Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 9, 2009

The Arena Active Protection System is an active countermeasure system developed at Russia's Kolomna-based Engineering Design Bureau for the purpose of protecting armored fighting vehicles from destruction by light anti-tank weapons, anti-tank guided missiles, and missiles with top attack warheads. It uses a Doppler radar to detect incoming warheads. Upon detection, a defensive rocket is fired that detonates near the inbound threat, destroying it before it hits the vehicle. Arena is the successor to Drozd, a Soviet active protection system from the late 1970s. The successful use by the Chechnyans of the rocket propelled grenade against the Russian fighting vehicles prompted the Kolomenskoye machine-building design bureau to devise the Arena active protection system in the early and mid-1990s. An export variant, Arena-E, was also developed. The system has been tested on the T-80UM-1, demonstrated at Omsk in 1997, and was considered for use on the South Korean K2 Black Panther main battle tank. (more...)

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