Looks like one of those Red Alert illusion tanks disguised as a big thorn bush here.
Wars are getting dumber
A kid at my son’s school has that haircut.
Tank fro
Quite the cope cage
how effective are these in general? The drone still explodes, but now it’s maybe 3 feet away kinda thing.
Does it still take damage and can it hurt them, but it reduces the risk a lot, or is the tank able to brush off a detonation a few feet away?
Tanks are good at shrugging off non-specific light damage. That’s basically definitional. As I understand it, this design is supposed to make it much harder to target weak points (so specific damage).
According to Perun, Russian assualt sheds get softkilled by their own poor visibility more often than blown up, because they just drive into things. You can see they’ve tried to keep a degree of transparency in this Ukrainian version.
Russian assualt sheds get softkilled by their own poor visibility more often than blown up, because they just drive into things.
I never would have even thought about that, but that’s pretty funny too.
That this war has generated a subgenre of funny war footage is itself, kind of funny.
Perfect target practice for one of these.
Sure. Except it itself is vulnerable to artillery fire, costs a lot, and would itself need drone-proofing.
This is just how armour fighting armour works.
My point is optimizing for defending only against drones makes armor extremely vulnerable, massive targets for direct fire weapons and artillery (artillery vulnerability being from reduced mobility and situational awareness).
Yes, the Russian versions strand themselves pretty often, which is why they’ve tried to make this one pretty transparent. Since it’s only slightly larger than the tank already is, I doubt it makes a difference in terms of detection, though.
Time will tell if it’s a gamechanger or just a reasonable enough strategy both sides keep trying it.
It seems like a decent optimization for an environment where drones are the primary threat but these circumstances were artificially engineered in the Ukraine war from Ukraine being severely underequipped with artillery reserves and traditional AT such as javelins.
Hmm, are the Russians also having problems in that department? This is a Ukrainian tank per the title.
That said, it’s a reasonable general take. Every time there’s a new weapon this debate plays out. Sometimes it’s the atom bomb and lives up to the hype, but sometimes it’s the interwar bomber that doesn’t always get through.
Russian artillery is magnificently imprecise. In order to hit a specific target using Soviet-style artillery, you need about 10 times as many rounds as with western artillery.
When the goal is to obliterate a town, that doesn’t matter. But when you’re trying to hit a single tank, it does.
Yes, Russia has had to heavily rely on North Korean artillery ammunition supply and that reserve stock has run out. It was poor quality to begin with as well.
The real problem for Russia though is they can’t protect their artillery from being hunted down by Ukraine so they can’t deploy it in as forward threatening positions on assault and thus for Ukraine fiber optic drones, glidebombs and mines are far more of a realistic threat to armor.
My very much armchair-general -level understanding is that they do work against simple detonation-on-impact -drones, as long as there’s only few. The tank armor can brush off the shrapnel from explosion (crew might need new boxers and/or pants) but once there’s a hole in that afro the second (or third or…) drone can use that hole and get to the meaty bits. Or a skilled FPV operator can find a existing gap and use that.
So that does more than nothing, but ideally tank should have infantry support to keep drones and individual enemies with a bazooka away from it.
Major “NCD” vibes.
Also extremely practical. Every military on Earth needs to be taking notes.
Doesn’t seem so great against gunfire 😅
It’s a tank.
It’ll do fine against gunfireTanks usually have armor. This one I can see through
You’re right, you can see through it.
You can see through it so well that you can see the normal armored tank underneath.This isn’t a new type of tank. They just attached a cage on top of an existing tank.
If you’re taking on a tank with gunfire, you’ll notice a problem real quick. The barbs there are meant to detonate anti tank rockets and missiles, too. The best way to take these out is mines or armor of your own.
Antitank missiles or heavy machine gun fire will absolutely mess this kind of armor up bad after a certain point, it all just ends up catching on fire and blinding/trapping the crew inside especially if the armor doesn’t have situational awareness or unimpeded turret travel to respond to and suppress incoming threats. That being said I am sure Ukraine is a lot more thoughtful how it deploys these in general and I am sure there are definitely appliations for this kind of armor under heavy assault conditions against thick drone walls. My point is I just don’t think this is representative of the future of armor design as when it comes to armored vehicles everything always comes down to mobility, mobility, mobility and every successful armored vehicle is just barely light enough to not become obsolete on a dynamic battlefield. There is little chance in my eyes that the future of armored vehicles is a commitment to doubling down on bulkier and bulkier defensive armor rather than leveraging other advantages and capabilities to create survivability for the crew. This isn’t to say I think armor is obsolete, what I am saying is that poorly manuverable armor was already hopelessly obsolete a long time ago before drones even entered the picture.
Badass in a Mad Max kinda way.
some mf with ADHD made that, I guarantee it.
Easy, aim for the barrel
It’s a hearty metal part, and well isolated from the much more expensive rest of the vehicle.
Like, maybe that would work and force them to go back for repairs, but it doesn’t obviously nullify the design.
The first part if your comment doesn’t make sense.
And a tank in a cage like this is pretty much useless already. Kinetic or heat rounds won’t get stopped by an anti drone cage. It is a massive target with atrocious visibility and an engine that is already underpowered without adding tons of extra weight. And if the barrel is fucked it can’t even be used as indirect fire support.
So just by having them put on this ridiculous thing they already limit the tanks capabilities massively.
The first part if your comment doesn’t make sense.
It’s just a thick metal tube, and it’s designed to have explosions in it normally. Your drone might simply make dents, and if not the crew will still be safe and mobile to get back to base for repair. Then it can go back out and keep fighting.
Being out there and sending a drone is of course not risk-free for the attackers, and the reward is so much less than the hardkill they’d get without the cage being in the way.
It is a massive target with atrocious visibility and an engine that is already underpowered without adding tons of extra weight.
Compared to the tank, it’s not going to weigh much. It’s pretty typical to add stuff on to your armour. The visibility thing is legit though, and you can see they’ve tried to retain as much as possible.
Are kinetic or heat rounds the primary threat these tanks face?
Know what else massively limits a tanks capabilities? Being destroyed by a drone.
Ok, internet warrior
We all are.
You say without a trace of irony.
