4 Armored Vehicles That Shrugged Off Drones in Ukraine

One Russian tank survived a staggering 70 strikes

A Russian porcupine BREM engineering vehicle. Via WarTranslated

The 700-mile front line of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine is a very, very dangerous place for armored vehicles. And for one main reason: the millions of tiny explosive drones, from both sides, that swarm the front line every year.

But heap enough extra armor onto your vehicle, and in the right configuration, and your ride just might survive the drone swarm. There are at least four notable examples on both sides of the wider war.

The fat little Ukrainian Stryker ‘fuck’

Open-source analyst Andrew Perpetua noted the latest example of a drone-proof Ukrainian vehicle—potentially an American-made Stryker wheeled fighting vehicle.

“There was a Russian video attacking a Ukrainian Stryker that Ukraine turned into an invincible tank,” Perpetua noted on Saturday. “This Stryker ate every single God-damn drone Russia sent at it without even taking a scratch.”

“The armor plan was this,” Perpetua added. “You take a Stryker with the slat armor on top. On top of the slat armor you apply a thick layer of rubber. All over. Whole vehicle is now rubber. Then, take slat armor and put that over the rubber.”

“It went: Stryker, slat, rubber, slat.”

The downside is all the extra weight on top of the 19-ton basic vehicle. “This had to be the heaviest God-damn Stryker to ever stryke,” Perpetua quipped.

To be clear, the base vehicle may not have been an 11-person Stryker, Perpetua conceded. It may have been a Soviet-style BTR weighing 18 tons and accommodating 10. In any event, “that little porker probably weighs as much as a goddamn [69-ton, four-person M-1] Abrams [tank]. But it ate drones like no tomorrow. The fat little fuck.”

The extra-spiny Russian porcupine tank

One up-armored Russian “porcupine tank”—a tank or fighting vehicle with spiky anti-drone armor—recently survived more than 70 drone strikes before finally succumbing. “It was very difficult to find a weak spot,” the Ukrainian Deep State analysis group noted.

The tank was one of two involved in an assault on Ukrainian defenses outside the ruins of Toretsk, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, on or before July 9.

The porcupine spines are the fourth layer of anti-drone defense on that type of Russian vehicle. First, the tanks’ own armor offers some protection—although there are lots of weak spots on the top, in the rear, along the treads and between the turret and hull.

On top of the baseline armor, the tanks have drone-blocking “cope cages.” The spines are the third layer. “Bundles of metal wire like these are welded directly onto the cope cage,” Russian T.V. network Zvevda noted.

“Before a combat mission, they are fluffed up,” Zvezda observed. That is, the crew bends the quills outward. “The tanks turn into an iron hedgehog”—porcupine is more accurate—“and when FPV drones attack, they run into these needles.”

One of the porcupine tanks outside Toretsk shrugged off a record number of drones, but still burned in the end. “After several hits, the tanks tried to disperse along the forest belts to safely land the infantry among the greenery,” the 28th Mechanized Brigade reported.

One of the tanks was badly damaged. The other was destroyed. “The enemy still won’t stop on his own,” the brigade explained. “But he can be stopped.”

At what cost? Ukrainian forces can’t afford to expend more than 70 drones on every Russian target. Not when the demand for drones continues to outstrip supply.

‘No Russian tank would survive’ like this Leopard 2A4 did

In April or May, one Ukrainian Leopard 2A4 tank survived what would have been certain death for any Russian tank—10 first-person-view drone strikes that triggered an ammunition explosion. The tank rolled another 500 yards before coming to a stop, according to the Ukrainian 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion.

Unlike Soviet tanks that keep their 125-millimeter main gun rounds in a carousel directly underneath the turret, the 62-ton, four-person Leopard 2A4 keeps its own 120-millimeter rounds in two spaces: a compartment in the hull near the driver, and another compartment in the back of the turret.

Most crews decline to use the hull stowage. They prefer the safety offered by solely using the turret stowage, even if that means a reduction in the tank’s 42-shell capacity. Unlike the hull compartment, the turret compartment has a blow-out panel. When a Leopard 2A4 gets hit and the ammo cooks off, it explodes outward instead of inward—toward the crew and the tank’s electronics and engine.

It’s that feature that saved the Leopard 2A4 the 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion recovered. “No Soviet/Russian tank would survive after an ammo detonation,” the battalion observed. The German-made tank “will return to the battlefield after repairs.”

One tough Ukrainian Leopard 1A5

An ex-Danish Leopard 1A5 tank belonging to a Ukrainian army brigade survived at least eight hits by Russian first-person-view drones before potentially three more explosive FPV drones finally finished it off back in January.

While losing any Leopard 1A5 is painful for Ukrainian forces who waited more than a year to receive significant numbers of the 1980s-vintage tanks from a German-Danish-Dutch consortium, that one of the Leopards survived a Russian drone swarm means Ukrainian efforts to up-armor the tanks seem to be working.

The 40-ton, four-person Leopard 1A5 is a fast and maneuverable tank with accurate fire controls for its reliable 105-millimeter main gun. Its greatest weakness has always been its thin armor protection: a Leopard 1A5’s base armor is just 70 millimeters thick at its thickest. A newer Leopard 2A4 has four times as much protection.

As the first few Leopard 1A5s began arriving in Ukraine in late 2023, the Ukrainians immediately got to work addressing the tanks’ biggest flaw. “The problems of reinforcing the armor are already being solved by Ukrainian engineers,” Ukrainian ICTV reported.

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