Thanks for watching! If you haven't seen my earlier videos on the Turtle Tanks, check them out they explain FPVs, what the Turtles role is and when they emerged. Links to those and the accompanying article for this video here: armourersbench.com/2024/05/17/is-the-tide-turning-against-the-turtle-tanks/
No, the tide has not turned. The turtle tank is a brand new concept still in the middle experimentation. When cars were new they broke down all the time for the same reason. The thing is turtle tanks are CHEAP and if the turtle shell protects the tank from the first hit then its a success. Even if it gets destroyed by the next drone its still a success. There is no such thing as invincible tanks. If you cant see the advantages of this new technology, then you are an idiot.
I really appreciate the actual human voice. The ai voiceovers bug the shit out of me. And everyone is using it nowadays. Thanks for being a real human. Subscribed
Agreed. I never support channels with ai content. Even the use of ai images is annoying and lacks professionalism, its sad to see how many larger channels are so lazy with their use of them.
These give off the same vibe as something you'd find in a "most bizarre vehicle designs in world war II" compilation, I bet people will look back on the Russian turtle tanks in 80 years time with the same level of intrigue.
@@Bang-ld4be I guess in the grand scheme of things because Russian tanks are so light weight (due to their small size) adding an extra 5 thousand pounds of steel doesn't cause much issue for moving.
Reminds me of Hobart's Funnies in WW2. Not saying they look the same as Hobart's Funnies but just the general idea of having unusual strange looking tanks.
Makes sense, turtle design is against drones in particular, it wasn't designed to withstand direct arty or atgm hits. Ukrainians probably got resupply on arty and atgm recently.
@dennisyoung4631 Maybe, Maybe not. The reason why mines like that are so effective is because most of the force is directed upwards with the ground acting as a backing. Exploding on top loses a lot of potential energy. The reason why the suicide drones work is because they use a shaped charge that can pierce the armor in a specific direction. Seeing a lot of replies, just wanting to note that I get it. All I want to point out is using the right tools for the right job. Some will be more effective than others.
@@Joseplh true but dropping one of those TM-62 mines from the air (which has been shown before) could blow apart the crudely built Sheetmetal armor leaving it vulnerable to an FPV strike. and with how slow the turtle sheds drive its not unlikely a heavier drone could get an accurate drop onto one.
I've said from the first time these abominable corrugated Steel sheds appeared that if they actually work against drones the drone operators will simply reorient and go e.g. for the tracks... if you can deliver something like a 10kg explosive payload straight into the rolling gear you end up with an immobilized and LOCATED tank that is easy picking for a 155mm gun.
When I started seeing these things, all I can think about them is "death trap", especially if the turret section is manned. If a fire breaks out, the whole cage risks trapping fire and heat and turning even the top of the tank into a roaster. The only possible solution is to operate it with a single driver as a minimum, but that severely limits the combat usefulness of the chassis into merely a lead breacher or mine clearer. If it's isolated from the rest of tank platoon, it's a sitting duck.
I don't know if its reassuring or not that this war has reverted to Great War technology and tactics. All we need now is the timely return of the handlebar moustache and football at christmas.
You be surprised how Often Trench Warfare shows up It was used extensively in the American Civil War, then even more Trench Warfare was conducted in World War 2 (more so than even World War 1). It only doesn't show up if it's a purely guerrilla campaign (and even then they are used a lot). You just haven't seen much in news coverage in War for a couple different reasons: people think Trench Warfare is antiquated and out of date. It isn't it is a tactic that has been modernized. Is the the most successful tactic? No, no tactic is, and it's heavily reliant on Logistics, Terrain etc. Terrain is the most important one. Digging a Trench in Europe: Annoying time sweeting back breaking labor Digging a Trench in the Middle Eastern Desert: Asking for Heat Stroke, and loose dust and sand to blow into your trenches.
Digging a Trench in the Ukro Russian War is a boring machine that cuts a circle but ejects the spill to one side to be used for sandbags They even have "in-trench" machines that can cut straight sided trenches used for laying pipe. The round ones can tunnel down for distances Maybe Hamas got one or two?
As main-guns have only limited traverse on these contraption, but still fulfill a role in mine-clearing in assaults, there is a case for bringing back assault guns WW2 style. They would have been even easier to "turtle up" than tanks with turrets.
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Against my better judgement, remove your against my better judgement because these tanks are in fact cool. And Russia's going to win, which makes them even cooler.
Nah, they just repair the damage and then add more stuff from the rubble to the outside. You see the successful drone attacks because that's propaganda to publish, what you don't see is the other 90% that fail entirely. Even the hits you do see aren't necessarily successful attacks, in that they didn't actually do anything to disable the tank.
@@peoplez129 the very fact that russia has to resort to such makeshift ridiculous crap, already tells us that, it is struggling against drones. These things are a complete waste of resources, fuel, time, money and effort. The shed might be better at fending off drones, but it basically turns a multimillion war machine into a useless heap of rubble for basically any other task. You pro-russians are so laughable
@@peoplez129 the very fact that russians are putting this much effort into this laughable crap, tells us they're struggling and tank crews are pretty afraid of drone attacks. Thankfully, it is making the orcs waste their resources, fuel, time, effort and money in building a countermeasure that basically turns a multimillion war machine, into a shed on wheels that, might be better able to withstand drones, but turns it into a useless heap of junk for basically any other task (making it a lot more vulnerable to other anti-tank weaponry and measures). You pro-russians are the laughingstock of the internet .
@@peoplez129the very fact that russians are putting this much effort into these laughable crap, tells us they're struggling and tank crews are pretty afraid of drone attacks. Thankfully, it is making the orcs waste their resources, fuel, time, effort and money in building a countermeasure that basically turns a multimillion war machine, into a house on wheels that, might be better able to withstand drones, but turns it into a useless piece of rubbish for basically any other task (making it a lot more vulnerable to other anti-tank weaponry and measures and makes them stick out like a sore thumb). You pro-russians are the laughingstock of the internet
@@bobgatewood5277 It's crazy you gulp down Western propaganda and then repeat hogwash like you just said. We literally used these 'cope cages' in Afghanistan in 2015 when I was there to protect vehicles too. While we weren't doing sheds like the russians, there is no denying the effectiveness of the design in most cases. Anyways, I'm sure you'll just call me a russian troll, but just remember both sides are up to nefarious agendas. There is no 'good' side in this war. It's two corrupt eastern european dictatorships fighting each other, just one has the backing of the US because it serves our purposes.
