New Counter-Drone Capability and New Markets Raise Profile of Advanced Vehicle Protection System

The demand for ground military vehicle protection worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years with the steadily growing threat of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), or more commonly, drones.

At an International Armored Vehicles (IAV) conference, held in January, in Farnborough, UK, Rafael Advanced Defence Systems announced an upgrade to its Trophy Active Protection System (APS). According to the company, the enhancement addresses challenges posed by low-altitude aerial threats and varying drone classes, including commercially available systems, one-way attack drones, and larger fixed-wing UAS.

This followed and may have augmented a similar Rafael announcement in October 2024, when the company announced it had equipped Trophy with a new capability specifically designed for the growing UAS threat.

Once month after the IAV conference, during Aero India 2025, Rafael and Indian industrial firm Larsen & Toubro, signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at jointly promoting the Trophy APS for the needs of India’s Ministry of Defense. Potential vehicles identified include Arjun tanks and widely used, Russian-produced T-90S tanks.

Mainly, Trophy detects and tracks an anti-tank missile threat and neutralizes it away from the platform. The threat detection and warning subsystem consists of electro-optical sensors and search radar located around the protected vehicle to provide full hemispherical coverage. Though not confirmed, the newly announced capabilities may rely on some form of electronic jamming or directed energy – both techniques seeing increasing favor in new, counter-drone technology.

This year’s recent Trophy activity is a positive sign that the already successful APS – deployed operationally by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since August 2009 – should see steady production over the next several years for the military vehicle inventories of multiple nations.

In June 2018, co-producer, Leonardo DRS won a contract worth $193 million to provide Trophy systems, countermeasures, and maintenance kits for U.S. Army tanks. Over the past few years, the U.S. has ordered enough systems to equip four brigades of tanks.

In April 2023, the German Bundestag approved the acquisition of 18 Trophy-equipped Leopard 2A8 tanks, as well as a further 12 PzH2000 self-propelled howitzers. The vehicles are to be delivered between 2025 and 2026.

Two years after selecting Trophy for the next phase of detailed assessment and integration trials for the British Army’s Challenger 3 main battle tanks, in July 2023, Rafael won a £20 million contract to supply the systems.