Israel's "Iron Fist Light" Active Protection System (APS) has moved one step closer to being the standard APS that will protect U.S. Army M2/M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles from RPGs and anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs).
In June 2017, Iron Fist Light has selected the interim APS solution for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. It is a "lighter" derivative of Iron Fist, an APS developed by IMI Systems (formerly Israel Military Industries) and General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems.
The Army announced it will now install Iron Fist Light onto a number of Bradleys for the second phase of more extensive testing and evaluation. IMI and General Dynamics are working to integrate and test the system.
The Army's decision can be seen as a vote of confidence in the system and could mean further fielding on a larger number of vehicles down the road.
Military analysts say the Bradley is considered the most challenging AFV on which to deploy an APS. This is because Bradleys are equipped with a multitude of different sensor and weapons systems on its roof. All of these sensors compete for limited power and bandwidth.
"Bradley is the most restrictive of those three platforms today, and so it is a really perfect, natural fit for the Iron Fist solution," said Kevin Sims, General Dynamics' senior director of business development of munitions, armaments and platform systems.
"It's smaller than the competition, it's lighter than the competition and it has a lower profile than the competition."
Iron Fist Light is designed to be integrated into a wide variety of combat vehicles from tanks all the way down to small ground mobility vehicles. The system is platform agnostic, said Sims.
Iron Fist Light is designed to always scan for threats and make immediate detection. Once detection takes place, the system slews to the incoming threat, and in microseconds knocks it out far from the vehicle using an interceptor. A shock wave from the interceptor causes the incoming missile to break apart in the air but not explode.
There are a number of ways the interceptor can take-out a missile. It can hit an incoming RPG in the front or to the rear to disable the flight pattern while keeping the armor-piercing HEAT warhead intact.
There also isn't a toxic blowback of fumes to worry about when a combat vehicle is operating with an open hatch.
Iron Fist Light also has the capability is to defeat a wide variety of munitions in close-range urban environments, thereby minimizing collateral damage.
