Israel field-tests effective anti-RPG weapon

Lisa Myers Senior investigative correspondent • Profile

WASHINGTON - In September, NBC News first reported on a fierce debate within the Pentagon over an Israeli-made system that shoots rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) out of the sky. The Army seems intent on killing the system, but officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense believe it can save American lives.

Over the last three years, U.S. commanders in Iraq have issued a series of urgent pleas for a system to counter RPGs — a favorite weapon of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation (OFT) scoured the world for a solution and thought it found one in "Trophy," which was developed over the last decade in Israel.

Trophy works by scanning all directions and automatically detecting when an RPG is launched. The system then fires an interceptor — traveling hundreds of miles a minute — that destroys the RPG safely away from the vehicle.

OFT subjected Trophy to 30 tests and found it is "more than 98 percent" effective at killing RPGs. Officials then made plans to battle-test the system on some Stryker fighting vehicles headed to Iraq this year.

But the U.S. Army blocked that testing. Why? Pentagon sources tell NBC News — and internal Army documents seem to confirm — that Army officials consider Trophy a threat to their crown jewel, the $160 billion Future Combat System (FCS). Under FCS, the Army is paying Raytheon Co. $70 million to build an RPG-defense system from scratch.

In an interview with NBC News on June 26, 2006, an Army official said Trophy simply is not ready.

"The Army is opposed to deploying a system before we assure that it's safe, effective, suitable and supportable," said Col. Donald Kotchman. "Trophy is not there yet."

In letters to Congress since our first reports, the Army says that the best proof Trophy is not ready is that the "Israeli Defense Forces have yet to integrate and field Trophy."

To check out the Army's claims, we went back to Israel. We found that the Israeli military has indeed begun to integrate and field Trophy on tanks, buying at least 100 systems. 

Brig. Gen. Amir Nir leads that effort. We asked him about claims that Trophy has not been sufficiently tested and that it's not ready to be deployed.

"It's the most mature, and it can do the job," he said. "We cannot afford waiting for the next generation."

This fall, after our first reports aired, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson gave Congress a laundry list of reasons the U.S. Army opposes Trophy.

Can Trophy handle attacks from every direction?
"From the standpoint of providing 360-degree coverage, we have issues," Sorenson told the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 21, 2006.

What does Nir say? Will Trophy be able to engage targets from all directions?

"Yeah, 360 degrees," he says.

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