. From the article: 'The Threat Detection and Warning subsystem consists of several sensors, including flat-panel radars, placed at strategic locations around the protected vehicle, to provide full hemispherical coverage. Once an incoming threat is detected identified and verified, the Countermeasure Assembly is opened, the countermeasure device is positioned in the direction where it can effectively intercept the threat. Then, it is launched automatically into a ballistic trajectory to intercept the incoming threat at a relatively long distance.'"

Comments

Force Field?

[rk]

Calling this a "force field" is a bit of a misnomer. It looks more like a point defense system for tanks and other armored vehicles. Very cool, but not as cool as a real force field.

As much as we might like to blame the summary, but the term occurs in the FA, too.

Re:Force Field?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

And the title of the article is MYSTERIOUS force field. The article describes just how the thing works. If you can describe how it works, it's not a mystery.

Anyway, I'm sick of seeing this stupid story repeated over and over. How many times have I read this in the past two days? Everybody's calling it a force field too. Weird. It's almost like a company has a new product to sell and sent out a press release which was copied by lazy reporters. But that never happens, right?

Re:Force Field?

[AKAImBatman]

It looks more like a point defense system for tanks and other armored vehicles. Very cool, but not as cool as a real force field.

Still, you've got to admit that this would be a huge psychological deterant. I mean, if I fired RPGs at a tank, and the RPGs (seemingly without cause) pre-detontated before they ever reached the tank, I'd be looking to get the hell out of there and warn all my friends! There would be a lot of "how can fight something like that?" discussions going on that night. :-)

Re:Force Field?

[arcanumas]

There would be a lot of "how can fight something like that?" discussions going on that night. :-)

Well i would look it up on the Internet. There is bound to be a post on some obscure forum by some guy named "Tank-H4xor" that gives direction on how to exploit a bug in the system by duct-taping a banana on the missile or a fluffy bunny something :)

Re:Force Field?

[wgnorm]

Just a guess, but I wonder if you could defeat it by shooting 3 RPGs from 3 different directions at it? Can it act that quickly against all of them?

From TFA:

The system can simultaneously engage several threats, arriving from different directions, is effective on stationary or moving platforms, and is effective against short and long range threats (such as RPGs and ATGM).

So yes, it can handle that... even while moving.

Re:Force Field?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they lost track of the idea that they should not be fighting. The most effective army is the army that isn't used. Particularly when it doesn't fight an equally big centralized adversary. Iraq has gone a long way in getting the shine off. It's not as scary as it used to be. The Romans, inspired by the Spartans, had a doctrine also for this "si vis pacem para bellum". If you want peace "prepare" war. Note the difference between "prepare" and "wage". When the Spartans drunk on their success against the athenians forgot that they were not supposed to wage war to maintain their psychological and tactical advantages, they only taught the Thebans how they could be beaten. All armies have their weaknesses, and in history no army has been succesful agains irregular combattants in the long term (of course you're going to quash any group of irregulars that you meet in any kind of open battle, but they just keep coming, and coming and coming). A large army is expensive to maintain, and keep constantly in battle readiness. The irregulars have lots of volunteers among the opressed populations... and they choose when and where to strike. They don't have a very centralized hierarchy. They can only be defeated by defeating politically the reason they were given birth for. History is full of those lessons, but politicians are not very good at learning their lessons. Of course, in some cases it's because all of their knowledge of history comes from the Simpsons.

Re:Force Field?

[Kadin2048]

Not all programmers are peacenik hippies, you know. Even Linux ones.

I know of several Linux programmers that would probably slaver over the opportunity to program a giant killing machine. (Although perhaps only if it walked and shot lasers and was 50 feet tall. They might not be down with programming an uncool killing machine. I'll have to ask.)

On a more serious note, do you really think that IBM, HP, Sun, and all the rest of the companies that have paid into and supported this Linux thing would continue to do so if there was such a 'no military use' clause? If you think so, then you have no idea how much of many of those companies revenues come from government contracts, particularly defense ones. Do you think the NSA would help to secure it? I bet even NASA wouldn't touch it. (Most of their contractors who do the majority of the work wouldn't be able to, since a lot of them do a ton of military work on the side.)

