Raytheon's Quick Kill APS wins again...

Israel's combat proven Trophy Protection System mounted on a Merkava Main Battle Tank.

Raytheon put out a press release today...long story short, the protection system they're working on is working...

As the U.S. Army prepares for formal testing to evaluate a system to protect combat vehicles from shoulder-fired and tube-launched Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs), Raytheon Company's (NYSE: RTN) Quick Kill™ Active Protection System (APS) has again shown its maturity and accuracy in a series of tests.
In a recent test, held in December 2012, the Quick Kill APS demonstrated its protective capability by successfully defeating an extended set of threats, including one of the most lethal RPG threats by destroying it in mid-flight. All testing is in preparation for formal government evaluations in early 2013 to demonstrate the system's unique RPG-defeat capabilities.
"Raytheon's APS is based on the same radar technology deployed to perform sense and warn operations at active Forward Operating Bases. It has been extremely successful in providing timely warning against rocket and mortar attacks," said Jeff Miller, vice president of Combat and Sensing Systems for Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business.
"With Quick Kill," he added, "Raytheon has matured a highly advanced system, offering our forces an unprecedented force protection capability that is essential to the future survivability of combat vehicles. This technology is ready and could begin fielding within a year."
The Quick Kill system consists of a multi-mission, fire-control radar that detects and tracks incoming threats, combined with hard-kill countermeasures that serve as a hit avoidance system, enabling multi-tracking and multi-engagement of enemy fire for vehicle and squad protection.
The system's vertical launch countermeasure is unique in its ability to engage threats fired from any angle or elevation, providing all weather, full 360 degree hemispherical vehicle and crew protection with each countermeasure.
In previous tests, the system demonstrated its ability to defeat multiple threat types both from a stationary and an on-the-move platform – and it showed its multi-threat capability by defeating two simultaneous threats.

On the surface this sounds impressive right?

Wrong.

Like I said the Israeli's already have a protection system in service...we've been wasting time reinventing the wheel and second, check out the specs on the RPG-29 (notice that they never state what threat RPG their system defeated).  via Wikipedia.

In August 2006 an RPG-29 round was reported to have penetrated the frontal ERA of a Challenger 2 tank during an engagement in al-Amarah, Iraq, wounding several crew members.^[8]In May 2008 The New York Times disclosed that an American M1 tank had also been damaged by an RPG-29 in Iraq.^[7][9] The US Army ranks the RPG-29 threat to armor so high that they refused to allow the newly-formed Iraqi army to buy it, fearing it would fall into insurgent hands.^[10]

But the RPG-29 is in essence old tech.  Check out the RPG-30..again via Wikipedia...

The RPG-30 shares a close resemblance with the RPG-27 in that it is a man-portable, disposable anti-tank rocket launcher with a single shot capacity. Unlike the RPG-27 however, there is a smaller diameter precursor round in a smaller side barrel tube, in addition to the main round in the main tube. This precursor round acts as a false target, tricking the target's active protection system (APS) into engaging it, allowing the main round a clear path into the target, while the APS is struck in the 0.2-0.4 second delay it needs to start its next engagement.^[1]The PG-30 is the main round of the RPG-30. The round is a 105-mm tandem shaped charge with a weight of 10.3-kg (22.7-lb) and has a range of 200 meters and a stated penetration capability in excess of 600-mm (24-in) rolled homogeneous armor (RHA) (after ERA), 1500-mm reinforced concrete, 2000-mm brick and 3700-mm of soil.^[1] Reactive armor, including explosive reactive armor (ERA), can be defeated with multiple hits into the same place, such as by tandem-charge weapons, which fire two or more shaped charges in rapid succession 

 Armor can't evolve fast enough to defeat these threats.  The key is mobility, speed and the introduction of Active AND Passive systems to defeat anti-tank missiles and grenades.  Quite honestly the idea of APC's and IFV's weighing in excess of 40 tons is questionable, it probably always has been.  It might even be worth considering forcing the issue towards the two tabs of the iron triangle...speed and mobility and accept the risks that come from lighter armor.

Maybe we need to establish a threshold of 20 to 30 tons and dismount further away from the objective in order to properly protect our armored forces.