Lets face it, until the T 90 all T-Series were used as better assault guns. Without a decent stabilizer or reverse speed they could never been really used in a fast pace manouver or shoot and scoot tactics.
@@westphalianstallion4293 Are you sure the T-90 has a better stabilizer than the T-80? T-80s are typically given to more elite units than the -72/90 models. Both models use the 2E42 on older production examples and the 2E58 on newer examples. It seems unlikely that Russia would upgrade only the regular units tanks and ignore the guards and other similar elite units. Considering they use the same gun and the same stabilizer, I would assume similar performance.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 As I said, up to the T 90. Even T 80 would mainly try to use their barrel launched ATGMs from a Standoff distance against NATO MBTs. While the other elements move. From what I know Russian stabilizers and targeting systems are way behind western ones.
in future people are going to talk about this short period in this war how Russia used funniest looking tanks against the drones. we are on a turning point of warfare, if you dont see it you are stupid. terminator is coming soon
@@blakumvanrollope7480 what is this video about? You basically asked that. Tank protection, latest electronic surveillance equipment. New tactics, FAB Bombs, A new air defence system, oh you do the research, why do you think Russia is destroying everything the United West sends? $billions in the latest military hardware, used by troops a lot tougher than NATOs and Russia has destroyed it, that's why -he who dances in high heels- is crying out for $billions more. The US and it's subordinates should have stuck to third world countries where they have a chance of success.
A limitation of 'Turtle' tanks I've not seen mentioned yet is that they are built around 50+ year old tanks that were already underpowered. The weight of these 'turtle shells' overburdens the engines, gearboxes, and running gear of these vehicles.
I think Russia has a scored earth policy for their equiptment so doesn't get captured by the enemy which is why some of these tanks are burned or destroyed before they are abandoned.
@@Naturenerd1000 Unlikely. More often, their crews abandon them as soon as they are damaged. Drones and artillery from either side are quick to destroy any armoured vehicle that they can't recover, although the Ukrainians have the better record in capturing or recovering Russian armour.
I can't believe I was lulled into complacency by these clear psy-op turtle tanks. Their ultimate form hasn't even been seen yet. A turtle tank covered in explosive reactive armour. I heard one of them once sunk an entire carrier strike group and it doesn't even swim!
The problem with putting reactive armor over a sheet sheet metal cage is the reactive armor destroys the sheet metal cage when it detonates. Without the heavy armor backing it the reactive armor just destroys things.
A Ukrainian soldier did say it takes a lot of drones to take them out. No Tank is invincible but hey if that extra armor makes the enemy expend more power and gets you closer to enemy. Then why not, just keep using it.
Dead is still dead. And "almost" doesn't count. These sacrifice all of the combat ability of the vehicle for the dubious defense against just one threat.
@@obsidianjane4413this. These tanks lose a whole level of versatility in doing this. They can’t exploit a breakthrough, they’re vulnerable to heavy weapons, they can’t go against tanks, etc. I think it’s too many drawbacks for too little gain. They need mutual support rather than creating a sheet metal teepee. This once again proves the importance of balancing between mobility, armor, and firepower.
@@obsidianjane4413 Dead is dead, soldiers will die in war. So if a tank is still going to be sent into the enemy defense line, why not choose the tank with extra armor instead of a regular tank. Those tanks are working better than tanks with no cage.
@@obsidianjane4413 That one threat was the only threat the Ukrainians had in abundance (?) at this time of shortages. All these sacrifices to the combat ability are made to a handful of tanks to clear a path for the rest of the army to do their work.
I have been thoroughly enjoying watching your breakdowns of the evolution of the turtle tanks. From the original bbq’s, to the sheds and turtles with additional features. Great work!
I would think that chain link fencing would be a better covering. Or just using fishing nets so that the drone gets tangled up instead of impacting a hard surface.
Not really sure how the drones work but assuming they go off touching anything then hitting something like a chain link fence would destroy it meaning you would only need one drone to get rid of its protection
There's a picture out there of a Lancet drone tangled in a chain link fence mounted to what looked like a Ukrainian artillery vehicle. It kind of makes sense for an artillery gun to get a screen like that since the biggest two threats to them are drones and counterbattery fire. It's much less useful on a tank since they're exposed to many more threats like mines and AT missiles that don't care about the screen.
This is true but there's a variable amount of detonation methods that can be used for a warhead than your standard issue primer cap for example a lot of drone operators in ukraine have been using steel wire trigger mechanisms for their payloads that can easily be configured into a shape that would be preferable to catch onto thin strips of material plus fish nets and chains are vulnerable to getting holes thorn through their links from flying pieces of shrapnel
They're not actually countering them though. These tanks aren't destroyed, they're just disabled or abandoned. The drones are largely meant to take out the engine or the driver, not much else. What do you think happens when the rest of the army advances from the path being cleared by the mines? They fix the tanks and move them up again. And since they're only barebones 1 man tanks, even if they do get the driver, Russia's not losing a whole lot compared to losing a whole crew with full armaments.
@@peoplez129 they destroyed several ancient T62s and early T72s, which were only suitable for being written off for scrap, and are already declaring almost victory over the entire army of the Russian Federation, very Ukrainian, while losing territories every day
the turtle tank was a temporary solution for antidrone warfare. i don't think they expected it to stop artillery / mines. this seems to more of a russian battlefield mcguyver moment to try and continue using damaged tanks / use a stopgap measure to protect against drones where CEW systems are lacking.
The thing is, the more you push your enemy when it comes to stopping these assault tanks, the better you can observe = strike and destroy them. What is the sole purpose of these attacks. You don't conquer an area with a 2-3 tanks and some infantery. If you take infantery with you, it's again to keep pushing the enemy and for further suveillance of the enemy and forcing them to move or at least react. You don't even see the real threat in general, which is the vast amount of artiller, aviation, missile systema and alike. Overall you mainly see 1% of this war on the internet and that 1% is domination by the drones, since it was the coup regime in Ukraine mainly got left and the use that for PR victories.
Battlefield modifications to tanks has a long history , during WW2 many crews added extra armor and sandbags ect , also makes me think of the all metal armor suits Italian infantry made and wore during WW1
Its bulky, inefficient, and cut your visibility, but its basically the only real countermeasure against fpv drones most of the army has, and they do work for that purpose, all things considered. Its a death sentence if it gets in a fight against other armor though. But hey, if you have a tank that doesnt have a turret laying around, might as well just slap a steel rectangle and a mine plow on it and use it as a mine clearer.
