Ukrainians Mocked Russia’s Hairy Anti-Drone Tanks—But Now Build Their Own.
First 'cope cages.' Then 'turtles.' Now the Russians are making 'hedgehog' tanks to defeat drones. And the Ukrainians are interested.
Adding thousands of metal “hairs” to a tank helps to protect the tank from first-person-view drones
The Russians first fielded these hairy “hedgehog” tanks this fall
Now the Ukrainians are building their own hedgehogs, hoping to reduce the impact of Russian FPVs
In their never-ending effort to protect armored vehicles from the tiny first-person-view drones that are everywhere all the time all along the 1,100-km front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, Russian forces have introduced a number of bizarre innovations.
The resulting “cope cages” and “turtle,” “porcupine” and “hedgehog” tanks are ungainly and, frankly, ugly. But they work. In fact, they work so well that Ukrainian forces usually copy each modification for their own armored vehicles.
The latest Russian anti-drone innovation is no exception.
Adding thousands of metal “hairs” to the existing anti-drone cope cages on a growing number of hedgehog tanks, the Russians have inspired the Ukrainians to do the same.
Now “both Russian and Ukrainian forces are modifying their tanks into so-called hedgehogs,” the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team observed.
“This is the progress we’re making,” one Ukrainian mechanic narrated in a recent video appealing to supporters for donations of industrial-grade aluminum cabling. Mechanics unravel the cabling into individual metal threads and weld a bundle with around 100 of the threads onto a tank’s cope cage.
A single hedgehog might boast 900 bundles for a total of 90,000 metal hairs. Each hair can detonate an incoming FPV before it strikes a tank’s hull.
There are downsides to do-it-yourself anti-drone armor, of course. All that extra weight can quickly ruin a vehicle’s gearbox.
And the heavier turtles, porcupines and hedgehogs are prone to getting mired while trying to cross rivers and streams. But a loss of mobility is a small price to pay for extra protection.
To be fair, Ukrainian forces have managed to eventually knock out even the most heavily up-armored Russian tank. But they have to use more and more of their precious FPV drones to do it.
One heavily up-armored Russian turtle tank, which sported an add-on metal shell or shed, deflected around 25 Ukrainian mines and first-person-view drones before the 26th munition—a drone—finally disabled it during an assault toward the city of Siversk in eastern Ukraine late last month.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
