Land operations
during the winter lull in fighting, reports showed how Kyiv had made creative use of camouflaged metal snares right over their artillery and armoured units that forced Russian Lancets to detonate their payloads before making actual contact. This greatly increased survivability, and led to a number of other similar innovations.
The Israeli Merkava IV tank has been shown to be vulnerable to low- cost drones used by Palestinian fighters in Gaza.
armed opponent. Perhaps of more interesting to Western observers is that it seems the TB2’s favourite prey has been Russian equipment and tanks. Prior to the war in Ukraine, Turkey successfully deployed the TB2 against the Russian-armed and equipped forces of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to great effect. Between 27 February and 5 March 2020, TB2s – supported by anti-tank crews – destroyed at least 73 Syrian armoured vehicles.
In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of 2020 between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Azeri military was supported by not only TB2s – whose ‘kill cam’ footage against Russian-made T-72s and other armoured systems repeatedly went viral during the 44-day war – but also by Israeli-made Harop loitering munitions and their Turkish STM Kargu counterparts. These loitering munitions caused significant damage by being used as ‘kamikaze’ drones, flying straight into hostile armour before detonating their payloads. Making matters worse, they are cheap enough that they can be bought in large numbers and used in swarms, overwhelming more traditional and cumbersome anti-air defence systems. The resulting carnage led to Armenia raising the white flag of surrender.
73 22
The number of Syrian armoured vehicles destroyed by Turkish TB2 drones between 2 February and 5 March 2020.
Middle East Institute
Perhaps learning from these lessons, as well as the drubbing they took during the Ukrainian spring offensive of 2022, the Russians have innovated their own cheaply made Lancet-3M kamikaze drones that have wreaked havoc on Ukrainian artillery pieces and even tanks. Pilots can enter a ‘first-person view’ when flying the drones at low-altitude to avoid detection, before sharply increasing altitude only to nose-dive directly into the top of Ukrainian armoured vehicles, sometimes even penetrating the lighter armour found at the tops of the vehicles. Like Nazi Germany’s Stuka bombers, often the only warning the Ukrainians got was the sudden sound of a Lancet – or a swarm of them – rising and then descending to deliver its deadly payload.
Changing with the times However, as is often the case in war, every new tactic or technology is met by another innovation to defend against the once-novel tactics. In the Ukrainian case,
For example – to combat the threat of kamikaze drones or small commercial quadcopters that have been modified to drop mortar rounds and bomblets directly on top of tanks – metal enclosure cages have been added to tanks that are seeing action in Russia and even more recently in the Gaza Strip. Numerous Israeli Merkava IVs and Namer APCs have been shown using these so-called ‘cope cages’ that provide a level of separation between the bomb being dropped and the vehicle’s hull. In some cases, explosive reactive armour has also been added to the meshed roof to provide additional protection by exploding out toward the explosive threat, neutralising it before it can knock on the tank’s hatch.
This has not stopped the cycle of creative countermeasures, however, as Hamas militants have as recently as November released videos showing drones dropping tandem charged munitions from drones to generate successive explosions to defeat a tank’s meshed enclosure. They have also been known to launch multiple attacks to generate hits on Israeli armour, and so the arms race between measure and countermeasure continues in real-time as the war in Gaza continues to unfold.
Such is the threat coming from these drones that military strategists and decision-makers the world over have spent the past few years deliberating on how best to counter them. While ‘cope cages’ have limited some damage, the recent and ferocious combat in Gaza has shown that they are not a fool-proof solution. Instead, armoured commanders must look beyond individual vehicle defence to more area defence, with early warning and electronic warfare capabilities being crucial in detecting and delaying drones through jamming and other methods before shooting them down. However, this needs to make economic sense, and firing a $6m Patriot missile at a drone that costs $100,000 will quickly bankrupt a nation trying to defend against swarms of cheap UAVs. Instead, great strides and hefty investments have been made in new technologies such as solid-state laser weapon systems, with the US leading the way and successfully demonstrating in April 2023 that their Directed Energy Manoeuvre-SHORAD lasers mounted on a Stryker fighting vehicle could knock drones out of the sky. But with these weapons still being prototyped and not deployed on a large enough scale, tank commanders will, for the foreseeable future, be driving anxiously about the battlefield with their eyes not only focused on the targets in front of them, but also on the machines stalking them from above. ●
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
Ran Zisovitch/
Shutterstock.com
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