@@pod11th31 Usually 1 shaped charge is enough to cook the crew or detonate the ammo. The turtle is made to counter drones with charges since they are the primary weapons against russian armor. So their idea is not bad at all. One thing we learned from this war is that the era of tanks is nearing its end.
I can see this leading to the development of a specialized breaching vehicle with low firepower but with carzy countermeasures, probably using the modernized T-80 main hull, since there are some in storage.
If you think about it, you can make these things, cheaply in less than a day, you only need a tapemeasure, an average welder and an anglegrinder. Basically it's free protection to get you closer to the enemy.
Where they can be lured into a tank trap. Why not? Old WW Atlantic Wall defence tactics in the lowlands. You can still see the remnants of tank traps that were built around the Hague, Noordwijk, etc. And the battle of Kursk. Go study that. It was a huge multilayer defensive structure built to blunt the Germans.
The concept makes sense but using a tank like the T72/T62 doesn't make sense. If they were to use the T50 series tanks with the same waste materials found in the warzone. Equipped with mine plows, multiple EW system's without any sort of ammunition so it doesn't detonate when hit by FPV. This is probably why Shoigu was rotated out of the MOD and replaced with a more economic minded leader.
@@mosesracal6758 If I was in Ukraine/Russia, I might be able to offer you some insight into the exact use cases here. Since I'm not, I'll just refer you to TAB's previous videos through the evolution of these tank mods and Perun's recent video. But, if you can't find a use for a mobile tank with a damaged turret, I'll argue that you aren't trying very hard. I mean, using an already damaged tank to lead the way through a mine field is a hell of a lot better than using a perfectly good tank. Blow the tracks off of the broken one, whatever - it saved you from blowing the tracks off of a good one and having yet another damaged tank. (with that said, I'm not exactly impressed by the track width mine clearing attachment, kinda think I'd like to cover the full width of my vehicle personally lol, especially if you're clearing a path for following vehicles)
This is exactly how war works, unless of course you have a huge technological advantage over your enemy. Today your polished tanks in battalion tactical groups are heading towards the capital, and tomorrow you are screwing a piece of iron fence onto a 60-year-old tank so that it can live on the battlefield for an extra couple of minutes. The point is that no matter what you come up with, your enemy will find a way to counter it with something.
These are old mothball tanks. This is how war works because it's the most efficient and cheapest way of getting things done. Russia hasn't even sent its polished tanks in. It's saving all of its modern stuff, which is smart, because why send a shiny new expensive tank to do something an old tank can do for a fraction of the cost.
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144 I don’t quite understand why there is laughing face when more than half a million people have already died without any significant reason. But in any case, not one of the Western tanks was ever considered some kind of invulnerable machine. Their task is actually to protect the lives of the crews, while in Russian tanks people are literally sitting on shells.
@@peoplez129 Maybe if Russia had sent their new tanks then they'd take Ukraine in few weeks instead of bleeding their resources and manpower on a country with 4 times smaller population for 2 years already. Unless there aren't any polished new tanks ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Smoke grenades and duplex war-heads. Duplex charge punches a hole in the shell, primary charge perforates armor. Smoke is useful in getting turtles to stop and wait for the smoke to clear. Driver visibility is already poor...smoke in the turtle shell blinds driver...nobody drives a tank blind.
Just subbed....here from Matsimus' video. Great job! I think the turtle tank concept is really just a field-expedient evolutionary stopgap. What will likely eventually happen is that some sort of EW solution preventing or interfering with the control of FPV drones will end up being attached to tanks/AFVs or perhaps there will be some sort of hunter/killer drone designed to defeat/shoot down the current generation of drones, in the same manner that fighter aircraft in WW1 made the observation balloon coordinating accurate long-range fire in that war obsolete. Anything like that will force the FPV drones to become exponentially more capable/more expensive to the point that commonly available drones won't be as effective and will overall lessen the impact of the drone. In the meantime, turtle tanks seem to actually work in some instances.
2:20 After over a century, the A7V returns to the battlefield. Standoff armor was probably more effective before the advent of readily-available guided munitions. If you're firing high-explosive shells at a tank, it will damage or destroy the standoff protection on that area of the tank. That point would then be vulnerable to a second HE shell striking exactly in the same area where the extra armor was gone. But even with today's advanced sighting technology, hitting the same exact place with two shots in a row would be virtually impossible. Now, however, one explosive drone can blast a hole in the standoff armor, and a second one can be flown directly through that hole to strike the vehicle proper.
Saw images making a Blyatmobile where they managed to weld the shell to both turret and body, turning the Cold War era MBT into a WW2 era assault gun. Honestly the shells remind me of cope cages…
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144 They might possibly work against FPV drones but they were originally devised against basic NATO MANPADS, iirc - against which they were and still remain entirely useless.
Seems that these are made as the first wave just to clear mines and defenses. 100 extra feet is worth it, especially if the driver doesn't know he is not going to be able to turn around when he gets his exposed tracks destroyed.
They are older tanks used as mine clearer's that other vehicles follow. They have been set up with FPV defense physical and electronic but they are not invulnerable. Seems like by and large they have been doing the job they were intended for
@@Crosshair84 This, Leopard and Abrams minesweepers got taken out before even getting anywhere close to Russian defensive lines. These turtle tanks plowed through villages, ran several loops and even returned home safely in many cases.
@@rogerc6533 Exactly. It's not a matter of "Not getting destroyed". It's a matter of "How far does it get before it is destroyed?". The Turtle demining vehicles are proving to be plenty survivable for the task they are intended for. (Not the tasks that people in the West imagine in their heads.)
@@Crosshair84 Yep, it's all propaganda. They will never give Russia its military strategy dues. If this was the US vs another country, they'd be writing books about the great military strategy being employed. But since it's not, they're either ignoring or down talking everything. Russia's losing almost nothing, because these tanks are old mothball fleets that would otherwise be sitting unused, and they're not being destroyed, they can be repaired and put back in service once the rest of the forces advance from the mines it cleared. My guess is that even the drivers aren't being taken out, but rather, when they're targeted with drones, they just abandon the tank and go meet up with their forces, who then move up and recover/repair the tank. So most of these drone attacks are literally attacking empty tanks, and not even necessarily disabling them, which means that they can be put right back into service very quickly.
