Britain has announced that it will be developing active protection systems to defend its armored vehicles from antitank rockets.

Russia and Israel already use active protection systems, or APS, to defend their armor, and the United States is now evaluating them. Britain, whose armor force has been somewhat neglected in recent years, is now joining the party.

The first step has been taken by Britain’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, or DSTL, which signed a contract with Italian defense contractor Leonardo to develop an active protection system. Leonardo will use a team of British experts to develop a prototype Modular Integrated Protection System.

“APS can detect and defeat threat missiles within 100 milliseconds, which is less time than half the time it takes a human to react to a visual cue,” proclaims a DSTL news release.

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But exactly how Britain intends to do this isn’t clear. Some APS, notably Israel’s Trophy, are based around kinetic (“hard kill”) countermeasures. Trophy, which is being evaluated by the U.S. Army, uses radar to detect incoming antitank rockets and then fires a barrage of shotgun-like pellets to deflect it. Israel’s Iron Fist, which the United States is also examining, uses an interceptor rocket to defeat antitank weapons (here’s a video of Russia’s comparable Arena APS in action).

Other active protection systems, such as Russia’s Shtora, rely on electronic (“soft kill”) defenses. These include electronic jammers and infrared “dazzlers” to disrupt command links of guided antitank missiles, and special smoke generators to mask an armored vehicle’s heat signature.

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DSTL’s press release only said that Leonardo would be developing a modular and open electronic architecture for an APS that will take advantage of existing products. “The MIPS Electronic Architecture will provide a common infrastructure that will deliver UK operational sovereignty and enable ‘best of breed’ commercial off the shelf APS sensors and countermeasures to be selected, integrated and deployed to defeat a wide range of current and future battlefield threats,” said DSTL. “This will enable the provision of a weight-efficient and affordable protection system capability.”

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DSTL did not respond to a TNI request for clarification. However, Leonardo’s news release suggests that Britain may be opting for a modular system that can incorporate either hard- or soft-kill defenses as needed. “It is clear that no single solution is suited to every threat scenario or indeed all threats,” Leonardo noted. “The key challenge is to be able to rapidly and affordably tailor a vehicle’s combination of APS technologies to optimize survivability prior to, or during, deployment.”

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Image: A Challenger 2 main battle tank with The Queen's Royal Hussars (QRH) at Hohne ranges in Germany. Challenger 2 (CR2) is the British Army's main battle tank. CR2 is based on the Challenger 1 tank, which served with distinction on operations in the Gulf War and the Balkans.​ Wikimedia Commons