Twenty years later it had a system ready to deploy. Trophy achieved international prominence during the 2011 combat versus Hamas. Currently Hamas is using a new anti-tank guided missile launcher that launches two missiles a short time apart in hopes of overwhelming Trophy. The results remain to be seen.
"Protection from attacking threats is a constant game of measure and countermeasure that has been going on for millennia. Its technological sophistication ratcheted up during World War I, when tanks were first deployed as a means of breaking the stalemate of trench warfare and the futility of massed infantry attacks. Those early tanks had to protect mainly against machine gun bullets and artillery-shell fragments, so less than a half-inch of steel armor protection was sufficient.
"But as soon as they were deployed, opposing forces responded by firing bigger guns and using artillery as a direct-fire weapon. Tanks then evolved, in turn, to having as much as three inches of steel armor in the frontal sector. This protected the occupants from all but the very largest guns. But not from shaped charges.
"Shaped charges are wonders of science. They are based on the “hollow charge principle,” which in America was discovered accidentally by Dr. Charles Munroe at the Newport Naval Torpedo Station when a TNT block with the manufacturer’s name indented in the charge accidently went off on top of a sheet of steel. The indented letters acted as hollow areas in the TNT and produced deep indentations in the steel resulting in a mirror image of the letters in the steel plate.
"That led to the design of a shaped charge as shown here with three explosive charges sitting on steel billets; the first charge having a flat bottom, the second having a conical indentation, and the third having an indentation with a thin metal liner. Upon detonation, the explosive gases and molten metal form a high-velocity jet capable of punching through many inches of steel armor. Optimization of this effect soon led to small weapons such as the bazooka and the rocket propelled grenade (RPG) that allowed even dismounted infantry troops to wield high-penetration tank-killing weapons. And larger weapons, such as anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), fired from vehicles or ground mounts, were completely unstoppable." . . .
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