The key factor is whether the assault troops manning the tank get to walk away from a series of hits /mines when leading the column - in which case they are a positive - especially if you are using captured vehicles or old T62 as the donor vehicle andnot modern T90
Could someone explain the point of the jammer to me? My understanding is the FPVs are p much flying grenades. While i'm sure it's better than nothing. The jamming range on those look almost point blank. Or the feed doesn't cut out till it's almost touching the armor. At that point you just set a trajectory, and hope. Seems to be working
I love how all the comments just suddenly assume that the Russians use turtle tanks in extended military engagements when their function in reality is more akin to a battering ram that allows everything else to come up behind it. 🤓”It cant fight other tanks”, “It has lower visibility etc… yeah its called have support assets near by to help the tank out. Those tanks get Recci drones, artillery and usually combined arms infantry units supporting the tanks.
@@mugs2169 >What you typed has been known for a month now. has it..... i thought poster was saying.... it wasn't........... and providing....................... examples,,,,
they could make a double layered turtle tank. two layers of sheet metal. perhaps a triple turtle. or even the dreaded quad-turtle. oh. wait. did i say dreaded? i meant to day dreadful.
that extra weight on the transmission, the tank wouldn't even move, it's physics, when they add that armor, the extra weight burns more fuel, lower speed, and moveability. As others have pointed out, no egress but we all know that is not a priority. There is a tradeoff to adding anything to a vehicle. While they do get credit for doing something, this is not how a cutting edge country solves problem. We had an issue in Iraq with IEDs for those that can remember, we stuck what they called a Rhino on the front of most mine clearing vehicles and all it was was a box with a glow plug in it, to use the heat to set off the IED, the stand off meant life or death, so yes, there will always be ingenuity on the battlefield, but this seems like a local solution and the bigger issue is that Russian should have the capability to address a changing battlefield in real time, but then again, we did see the stealing of toilets and washing machines.
@@blkted2945and their engines are already notoriously underpowered. Not that it would matter, there are still weak spots, there are plenty of drones that can damage them. There are fpv drones that can level houses, the tracks are still vulnerable. The most logical step imo is either just turning an at mine into a drone and flying it directly in front of it's track would totally destroy it.
The answer to the question is still open after watching the video. The purpose of the turtle tank might just be to make destruction of them much more costly and the video does not destroy this feeling.
I saw a lot of shots when the turtle tank got a lot of hits, but did not lose its mobility and successfully returned back to base. I think we're going to see something new soon, as the Russians try to find simple ways against drones.
I know you and the others making this same comment think it's a real big brain idea you've come up with, but beyond extremely superficial resemblance they are nothing alike.
The entire discourse about the turtle tank has been bizarre considering that its a limited phenomenon with a few examples from basically a few battalions of a singular AC on a very limited section of the front where they've had essentially no effect. The heavily modified and uparmored MTLBs thats been seeing large deployment across the entire Donbas front are a lot more interesting in context of fixing bad Soviet armor designs (and reaffirmin western designs), matching current Russian doctrine, and kinda countering drones/ATGMs
The Russians thankfully arent emulating the costliness of western afv design. Western designs are pathetic in cost effectiveness and the west has also been pivoting to lighter afvs closer to the weight of Russian tanks for quite some time now.
@@rogerc6533 Not really if you look at any acquisitions. Even Russia is looking to heavier and larger IFVs and tanks long term via Armata and Boomerang since it will increase infantry survivability significantly. Chopping up MTLBs to allow troops that don't have to either squeeze into and die in a tin can or ride on top of a BMP that gets hit by a drone, ATGM, mines, or direct fire has been the major through point of the war and explains why certain IFV manufacturing lines have been resurrected or not
Short term, sure, they're escaping that costliness (though really the West is only sending ~30 yo systems they're divesting from tbh), but at the massive cost of man power and long term they're avoiding that because they haven't had a growing population for ~15 years and can't rely on central Asia immigration considering geopolitics of the region
@@rogerc6533 You do know that the move to lighter tanks is not due to cost or support issues but the fact that the west has had to shift into a more offense orientated idea and feel the need for a lighter tank since the infrastructure in the areas to be invaded is so shit.
@@Svenne-man-1880 Isnt what you said exactly what a support issue is? But point taken, part of the shift was influenced by experiences in low intensity wars but the current high intensity war only reaffirms that overly complex solutions have no place when the battlefield rapidly devolves.
Yes. The main advantage was they weren’t facing artillery and more heavy hitting armaments as the war became more about drones. Now that Ukraine has been resupplied on that end, these setups will quickly become metal coffins again. It’s just how things will progress. The Russians noticed overreliance on drones, tried to take advantage, but by the time it was in use, Ukraine has a full deck again.
Which in turn will further the development of anti drones measures. Or do you think Russia isn't developing non makeshift responses? lol That's how this works.
@@CALIMA2000 Tandem grenade for FPV drone? it has a larger caliber, greater weight and longer length! Try to hit with a tiny shaped charge when your signal is jammed, and you’re also talking about tandem charges! And even if it’s tandem, what will change? It will cock in the same way as a regular non-tandem charge, it will cock a meter or half a meter from the armor, like a regular shaped charge, it will still have to deal with dynamic protection and the main armor, and the cumulative jet will also need to pass the air bag between the armor and a barn! The essence of a tandem charge is to cock the dynamic protection so that the moving elements of the dynamic protection container do not dissipate the cumulative jet very strongly, and not to pierce plywood! The second charge of the tandem charge will be cocked in the same way as a regular non-tandem charge during a collision with the barn plywood!
The turtle tanks do make sense, and there is a tradeoff in even further reduced vision and movement of the gun. The extra weight is an issue, just as when people started "uparmour" their tanks in WWII using sand bags or extra metal. However, like everything else there will be countermeasures to the counter measures, even if the most important counter measure is blowing up refineries and depots..
In principle, the idea is incredibly stupid. You are sacrificing most of the design attributes of the original tank (mobility, rotating turret, low profile, visibility) in an attempt to improve its survivability against a narrow range of threats.
@@jrd33 Which of those attributes are important when tanks can't even cross fields? FPV drones are more mobile, your side's drones can provide situational awareness. NATO tanks are superior in most attributes over their eastern counterparts and they did not do any better. Most of the time these shed tanks are used as breakthrough or mine clearers, soaking the hits and clearing a path for the rest of the army. And that narrow range of threats was the primary method of attack the Ukrainians had available to them at this time.