And what is "military use" anyway? Is running a logistics or inventory management system 'military use,' if the inventory being managed is bombs and bullets? What if it's just MREs? What if it's a payroll system for military personnel? How about civilian contractors? Could you use it to run a firewall--if that firewall was in a missile silo?

Anyone who wanted to make a commercial software product and even had the dimmest hopes of ever selling it to government wouldn't be able to use any code under such a license.
Not to mention the public-image damage you'd do by associating Linux with yet another political philosophy; as if Free Software isn't controversial enough to sell to management, you want to make sure that there's absolutely no chance that it's taken seriously?

It would be the best thing in the world for BSD, though...

Re:Force Field?

[yndrd1984]

Holy PR moves Batman!

My fellow war supporters, here's the situation - all of the reasons we gave for invading Iraq before the war turned out to be hogwash. Whether it was due to lying, incompetence, or (most likely) over-enthusiasm and spin by certain parties best left unmentioned, Iraq posed no signifigant threat to the US in any way. So how do we salvage our dignity? We have to make the war look like a humanitarian effort.

First - The image of the enemy - we have to make Saddam look as evil as possible. He can't be just another petty dictator, like so many others that we aren't fighting, he has to be Hitler. So give all the grusome details about the evil he's done, but don't put it in perspective to other places, or he won't stand out like we need him to.

Second - The image of ourselves - we have to make it look like the choice was between waging war and doing nothing - people will always go for a hands-on bad solution over a hands-off good solution. So the fairly effective inspectors and embargos should be dismissed as peacenick-hippie daydreams, and only then can a long, destabalizing war be seen as good. (Especially after our promises of a fast, painless war.)

Remember the idea we're trying to plant - something had to be done, nobody else had any better ideas, and by golly, we did something. And damn the consquences.

How is that a "force field"?

[khasim]

Then, it is launched automatically into a ballistic trajectory to intercept the incoming threat at a relatively long distance.

Strange ...

Ballistic - relating to or characteristic of the motion of objects moving under their own momentum and the force of gravity; "ballistic missile"

So....... if I keep my enemies at bay by throwing rocks at them, I am protected by a "force field"?

Not even slightly.

[temojen]

Defense Update understands that Trophy is design to form a "beam" of fragments, which will intercept any incoming...

Translation: It's a machine gun. Probably 5.56mm NATO standard, as it's just big enough and the ammo is cheap.

Basically the same as a scaled down Phalanx.

Reactive armour has no electronic control, it's just a sheet of explosives sandwiched between two layers of steel held off of the vehicle hull. When a HEAT shell detonates on the surface, the explosive sheet also detonates, disrupting the jet.

Iranian Uranium

[SoVeryTired]

Iran announces that it has successfully enriched uranium, and shortly afterward the U.S military announces that it has laser cannons and force-fields. Coincidence?

Not new

[Clsid]

The Russians were far ahead in this field. This "mysterious forcefield" is nothing more than the US version of the Russian Arena system fitted in T-90 tanks since 1995. There are even videos on the web showing some fire tests which are truly impressive. If you find them you can see anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) get destroyed or thrown out of course by this special cannon matched to a radar system. When activated it creates a field of protection around the tank where anything approaching the tank at certain speeds of enough size gets an automatic response from the system. They also have an electro-optical jammer system called Shtora-1 which is far more interesting in my opinion than this active protection system.

Checklist for accepting military projects

[suv4x4]

1. gotta be expensive (we don't wanna look like cheap assholes) 2. gotta make it sound like it's out of a sci-fi movie Training donkeys to help soldiers with carrying provisions : REJECTED A million dollar noisy and entertaining robotized donkey, looks like those big quadruped machines on Hot in Episode VI - ACCEPTED Laser beams shooting out of airplanes, like on space ships - ACCEPTED Light mattery to replace bullet proof vests - REJECTED Robotized cyborg-like appendages, makes soldiers look exactly like Robocop - ACCEPTED Machine gun that shoots of RPG-s targeted at tanks - REJECTED Mysterious Force field repelling RPG-s - ACCEPTED

Warning Label:

[SnapShot]

Warning Label on Tank:

Do not play frisbee, football, or baseball near the talk.

Thank you,
The Management