Ukrainian drones overwhelm Russian tanks’ new active protection system—for now - Ars Technica
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Russian tanks have entered battle for the first time with a new active protection system designed to shoot down incoming drones. But the technology’s recent combat debut in Ukraine met with only limited success—Ukrainian drones still destroyed the Russian armored vehicles by attacking in overwhelming numbers.
The first documented battlefield appearance of the Arena-M active protection system took place when Russian forces launched a company-size assault with tanks and other armored vehicles in the Donetsk Oblast region of eastern Ukraine on July 22. The Ukrainian defenders repelled the attack and posted video footage of their kamikaze drone strikes destroying at least seven T-72B3A tanks, including some that carried the Arena-M system, according to Euromaidan Press.
However, Ukrainian soldiers also described the Russian Arena-M system successfully shooting down some incoming drones, according to the journalists Dmytro Putiata and Rob Lee. The Ukrainians reported requiring between 15 and 20 drones to finish off each tank.
The incident “demonstrated that the Russian military is learning and is experimenting in how to employ armor on a drone-saturated battlefield,” Lee wrote on X. “The Arena-M [active protection system] demonstrated effectiveness and will likely be improved.”
This development comes more than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as mass armored assaults have become increasingly scarce on the modern battlefield dominated by drone warfare. It’s part of an ongoing arms race where many militaries are struggling to figure out how to protect the weakest points of their expensive main battle tanks and other armored vehicles against swarms of cheap drones.
The Russian military has previously tried adding more physical armor in the form of “cope cages” welded or bolted onto tanks and other vehicles, which inspired the Ukrainian military to do the same. Russian forces even made “turtle tanks” covered in porcupine-style metal spikes and other improvised armor, although the extra weight and encumbrance of such add-ons have often limited both tank mobility and the use of their main guns.
Even up-armored vehicles attempting to enter the drone kill zone usually get destroyed, which is why mechanized assaults have mostly disappeared from the current battlefields in Ukraine in favor of infiltration tactics using small groups of soldiers. Russia’s battlefield deployment of the Arena-M aimed to change that.
The limitations of Arena-M
The Arena-M represents the latest version of the Arena system originally developed in the Soviet era. The technology uses radar to detect incoming rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles so that it can launch its own projectiles to intercept the incoming warheads.
The Ukrainian news publication Militarnyi reported that Russian engineers have been working to equip their tanks with the Arena-M system since 2019 and that live-fire tests were already being conducted in 2021. However, Militarnyi also highlighted reports suggesting Russia was struggling to adapt the Arena-M system to detect and destroy small drones, because the latter can fly more slowly and in more unpredictable ways than incoming missiles or rockets fired directly at tanks.
Having just a dozen countermunitions for interceptions also proved inadequate in the face of large numbers of Ukrainian drones. Remotely piloted Ukrainian drones capable of disabling or destroying armored vehicles through kamikaze attacks can cost as little as $400 each—so it’s still a very cost-effective trade for Ukrainian drone operators even if they have to use more than 12 drones to take out an armored vehicle costing millions of dollars.
“The Arena-M system, by itself, likely will not be an effective countermeasure to Ukrainian [first-person view drones] alone, as the system can be overwhelmed and only increases the cost and effort required of Ukrainian forces defending against the Russian mechanized assault,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War in an August 9 update on the war in Ukraine.
Pro-Kremlin Russian bloggers apparently acknowledged the Arena-M system’s current limitations and called for additional defenses to be integrated to provide tanks with layered air defense against drones. However, tanks and other armored vehicles still face additional battlefield threats beyond drones in the so-called kill zone, including crewed anti-tank...