In trying to protect against the drones, they've traded away mobility and situational awareness which ironically makes them even more vulnerable to the original tank hunters, the artillery and mines. Those turtleshells are gonna help any explosives that gets past them by concentrating the effects of the explosion onto the tanks themselves.
So two things. One is the emotional impact of the weapon and second is the practical. Practical is easy, if it offers any improvement in combat in an otherwise equal battlefield, it's worth using. First is the more important. Look at WW2 tanks. Often, they had sandbags and random crap around them. Soldiers did that to add protection to their tanks. Did it work? No. But it made the soldiers feel better and therefore perform better. That's the key. Higher motivation to do something is obviously going to get better results.
What makes you think they can't traverse the turret? Those shells aren't going to stop a turret that delivers over 20,000lbs of force. Those barrels will turn like there's nothing there.
For Javelin and TOW you need a line of sight and you need to be outside or at least near a big opening which exposes you to being spotted by drones which are for sure circling above if they are preparing to attack that position. Goal of the turtle is mostly to clear mines and expose enemy positions and its doing its job well. btw every one of those 155 fired carries a risk because Russians have a lot of counter battery radars.
@@phlexy People are applauding the drones, but what they don't realize is most of these drone operators are in a bombed out building somewhere nearby, quickly becoming behind enemy lines as the days pass, so they can't do anything but sit there and hope to not be discovered. But what it means is these drone attacks are essentially suicide missions, because they're never going to make it out of there as the Russians advance, and when they get there it's not going to be just one lone tank clearing mines, it's going to be a whole battalion around them with all the things swarming to look for them. So these aren't quite the victories the propaganda wants people to believe.
War is always about one side coming up with new technologies, even if it is a sheet metal frame, and the other side learning to counter it. Things like that can make the difference between a win and a loss. One side is always in pursuit of the advantage. As they should be. Its been that way since men were fighting with clubs. It will never change.
The damage from most of these FPV attacks are superficial in nature. It takes several to disable a tank, and even more for a turtle tank with the extra protection. So scorch marks don't mean a thing, fire doesn't even mean a thing. Considering the amount of mines being cleared by these turtle tanks, Russia is definitely gaining. And they're using their old mothball fleet of tanks to do it, not their best stuff, so they're technically not losing anything, because these are tanks that would otherwise be sitting unused in a field, so it gives use to old hardware that would otherwise have no use. On top of that, these tanks are largely being manned by a single person, along with not carrying anything extra like armaments, so when they do lose a tank they're not losing as much as one would from fully equipped tanks, while as the rest of army advances from the rear, they can repair damaged tanks and put them back in service. So a tank sitting abandoned, doesn't mean it's a total loss, it just means it's taking a break for a while. Now imagine what that means when Russia does repair them as they move up. It will be as if they lost almost nothing, bolstering their army. And Ukraine clearly can't afford to send drones at abandoned tanks to damage them more and make sure they stay out of commission, because these drones don't actually have the capability to completely destroy tanks, they're largely meant to just disable them and take out crew, so pretty much all of these abandoned tanks are still operable with some repairs. One thing to keep in mind about these mines, is they're not just Ukraine's first line of defense, they're also essentially Ukraine's last line of defense.
I bet you also think that police can just shoot the knife out of a criminals hand. Hitting things from a distance is actually pretty hard. You only see the videos of FPV drones that hit. Many more miss. Hitting the engine deck or rear of the turret is hard enough as it is.
@@Crosshair84 There was a case many years ago that happened in Vancouver, BC. An officer shot at a fleeing suspect and hit him in the back of the knee, pretty much crippling him. The suspect sued on the grounds that the officer deliberately knee-capped him. When the officer got to speak: "Your honour, it was at night, in poor lighting, the suspect was 30 yds away, and I was using a standard issue .38 special. I was aiming for main body. I was lucky to hit him at all. If you want, I can bring in ballistics experts who will confirm what I am saying." Lawsuit was dismissed.
The use of attack drones has achieved so many benefits for the defenders, not the least of which is that the Russians have had to commit much time energy and materials into fitting theses crude additions, the use of which severely limits the use of the tanks’ main guns, increases weight, restricts visibility and makes it a night mare for field maintenance which is a major drawback in action wherever engine, etc, parts require access or removal and replacement. It’s possible that crews have a better chance of serving a drone hit but I reckon that exiting a stricken tank must be a major headache. The major problem is that this tactic doesn’t appear to stop the vehicles from being disabled, which somewhat defeats the object.
Imagine going to these lengths to protect a... wait for it... tank. If a tank needs additional protection that's been hastily cobbled together in the field then something has gone very wrong. Not to mention that any additional protection is basically negated by the fact you've now cut off all situational awareness and severely limited movement of the main gun. Absolute madness.
@@crisdangerous1 A kamikaze drone with a warhead strapped to it is no different than being hit by an ATGM, yet traditional armor has always been used against those.
@@noticing33have you stated this video? Bedsprings might’ve been better only because they’re easier to see through.. now you have full metal plates over you which means NO visual on anything you can’t see men from your side tanks coming from your side let alone a drone anywhere in the air.. it doesn’t matter if it stops the first drone there’s plenty more where that comes from along with above artillery which will collapses this whole structure on top of the tank not allowing crew to disembark or leave so better have water and rations with you
A thought I had is for small weak drones normally depending on precision hits at seams is to add some aluminum powder and ammonium nitrate to the charge which sends hypersonic grit at ignition able to etch even sapphire camera lens. These tanks seem to have no driver view hence the camera would have to be replaced.
With at least some of these it seems that the tracks have been thrown off, which makes me think that immobilization may be a simple tactic being used to counter them. The crews wouldn't realistically be able to repair during an assault, and static armor can be hit with artillery or ATGMs. The sheds make it so that they can't really return fire themselves, and if they are the mine-clearing vehicles in the assaults then the assault is effectively stalled until the sheds can be recovered and repaired off the field of battle, since they're blocking the lane they were clearing, which would be even more difficult if they're under fire.
Being stuck in a 'turtle tank' that's on fire inside the shed, there's some quality nightmare fuel. It's going to be *VEEERY* interesting to see what new tank development looks like over the next decade.
