8 Things That Will NOT Prevent Your Tank From Exploding in Ukraine
8 Things That Will NOT Prevent Your Tank From Exploding in Ukraine
Why you do not want to be in a metal box rolling around the battlefield.
This month the Russians purportedly killed at least three Ukrainian US-made Abrams main battle tanks. Since the beginning of the war, the Russians have lost nearly 7,000 tanks and 13,000 other armored vehicles. Although the Ukrainians won’t disclose their loses, it is reasonable to believe their tanks are also having a difficult time. The proliferation of advanced anti-tank guided missiles, land mines, and First Person View (FPV) drones has made this battlefield extremely deadly for armored vehicles. You do not want to be in a metal box rolling around Ukraine.
Yet, most military strategists are hesitant to say that the tank is dead (in this article I use “tank” to represent all land vehicles). They realize that war is a technological cat and mouse game, with the momentum oscillating between tank and anti-tank. Experts are quick to point out that Ukraine is not representative of a battlefield with full-NATO equipment, personnel, and doctrine—if it were so, the tank would have no problem. And regardless, they say, solutions to the tank problem are already under development. I disagree—the world is experiencing a fundamental change in land warfare. In that vein, the following is a list of some of things that will NOT prevent your tank from becoming a rusted metal monument to obsolescence in the middle of some Ukrainian buckwheat field.
1. Electronic Warfare
Many experts point to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) as one of the best solutions to the drone problem. Currently, drones are controlled by humans. EMI severs the electronic control link, dropping the drone to the ground or forcing it to return to base. The problem with EMI is that you often need a lot of power, on or near the correct frequency of the drone, and many times pointed in the correct direction. The Russians and the Ukrainians have been using powerful stand-alone jammers to attempt to create an EMI bubble in specific locations. The tactical paradox is these powerful jammers act as an electronic beacon, alerting everyone to their presence, and jamming friendly GPS and communications in the process (a situation not conducive to coordinated, combined arms). Plus, the mobility of these larger systems, like the Russian Krasukha EW system, is restrictive on the assault and become an instant HIMARS target.
The drone cat-and-mouse game will continue. Russian and Ukrainian on-vehicle jammers have shown promise, but they don’t seem to be currently working well, at least for the Russians. Here is a video of a Ukrainian FPV hitting a Ural truck equipped with an anti-FPV EMI system (starts at 26 seconds into the video). Additionally, the next evolution of drone will probably include digital communications, which will increase video quality while making the control link harder to jam. The Ukrainians have experimented with connecting FPV drones with long fiber optic cables, impervious to jamming. Also, on-board artificial intelligence known as “machine vision” is already allowing drones to automatically select targets. No command link, no EMI disruption of said link.
But what about high-powered microwave (HPM) guns? The idea here is to use an obnoxiously large, “hand held” HPM gun to fry the components of the drone as it swoops in on you at 65-miles-per hour. Ridiculous. Although promoted by the US military, HPM guns seem to be a total scam. The good news is the Russians have been fooled by their military industrial complex as well. Here is a video of a Russian trying to shoot an FPV drone with a HPM gun, right before the Russian catches the drone with his butt. Drones are not going to hover 100 feet above as you point a HPM gun at it for 30 seconds. It makes me sick to think how many systems like HPM guns actually get fielded, wasting everyone’s time.
2. Combined Arms
In the summer of 2023, after training nine Western equipped brigades to conduct a combined arms assault of the Russian defensive belt, the much anticipated Ukrainian offensive was stopped cold. Western tanks ran into Russian mines, artillery and anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM). Thankfully, the offensive began before the Russian army had fully embraced FPV drones, or the damage would have been more catastrophic. The Ukrainian tanks faired as poorly as their enemy counterparts did at places like Vuhledar, where the Russians lost an entire brigade attempting an armored assault.
