US Army greenlighting a soft kill APS programme with RfI this month, industry day January, request for prototype proposals July 2021 and intending to select a vendor in 2022.

The @JanesINTEL story: https://bit.ly/33ZHlw8 , a few of my own thoughts below

They seem keen to keep hard/soft kill as separate efforts, though hopefully someone at Elbit will point out Iron Fist, which was to be acquired for Bradley until power limits meant that vehicles had to have A4 upgrade to be able to run it, can have an integrated soft kill module

They've also recently discussed a desire to pursue a hard kill effort to defeat KE rounds, which again suggests someone isnt reading the briefings being given, as Iron Fist again has a hard kill (IFLK) version with some developing capability against kinetic threats.

Not saying there shouldnt be an open competition downstream, but to experiement with tech, evaluate maturity and most signfiicantly to aspire to an integrated solution to minimise SWAP impact, Iron Fist looks a sensible product to investigate

The Army actually already did a 'Soft Kill (SK) Rodeo' in 2019, where the outcome was a recomendation to integrate BAE Systems' RAVEN Multifunction Countermeasure (MFCM) ( https://bit.ly/2LknWPX ) IR countermeasrure system onto a Bradley for further testing.

The other soft kill kit tested included Northrop's Multifunction Electro-Optical System (MEOS) and Ariel Photonics Group/Lockheed Martin's Color Light Operational Unit for Deflection (CLOUD). Slightly unusual selection of products without any of the usual suspects in this domain

Meanwhile Trophy deliveries for the US M1 fleet are to complete this month, already sent to Europe and taken part in Defender Europe 2020 over the summer /end #APS