Fire on a tank doesn't necessarily mean any danger at all. You could pour jet fuel on a tank and have it burning for hours and the crew inside could be cozily sipping tea.
@@TheArmourersBench Better than being dragged off the streets as cannon fodder with barely months of training, inadequate air cover and a critical ammunition situation to go eat FABs. If this goes on for another few years, they will have to even force the elderly and women off the streets to fight. Ukraine should surrender even if it means giving up the eastern half of the country.
because it is. This aid package will not last for any real amount of time whilst Russia continues their FAB attacks and mass production of all arms with impunity. A single turtle tank can eat dozens of FPV drones. Ukraine cannot sustain this.
Honestly this kind of underlines how ahead of its time the strv 103 was. Not putting the main gun on a turret would make it so much easier to add counter-drone equipment to it
I prefer the term "Shoigus Shitbox" to describe these tanks Firstly due to the superb quality of their construction and secondly from the reaction of the crew if they are hit and can't get out
So the weight of that shit means that it carries less ammo? So whats the point make a tank more blind that it is, less capable of doing what a tank does? Still get blow out just a bit harder than the normal ones. I dont get this war anymore.
It's not fighting other tanks. It's main goal is to prevent fpv drone attacks which are more of a threat than other tanks right now. It can still provide fire support to any infantry that might be along with it.
@@Drownedinblood Yeah but a FPV RPG-7 warhead cares not for corrugated iron, and most tanks seem to bite the dust before they ever get to do infantry support.
I don't think the tide was ever on the side of rolling garden sheds, but their utility is as undeniable as the opportunity costs imposed by their design... I can't help but be reminded of the glorious mobile paperweight created by Bob Semple. Who would have thought this would be what the most violent war covered by the mainstream media (in any sort of meaningful depth and frequency) of this century would end up looking like? Well, that is to say, the deadliest popular war that occupies significant media attention, that is. Of course, most people tend to forget the Yemeni Civil War, wars in Ethiopia, and genocidal cleansing in Sudan.
The shell being able to block an attack doesn't mean it's necessarily effective. Not to mention we don't even know if what the thumbnail shows is an example of it working, looks to me like it might as well be immobile. The question comes down to if the extra supposed protection is worth not being able to turn the turret, not being able to quickly bail out of the tank, not being able to see anything from the tank in pretty much any direction but forward, also being much easier to spot and probably being a slight bit slower thanks to the added weight. I'd venture that just not being able to see probably means running into more danger than the little protection it lends.
I think it was effective more because of Ukraine having ammo shortages and/or relying more on FPV drones There was a footage of Ukranian SoF capturing a tank with an anti-drone eletronic warfare system, so perhaps they have studied that and managed to find a way to circunvent the interference
@@superspies32 Yep. They can send a signal back, they just can't receive. Most people think these things are manned, they're not. They're clearly almost completely on auto pilot, not just because of the jamming, but because of the targeting too. I've seen drones dropping grenades that are literally bouncing off the lip of the tank into a window. A person with a remote simply can't do that, the drone is clearly using precision guidance based on self awareness of where the payload is that it's carrying, relative to the position it needs to drop from to be successful. When you're looking through a drone camera, you simply have no sense of that kind stuff to position yourself perfectly relative to where your payload is, especially not with a camera that is essentially a wide angle smartphone camera that distorts things. So these drones are definitely almost completely automated. You essentially fly it a little, push on a touch screen where you want it to go, and it takes over the rest. I think they probably even have modes based on the tank design. So they can simply press a button that says "attempt to drop grenade in viewport", and it hovers over the target, looking for object recognition that has been preprogrammed, knowing where it needs to be relative to everything else in the image, that was dialed in by the US military through software and testing. And of course these things are designed to still operate even when being jammed, because despite all the jammers that Russia is using, they're not being impeded by them. The jammers are clearly used in hopes that jamming the operator keeps them from being able to do anything else intelligently, forcing the software to take over, which could lead to a less intelligently driven final approach. On top of that, the turtle shells are also probably messing with the object recognition of the software, since things aren't quite looking like the software would expect. So when jammed, the drone software still attacks, it just doesn't quite know where the best place to attack is like a human would, so it just rams into the closest thing it can.
The turtle tank is the best expression of how the war is going for RuZZia. A Nazi tank that isn’t capable of firing sideways or backwards, has very limited visibility for the driver, is slow and inflexible and has a high visibility at all times for the enemy. Basically everything wrong from a military standpoint. My take is - they are so embarrassed to only having the capacity of fielding Rusty T-55 and T-62‘s that they decided to cover them up with layers of metal to hide the fact. That’s the only logical explanation for this utter nonsense.
Something that I think about looking at the design of these cages, is how difficult they must make crew escape. Russian tanks aren't exactly famed for fantastic crew preservation, but if the tank is on fire at the front it looks like you are mostly trapped and awaiting being cooked. Obviously this isn't even thinking about having a ~45 degree cone of vision out of the direct front of the tank only. I think that 'innovations' like this would go a long way to making crew preservation in an already strained recruitment system sooo much worse. This is purely my thoughts, but I imagine the crews that would engage in crew modifications like this are probably on the more veteran side too (in the video early on, we heard that those were guards tankers, who are meant to be significantly better trained).
What I don't get is this.. already a Russian tank is a coffin on treads.. but this some how makes it even worse.. so now when the Tank starts burning.. you're now trapped under a metal shell..
Thanks for watching! If you haven't seen my earlier videos on the Turtle Tanks, check them out they explain FPVs, what the Turtles role is and when they emerged. Links to those and the accompanying article for this video here: armourersbench.com/2024/05/17/is-the-tide-turning-against-the-turtle-tanks/
Like the way you present your vids; easy to listen to, good voice, not too fast, no nonsense and simple.
@@sking3492 thank you!!
No, the tide has not turned. The turtle tank is a brand new concept still in the middle experimentation. When cars were new they broke down all the time for the same reason. The thing is turtle tanks are CHEAP and if the turtle shell protects the tank from the first hit then its a success. Even if it gets destroyed by the next drone its still a success. There is no such thing as invincible tanks. If you cant see the advantages of this new technology, then you are an idiot.
And another episode of the ruZZian world hit TV show "The walking shed". You can´t make this shite up.
@@TheArmourersBenchGOD BLESS RUSSIA !!!
