The Ministry of Defence has taken no decision on including a hard-kill counter-drone active protection system within the Mechanised Infantry Programme, though such opportunities are being explored, according to a written answer published on Monday.
Luke Pollard, Minister of State for Defence Readiness and Industry, was responding to Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, who had asked what assessment had been made of the potential benefits of including such a system in the programme.
Pollard said: “Hard-Kill Counter-UAS opportunities are being explored, but no decision has been taken to include a hard-kill Counter-UAS active protection system within the current scope of the Mechanised Infantry Programme. However, the Department continues to evaluate emerging technologies and capability options to ensure Army platforms remain effective against current and future threats.”
Soft-kill systems work by interfering with the threat, jamming its guidance, decoying its seeker or obscuring the target behind smoke, and they consume nothing physical when they operate. Hard-kill systems physically destroy the incoming round, typically by firing an interceptor or a projectile pattern into its path.
The Mechanised Infantry Programme
The programme is delivering the Boxer to the British Army, a wheeled armoured vehicle built around a drive module and interchangeable mission modules, produced in Britain by WFEL at Stockport and Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land at Telford under a contract for more than 600 vehicles.
The Boxer is intended to carry the Army’s mechanised infantry battalions, and the vehicles began arriving with units over the past two years. The question of what protective equipment they carry has been raised repeatedly since the invasion of Ukraine, where losses among armoured vehicles to small drones have run at a rate nobody planning armoured forces in the 2010s anticipated.
The department’s broader general position on counter-drone work has been set out through a series of related efforts, including the Request for Information issued in July for electronic warfare systems for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which sought equipment able to disrupt drone control links from soldier-portable, vehicle-mounted, uncrewed and emplaced configurations, and which the department noted was the only category where a combat-proven answer to fibre-optic drones was being sought.
No surprise there then.
Can not afford it there will be some warm worded statment about being may be fitted for but not carrying and limited numbers held back in case of deplyment a bit like the crap way C3 gets fitted for Hard kill but not all of them, save a few pounds, look like the Government is doing some thing and then kick it in the long grass and hope there is no war or we will take casuilties because we are skint and Labour talks a good defence but will not stump up the money.
O/T but it looks like Ukraine has actually got its hands on RCH 155 according to the DefenceBlog
Colour me shocked.