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Equipping the M2 Bradley with the Iron Fist active defense complex was put on hold due to lack of funds and this despite the astronomical budget of the US Army
Source: Defense express
Equipping armored vehicles with active defense systems that allow them to intercept enemy rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and, in some models, even projectiles requires significant funds. Which the USA does not even have enough for this task, despite the world's largest defense budget of 825 billion dollars.
In particular, only now has the Pentagon managed to find funds to equip M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles with the Iron Fist Light Decoupled active protection complex from the Israeli Elbit.
But we are not talking about installing this complex on a significant number of vehicles, but about a parameter in the "dozens", as reported by the executive director of Ground Combat Systems of the US Ministry of Defense, Major General Glen Dean, who is quoted by Breaking Defense.
Moreover, we are only talking about placing an order, which will be gradually fulfilled. It is also questionable whether the manufactured active protection complexes will be immediately installed on armored vehicles, or sent to the warehouse until they are collected in a sufficient number to equip a large number of vehicles at the same time.
It was also confirmed that a similar program to equip Stryker wheeled combat vehicles with a similar complex of active protection continues to slow down. As the American general admitted in December 2023, a ready-made solution for installation on the Stryker never appeared.
It should be noted that the US Army tested StrikeShield from Rheinmetall and Unified Business Technologies, which combine active and passive solutions for the protection of armored vehicles.
Currently, in the USA, the only type of armored vehicles with installed active protection systems remain the M1A2 Abrams SEPv3, on which the Trophy from another Israeli company, Rafael, is mounted.
As of January 2021, several US brigades based in Europe were known to be equipped, which was done under the terms of a rather emergency contract from 2018.
Thus, the example of the USA fully demonstrates that equipping armored vehicles with active defense complexes is an extremely difficult task. In addition, the actual combat experience of the IDF using the Merkava Mk 4 tanks with the Trophy complex showed that it should be adapted to combat such an ultra-cheap means as drops from a drone.