Man War Thunder updates are going to be crazy in the future
These tanks would be total shit even at 8.0
@@lucasdevries5131
The chain front t72 will be insanely good at 8.0 even if it only has he.
Coment from a little boy in his mums basement
@@rionijam727 Hello little boy in his mums basement
@@lucasdevries5131Unless they add kamikaze drones in the game
I really appreciate the actual human voice. The ai voiceovers bug the shit out of me. And everyone is using it nowadays. Thanks for being a real human. Subscribed
Agreed.
I never support channels with ai content.
Even the use of ai images is annoying and lacks professionalism, its sad to see how many larger channels are so lazy with their use of them.
Exactly. I always remove those channels from my recommendations. AI will eventually ruin YT in my opinion.
The ai voice overs are going to be exactly like human voices in the near future
AI voiceocers ard just as badxas old computer voices I reckon. They are not human friendly and AI for that matter often gets things wrong.
Yeah I totally agree the stupid AI voices are like nails on a chalkboard if you ask me 🤮
if it weren't for all the images and videos nobody would believe that these things were being made.
I can still barely believe adding all that weight doesn’t lead to any malfunctions or stuck hulls
These give off the same vibe as something you'd find in a "most bizarre vehicle designs in world war II" compilation, I bet people will look back on the Russian turtle tanks in 80 years time with the same level of intrigue.
@@Bang-ld4be I guess in the grand scheme of things because Russian tanks are so light weight (due to their small size) adding an extra 5 thousand pounds of steel doesn't cause much issue for moving.
@@drummer9642 yeah most likely
Reminds me of Hobart's Funnies in WW2.
Not saying they look the same as Hobart's Funnies
but just the general idea of having unusual strange looking tanks.
This war slowly turns into Mad Max.
Yea..
Not Mad Max.
Crazy Ivan
after ww3 starts it will turn into mad max a lot faster
Para se objetivo NO ES UNA GUERRA, ES UNA INVASIÓN.
@@anasanz25what do you mean lol. It's an invasion on another country which doesn't want to be invaded(duh) thus causing a war
1:14 i love how they welded ERA to the ERA
You just showed me that😂😂😂
Oh my god!
What does that become?
ERA++?
That has me on the floor😂😂
Yo dog, we heard you liked ERA, so we welded ERA to your ERA so you can be protected while you're protected
Tandem ERA.
Because Tandem HEAT existed.
Don’t be silly. We all know the Russians don’t have ERA on their tanks, their commanders sold it all.
@arya31ful, but it will not work as tandem ERA
Makes sense, turtle design is against drones in particular, it wasn't designed to withstand direct arty or atgm hits. Ukrainians probably got resupply on arty and atgm recently.
They could also dump TM-62 mines on them…
@dennisyoung4631 Maybe, Maybe not. The reason why mines like that are so effective is because most of the force is directed upwards with the ground acting as a backing. Exploding on top loses a lot of potential energy. The reason why the suicide drones work is because they use a shaped charge that can pierce the armor in a specific direction.
Seeing a lot of replies, just wanting to note that I get it. All I want to point out is using the right tools for the right job. Some will be more effective than others.
Yea
@@Joseplh true but dropping one of those TM-62 mines from the air (which has been shown before) could blow apart the crudely built Sheetmetal armor leaving it vulnerable to an FPV strike. and with how slow the turtle sheds drive its not unlikely a heavier drone could get an accurate drop onto one.
I've said from the first time these abominable corrugated Steel sheds appeared that if they actually work against drones the drone operators will simply reorient and go e.g. for the tracks... if you can deliver something like a 10kg explosive payload straight into the rolling gear you end up with an immobilized and LOCATED tank that is easy picking for a 155mm gun.
"Assault Shed." I love it.
ME TOO : )))
jajajajajjajajajajajajajjajajajajajajajjajajajajajja
I like the term "blyatmobile"
@@Stigstigster It is hillarious !
A&$ ALT
7:47 Getting out of such a tank in case of emergency must be very distressing.
When I started seeing these things, all I can think about them is "death trap", especially if the turret section is manned. If a fire breaks out, the whole cage risks trapping fire and heat and turning even the top of the tank into a roaster.
The only possible solution is to operate it with a single driver as a minimum, but that severely limits the combat usefulness of the chassis into merely a lead breacher or mine clearer. If it's isolated from the rest of tank platoon, it's a sitting duck.
In Russian army,, they don't care about soldiers or tanks.
You guys are getting enough notice to abandon the vehicle? lmao
@@warweasel2832 they are expendable.
The cage against suicide drones turns every mission into a suicide mission.
I don't know if its reassuring or not that this war has reverted to Great War technology and tactics.
All we need now is the timely return of the handlebar moustache and football at christmas.
Damn, didn't know they had guided weapons, GPS, and computers in WW1
You be surprised how Often Trench Warfare shows up
It was used extensively in the American Civil War, then even more Trench Warfare was conducted in World War 2 (more so than even World War 1).
It only doesn't show up if it's a purely guerrilla campaign (and even then they are used a lot). You just haven't seen much in news coverage in War for a couple different reasons:
people think Trench Warfare is antiquated and out of date. It isn't it is a tactic that has been modernized. Is the the most successful tactic? No, no tactic is, and it's heavily reliant on Logistics, Terrain etc.
Terrain is the most important one. Digging a Trench in Europe: Annoying time sweeting back breaking labor
Digging a Trench in the Middle Eastern Desert: Asking for Heat Stroke, and loose dust and sand to blow into your trenches.
Bot comment
Bot comment@@melvinbrotherofthejoker436
Digging a Trench in the Ukro Russian War is a boring machine that cuts a circle but ejects the spill to one side to be used for sandbags
They even have "in-trench" machines that can cut straight sided trenches used for laying pipe.
The round ones can tunnel down for distances
Maybe Hamas got one or two?
As main-guns have only limited traverse on these contraption, but still fulfill a role in mine-clearing in assaults, there is a case for bringing back assault guns WW2 style. They would have been even easier to "turtle up" than tanks with turrets.
Battle Barns !
Limited shed life
This sounds like an off brand toy series from a tv show
The Amish: barns you say?
@@M81_WOODLAND Orthodox or Amish which Battle Barn will win ?
join us at the colosseum for
WW3 RELIGIOUS SHED WAR
The rematch of duchy hardbeam Vs ivan Mcruststick
WE ARE SPONSERED by cokeacola™
@@falloutfart9917 AGREE ; ))))
jajajjajajajjajajajajajajajajjajajajajajajajajajajaj
The "Turtle" looks like a Sturmpanzerwagen A7V
You are certainly not the first person to make this observation 😊
There are memes around with Putin on an A7V alike turtle tank.