The tank has been ravaged in every disputed location in Ukraine. But, diehard tank fanboys insist that the tank is not dead just because both Russia and Ukraine are losing all their tanks in modern combat. They argue that the West would do things differently. We have airplanes. We fight with combine arms. I’m here to tell you that combined arms won’t save your tank.
We’ve been here before. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a disaster for Israeli tanks, the popular sentiment was that ATGM technology had surpassed the ability to protect armor. The Soviet Sagger missile increased the Arab’s engagement distance and, concurrently, advances in Soviet mobile surface-to-air systems muted Israeli air support. The Western solution was the suppression of ATGMs and SAM systems with combined arms. The tight integration of air, artillery, and armor ensured that the enemy kept their heads down while armored vehicles delivered the infantry to their objective.
Again, the key to thwarting advanced ATGMs was suppression. To this point, most ATGMs required a degree of target fixation to ensure that they hit their mark (some modern missile systems—TOW, the Ukrainian Stugna-P—still require the operator to keep the missile locked on target). Distracting the ATGM operator, through direct or indirect fire, was a good way to prevent them from hitting your tank. But more importantly, the suppression of follow-on attempts were paramount. Once you knew where it was coming from, you could prevent another strike attempt.
There are couple of major factors in suppressing anti-tank capabilities. First is the tyranny of stand-off distance. As you increase the range from the anti-tank system you increase the difficulty of suppressing that threat. FPV drones now have an operating distance of almost 10 km. Some of the more expensive loitering drones can reach 30km. Much like the introduction of the Kornet ATGM (with a range of 5km versus the Sagger’s 2km) in the mid-2000s caused problems for tanks in Syria, Western combined arms are going to have a problem suppressing all of the possible real estate from which drones could originate.
The second combined arms problem is detection. An ATGM has a signature—a trail of smoke—when it leaves the tube. If you’re attentive, and lucky, you will see the enemy fire and you will be able to suppress that area. With drones, the operators don’t need to be co-located with the infantry or armor they are trying to protect. With drones, the operator is safely ensconced in a stairwell ten clicks away. There is nothing to suppress. Combined arms, in its current form, is not going to save your tank.
3. Active Protection Systems (APS)
Along with its extended range, the Kornet missile has the ability to punch through the thick front armor of a tank, including explosive reactive armor (ERA—the squares of explosives covering modern tanks, designed to explode outward if an object attempts to pierce it). With the Kornet the pendulum had swung again in favor of the ATGM. The response was the development of APS designed to detect incoming threats to the tank and intercept them with a projectile or directed energy.
The most effective of these APS seems to be the Israeli Trophy system. This APS costs around $350k and has been adopted by many Western militaries including the United States. It contains two warheads (so it can kinetically interdict two ATGM attacks) and is fairly directional. Thus, ATGM attacks from the rear or above may be more effective. Recently, the Trophy system seems to have been effective in stopping Hamas attacks on Israeli tanks in Gaza.
APS sounds pretty good, but here’s the catch. Sometimes it’s not about what’s in the black box, but how many you have. We can safely assume that APS should be able to defeat an incoming drone. Unfortunately, there are many more where that came from. Russia claims it built hundreds of thousands of FPV drones last month alone. Ukraine wants to build a million this year. Will that APS be able to stop the third, forth, or fifth drone? I think not. And I’m not even going to start on drone swarms, because I actually don’t even think they’re necessary. Ukraine and Russia are doing just fine destroying tanks without swarms.
4. More Armor/ERA
Tanks are designed to attack in one primary direction and to defend from attacks in that direction. It follows that tanks are most heavily armored in the front and on the sides. The weak points in the tank’s armor are most commonly the rear, the top, and the joint where the turret meets the hull. While modern ATGMs like Javelins and NLAWs can attack the thin roof of a tank, and thus why some manufacturers are increasing the armor on the top, FPVs seem to favor the turret-hull gap. Soviet tanks are especially vulnerable to attacks here, as the ammunition is stored around the turret, causing some dramatic, instant tank evaporations.
