Yep, The Russians Are Welding Shipping Containers Onto Tanks Now
It's silly ... but shipping container armor should actually work
A Russian regiment is welding shipping containers onto some of its tanks in what is clearly the latest effort to protect the tanks from Ukrainian first-person-view drones.
No, this is not as stupid as it might seem. Shipping containers are designed to be lightweight and weatherproof, so their shells are made of corrosion-resistant corten steel that’s typically less than two millimeters thick.
A standard shipping container isn’t even proof against small arms fire. The warhead on any FPV drone—a reused rocket-propelled grenade, in some cases—should punch right through.
But the Russians learned long ago to layer anti-FPV armor atop their assault vehicles. First, there’s the base armor on the vehicle: potentially hundreds of millimeters of high-grade steel often sandwiched with ceramic or some other hard material.
On top of the base armor, the Russians usually add explosive reactive armor blocks. Next, they weld on a metal frame and hang thin metal sheets to the frame. They may replace the metal sheets with bundles of protruding steel rebar or unwound aluminum cabling—or add the wires to the metal shell.
