Two years ago, Russian troops began wrapping their armored vehicles in shell-like layers of add-on armor—all in a desperate effort to protect the vehicles from Ukrainian drones. The Ukrainians gave these up-armored vehicles a name—“turtle tank”—and got to work destroying them with better-aimed and more powerful drones.
So now the Russians are trying a new kind of protection. Instead of welding shells around their vehicles, they equipped at least one BMP infantry fighting vehicle with long metal bristles they clearly hoped would detonate incoming first-person-view drones before they struck the vehicle’s hull.
It wasn’t a turtle tank. It was a porcupine.