Dropping the Iron Curtain on RPGs and other explosive soldier killers [Video]

While most of us that are old enough to remember the original meaning of Iron Curtain being that of the dividing line between the old USSR and the rest of Europe the term has taken on a new meaning and could soon be headed to Afghanistan to help save soldiers lives.

This modern day Iron Curtain is in fact a new for of armor that instead of waiting for explosive ordinance, like RPGs, to hit and hopefully protect soldiers is what they refer to as the new Active Protection System. This type of protection system doesn’t wait for incoming threats to hit but instead waits until those threats are just inches away and then fires downward facing explosives to intercept and shred the incoming threats.

Iron Curtain differs from Trophy in that instead of firing outwards to intercept projectiles, it firesdownwards from the top of the vehicle it’s protecting straight towards the ground. The system uses racks of downward firing explosives coupled with sensor arrays that track incoming projectiles, and when Iron Curtain spots something, it waits until the projectile is just inches from the side of the vehicle, and then triggers the proper explosive to explode downward, shredding the projectile into bits that bounce harmlessly off the vehicle’s armor. Iron Curtain can deal with multiple incoming projectiles at the same time, and the downward blast helps to keep anyone around the vehicle from getting hit:

via DVICE

Apparently the testing is going so well and the results better than expect which means we could see the Iron Curtain being deployed in Afghanistan by the end of the year.