About Trophy APS and its troubles to integrated in to the Leopard-2A7 MBT

Via SH_MM

• The purchase and integration of Trophy has been approved by the German parliament (as the contract has a volume above €25 million, approval was required). The price of the systems (including spares, training equipment, dummy rounds, etc.) is supposedly €40 million, total cost (including integration into the tanks) is more than €100 million. Trophy is purchased for 18 tanks (one testbed and 17 tanks).

• Rumors say that the system weighs more than 3,5 tonnes, which seems quite plausible given the weight increase of the M1A2 SEP v2 Abrams when fitted with Trophy.

• Trophy has passed a number of German tests including performance in cold environments, resistance to shock and vibrations, and safety tests. Firing trials are still to be made.

• Also it has been stated, that Germany has no access to the source code and algorithms used by Trophy, which is deemed as bad. German companies are required to disclose the source code of their systems (not only APS, but in general) and to meet certain ISO norms (with certification). Trophy is purchased as a "black box".

• Trophy will not be integrated into the Leopard 2A7(V) tank, but instead into the Leopard 2A7A1 tank. These are based on the Leopard 2A6A3 turret with newly-made hulls, as the old Leopard 2A6 hulls are unfit for Trophy (e.g. they lack an APU and thus have very limited electrical energy, but it seems that there might be other modifications required). There seem to be two options here: either the Leopard 2A6A3 was chosen in order to free the Leopard 2A7V tanks for the VJTF 2023 or Trophy requires so many/deep changes, that the Leopard 2A7V hull would not be suited for Trophy (which would mean no future purchases of Trophy for Germany). One side effect is that Germany will have 17 more Leopard 2A7 tanks.

• No Leopard 2 tank with Trophy will be ready for the VJTF 2023, i.e. the only reason why Trophy was purchased at all. Delays in the program will result in a delivery between 2024 and 2025. Instead of 17 Leopard 2 tanks with Trophy, Germany will send 30 Leopard 2A7V tanks for its participation to the VJTF 2023.

• There are apparently voices in Germany arguing (following the issues with Trophy) that the government should declare (active) protection systems a "national key technology", which would lead to more money being invested into homegrown systems and national solutions being prefered to foreign offers.

Entscheidung für Trophy – bleiben abstandsaktive Schutzsysteme nationale Schlüsseltechnologie?

Abstandsaktives Schutzsystem – Trophy für Leopard 2 erst ab 2024