The United States Army will be installing an Israeli-made anti-rocket system on a number of its M1A2 Abrams tanks.

The Pentagon will outfit the tanks with the Trophy active-protective system (APS) which can detect and destroy incoming projectiles. The U.S. will be the first army other than Israel’s to deploy the systems, which cost $350,000 per tank The Jerusalem Post reported Monday.

General Dynamics Land Systems received a $10 million contract to install the systems. It is expected that the installations will be completed by March 2019.

The impetus to install the Trophy systems, the Post reported, is a realization in the military that tanks in Syria and Iraq would be “sitting ducks without any active protection systems.”

The Trophy, which was developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries’ Elta Group, has four radar antennas and fire control radars to detect incoming projectiles. A non-exploding projectile is shot at the the threat to neutralize it.

Israel has been deploying the Trophy systems on its Merkava tanks since 2009. It has also been installed on the Namer heavy infantry fighting vehicle and the Eitan, an armored personnel carrier set to be introduced into infantry battalions next year.

The first battlefield success of the Trophy occurred on March 1, 2011, when the system knocked out a rocket-propelled grenade fired at close distance to an IDF Merkava Mark-IV tank close to the Gaza border. The Trophy system was also effective during other operations, including Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when no Israeli tanks were lost in Gaza.

[Photo: Israeli Defense Forces / Flickr]