Israeli defense technology company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems will provide its TROPHY active protection system to Germany for installation on its fleet of Leopard 2 tanks historically manufactured by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann.
On Wednesday, the two countries’ defense ministries inaugurated the first of the tanks to be equipped with the APS. The installation, part of an agreement signed in 2020, followed live fire tests and a TROPHY demonstration Rafael and KMW performed in 2021. Recently, Rafael announced that it upgraded the system to defend against top attack threats amid increasing tensions in the Middle East.
Rafael secured contracts in 2023 to outfit Germany and Norway’s Leopard 2 A8 MBT configuration with TROPHY. The company said at the time that it was KNDS, the merger between Germany’s KMW and France’s Nexter Defense System, that decided to select TROPHY as the baseline APS of the battle tank.
The Israeli Defense Forces has been using the system for over a decade, integrated into Merkava tanks. TROPHY is also installed on board the IDF’s Namer armored personnel carriers, the U.S. Abrams tanks and the Challenger 3 tanks.