The tank is going to have to be completely redesigned. Not just Soviet-era tanks, but Western tanks are also going to have to protect 360 degrees and cover weak spots like the turret-hull gap. Keep in mind that the modern US Abrams tank already weighs 70 tons, and each additional pound echoes throughout the logistics chain (e.g., engine wear, transportability, fuel use, etc.). Perhaps the solution is a giant rolling orb like the BB-8 robot from Star Wars, but covered in a large floating fishing net. I’m sure defense contractors like General Dynamics or Oshkosh Defense would be willing to try and prototype it for $500 million until the program gets cancelled, because it’s an idea that has no basis in reality, aka 90% of military R&D.
5. Cope Cages
In Ukraine, a cope cage is usually a metal roof that is welded onto the roof of a tank to protect its weak upper side. The top-attack munition (e.g., NLAW, Javelin) is capable of detonating multiple times to thwart ERA explosions. The cope cage is supposed to make the missile detonate early. It doesn’t work. As this video shows, it will not stop a Javelin. Cope cages are a kin to putting sandbags on a Sherman tank in WWII—it does nothing but make you look silly. Occasionally a cope cage might trap an RPG round or snag an FPV rotor, but this is rare.
To be fair, although most FPV drone operators will simply fly below the cope cage, there have been videos of tanks taking multiple FPVs hits in the cage before eventually succumbing to the drones. Just like with overcoming the Trophy APS, the drones are going to keep coming. That being said, I would probably rather have a cope cage than not, to maybe buy me that extra 30 seconds to jump out of my tank before it turns into a smoldering husk.
6. Smoke
Modern tanks have the ability to create a smoke screen to hide from ATGM crews and other armored vehicles. This trick isn’t going to work on drones, which can fly above the smoke and wait. You’re just going to die coughing.
7. Moving At Night
As FPV drones began to dominate the battlefield this summer, moving at night became the only safe option. That tactic is now nullified, as both sides are using thermal vision on their drones.
8. Engineers
Ok, engineers will keep your tank from exploding in Ukraine. The problem is all the engineers are dead. Engineer vehicles are the first to be targeted. Engineers on foot, in the middle of a field, are easy pickings for drones. This fall in Ukraine, one acting brigade commander told me his entire engineer company was gone. One of the problems with the Mala Tokmachka offensive was that there were so many mines, the Russians don’t even know where they put them. Also, over a million acres in Ukraine is contaminated with mines.
Preventing mine attacks is difficult. Sometimes they are buried in multiple horizontal layers, so even if you clear the top layer, there are more below. Clearing minefields in Ukraine is a tricky business. After an area is cleared by engineers, the enemy can drop new ones by helicopter, artillery, or sneaky little robots. Also, tanks are not MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles which rely on the height and shape of the bottom of the vehicle to deflect the blast. With so many anti-tank mines in Ukraine, you don’t want to be the lead tank. But, you don’t want to be in the trailing tank either, because when you turn around you might hit a mine. Bottom line: you don’t want to be in a tank.
Conclusion
There are two final observations I would like to make about the current state of tanks on the battlefield. First is a statement about the tactical level of combat. Mobile, protected firepower is a desirable capability. Also, time travel is a desirable capability. Neither might be possible given the current state of technology. There will have to be a reimagining of both the tank and of combined arms doctrine. Tanks were built to fight other tanks head-on. The Western idea of combined arms is built around protecting the tank by suppressing located threats. Neither of these concepts reflect current reality.
My second thought is about the strategic level of war. If we accept that, for the foreseeable future, the armored vehicle is neutered, then the corresponding strategic threat is also diminished. There will be no Russian tanks rolling into Prague or Warsaw. If there is no threat of tanks physically occupying opposing terrain, then there is no Fulda Gap-type strategic threat. Aggressive countries may be limited to relatively futile strategic bombing to project power. The inability of countries like Russia to place “boots on the ground” should force governments to adjust their deterrence calculus (and defense budgets) accordingly.