New Truck Blasts Missiles from the Sky

In March, the Israeli system — known as “Trophy” or “Windbreaker,” and seen in the cheesy video above — was used in combat for the first time. shooting down a missile before it could hit a Merkava 4 tank along the Gaza border. Now, according to documents unearthed by Aviation Week’s Paul McLeary, an American active protection is getting ready for “field testing” and “transition to combat forces.” Trophy is an especially big deal for the Israelis, who saw 40 of their tanks get hit in their 2006 war in Lebanon. The system uses flat-panel radars to watch out for incoming fire, Defense Update notes. Once a rocket-propelled grenade or other projectile is spotted, Trophy verifies that the round is coming straight at the tank, calculates its time-to-intercept, and picks to best angle to shoot it down.