Independent Report Backs Israeli Defense System

NBC News continues its campaign against the Army's weapons buyers, taking aim again at the service's decision to continue funding development of a U.S. technology to defend against rocket-propelled grenades rather than buy a more mature Israeli-made system. The latest news is that a congressionally mandated report has confirmed that the Israeli system is more mature.

As a reminder, last year NBC News did an entire report on the issue. Even though Trophy, the Israeli system, has already been demonstrated, the U.S. Army is placing is proverbial eggs in the basket of Quick Kill, a Raytheon system. Anyhow, NBC is crediting themselves with prompting Congress to order a formal comparison of the two systems:

*After a series of reports by NBC News raised questions about the Army's efforts to scuttle Trophy and the propriety of the Raytheon selection, Congress passed a law ordering the Secretary of Defense to assemble an “independent” panel to do what the FCS technical team was supposed to have done in May 2006; namely, conduct a comparative analysis and assessment of foreign and domestic APS. *

*The new panel was supposed to pay particular attention to the “feasibility, military utility, cost, and potential short-term and long-term development and deployment schedule” of the systems considered. *

*To carry out this work, the Office of the Secretary of Defense picked the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a respected federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) which the Pentagon frequently calls upon for scientific and technical expertise. *

*Over the course of four months, IDA analyzed classified and unclassified data on 15 different APS, including Trophy and Quick Kill. The team also met with the U.S. Army as well as the Navy, Marine Corps, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), elements of the Intelligence Community (IC), and the government of Israel. *

*Their mandate, as set forth by Congress, was to find the most promising short- and long-term solutions to the scourge of PRGs and ATGMs. *

*IDA’s draft report, obtained exclusively by NBC News, found Trophy "the most mature" APS, one "with significant demonstrated capabilities against several types of threats." *

*“They rated Trophy the farthest along, the top system of the 15 that they looked at,” said Phil Coyle, the longtime Pentagon tester, who reviewed the IDA report for NBC News. *

By contrast, IDA found Raytheon’s Quick Kill to be relatively immature and fraught with significant development risks. Important components like the radar, which is supposed to track and identify incoming threats, are not yet fully developed and testing of the system as a whole is on hold while the warhead — needed to intercept and destroy threats — is redesigned.

As more cynical watchers of this controversy have noted: none of this is a surprise. It's not about the technology, but about the age-old problem of the military having entrenched interests in procurement programs. Even if the Army buys Trophy (which is doubtful), that underlying problem won't change.

Anyhow, rumor has it NBC News is going after the Army's body armor problems (including the Dragon Skin controversy), so stay tuned...