4 Days To Make A Russian Hedgehog Tank

Welding thousands of metal wires to a tank can protect it from drones

First cope cages. Then turtle tanks. Later, porcupine and hedgehog tanks. The Russian military in Ukraine has heaped more and more improvised armor atop its tanks and fighting vehicles in an effort to protect them from the millions of tiny explosive drones the Ukrainian military sorties all along the 700-mile front line every year.

The hedgehog tanks is one of the latest improvisations—and potentially one of the most effective. And now the Russians have organized an effort to produce many more of them. As tanks and BMP fighting vehicles return to depots for repair, they also get the hedgehog treatment.

Russian media recently visited a depot working for the Russian Southern Group of Forces. There, workers were hard at work unwinding aluminum industrial cabling and welding individual two-foot strands—thousands of them altogether weighing a couple of tons—to a frame surrounding the tank.

“It takes three to four days to complete this,” a worker explained.