Armored coffins
There is no such thing as an invincible tank.
there's no such thing as an invincible anything....
No shit sherlock captain obvious 😂😂😂
@@CR055FIREidk my buddy Keith is pretty tough
Wait till crab tank, the next step in evolution after turtle tank.
Wait till crab tank, the next step in evolution after turtle tank.
Against my better judgement, I find these tanks incredibly cool.
Against my better judgement, remove your against my better judgement because these tanks are in fact cool. And Russia's going to win, which makes them even cooler.
Aesthetically very interesting.
@@VunderGuyI doubt that Russia will win, but the turtle tanks are a bit of stupidity that’s kind of cool
@@chaostheory89 if cnn says Russia will loose than it is true!
@@VunderGuylies
Moral of the story= make bigger shell, possibly covering the side of tracks. MAKE THE SHED A HOUSE!!
Nah, they just repair the damage and then add more stuff from the rubble to the outside. You see the successful drone attacks because that's propaganda to publish, what you don't see is the other 90% that fail entirely. Even the hits you do see aren't necessarily successful attacks, in that they didn't actually do anything to disable the tank.
@@peoplez129 the very fact that russia has to resort to such makeshift ridiculous crap, already tells us that, it is struggling against drones. These things are a complete waste of resources, fuel, time, money and effort. The shed might be better at fending off drones, but it basically turns a multimillion war machine into a useless heap of rubble for basically any other task.
You pro-russians are so laughable
@@peoplez129 the very fact that russians are putting this much effort into this laughable crap, tells us they're struggling and tank crews are pretty afraid of drone attacks.
Thankfully, it is making the orcs waste their resources, fuel, time, effort and money in building a countermeasure that basically turns a multimillion war machine, into a shed on wheels that, might be better able to withstand drones, but turns it into a useless heap of junk for basically any other task (making it a lot more vulnerable to other anti-tank weaponry and measures).
You pro-russians are the laughingstock of the internet .
@@peoplez129the very fact that russians are putting this much effort into these laughable crap, tells us they're struggling and tank crews are pretty afraid of drone attacks.
Thankfully, it is making the orcs waste their resources, fuel, time, effort and money in building a countermeasure that basically turns a multimillion war machine, into a house on wheels that, might be better able to withstand drones, but turns it into a useless piece of rubbish for basically any other task (making it a lot more vulnerable to other anti-tank weaponry and measures and makes them stick out like a sore thumb).
You pro-russians are the laughingstock of the internet
@@bobgatewood5277 It's crazy you gulp down Western propaganda and then repeat hogwash like you just said. We literally used these 'cope cages' in Afghanistan in 2015 when I was there to protect vehicles too. While we weren't doing sheds like the russians, there is no denying the effectiveness of the design in most cases. Anyways, I'm sure you'll just call me a russian troll, but just remember both sides are up to nefarious agendas. There is no 'good' side in this war. It's two corrupt eastern european dictatorships fighting each other, just one has the backing of the US because it serves our purposes.
So T72 turned into a WW2 assult gun that can't even see its sides, even if you open the hatch.
Not only T-72, some T-80 were also seen.
Lets face it, until the T 90 all T-Series were used as better assault guns.
Without a decent stabilizer or reverse speed they could never been really used in a fast pace manouver or shoot and scoot tactics.
@@westphalianstallion4293 T-90 is only a different name for the T-72 modernization, T-80 has better reverse speed than T-72 and T-90.
@@westphalianstallion4293 Are you sure the T-90 has a better stabilizer than the T-80? T-80s are typically given to more elite units than the -72/90 models. Both models use the 2E42 on older production examples and the 2E58 on newer examples. It seems unlikely that Russia would upgrade only the regular units tanks and ignore the guards and other similar elite units.
Considering they use the same gun and the same stabilizer, I would assume similar performance.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 As I said, up to the T 90.
Even T 80 would mainly try to use their barrel launched ATGMs from a Standoff distance against NATO MBTs.
While the other elements move.
From what I know Russian stabilizers and targeting systems are way behind western ones.
When Tractor Supply and Home Depot collab to build a tank
Ahh the killdozer
That warfare mate, Russia always coming up with knew idea, while NATO and Ukraine always slow to catch on
in future people are going to talk about this short period in this war how Russia used funniest looking tanks against the drones. we are on a turning point of warfare, if you dont see it you are stupid. terminator is coming soon
@@blakumvanrollope7480 what is this video about? You basically asked that. Tank protection, latest electronic surveillance equipment. New tactics, FAB Bombs, A new air defence system, oh you do the research, why do you think Russia is destroying everything the United West sends? $billions in the latest military hardware, used by troops a lot tougher than NATOs and Russia has destroyed it, that's why -he who dances in high heels- is crying out for $billions more. The US and it's subordinates should have stuck to third world countries where they have a chance of success.
@@blakumvanrollope7480 They invented a way to lose a war against the poorest country in Europe.
I almost spat out my Sake when I heard you say "Blyat-mobiles" 😂😂😂
That's a really good one.
A limitation of 'Turtle' tanks I've not seen mentioned yet is that they are built around 50+ year old tanks that were already underpowered. The weight of these 'turtle shells' overburdens the engines, gearboxes, and running gear of these vehicles.
i was thinking this exact thing. you always read how engines are underpowered even for stock vehicles.
I think Russia has a scored earth policy for their equiptment so doesn't get captured by the enemy which is why some of these tanks are burned or destroyed before they are abandoned.
@@Naturenerd1000 Unlikely. More often, their crews abandon them as soon as they are damaged. Drones and artillery from either side are quick to destroy any armoured vehicle that they can't recover, although the Ukrainians have the better record in capturing or recovering Russian armour.
They look like a WW1 tank now
That's an insult to the FT and the Land Battleships. Even TOG2 would laugh here.
@@Maxislithium Yes you're right😁
Welcome back Saint Chamond
@@Maxislithiumthey do look a lot like the German a7v though
@@Alucard-gt1zf I ❤ the Sturmpanzerwagen A7V
I can't believe I was lulled into complacency by these clear psy-op turtle tanks. Their ultimate form hasn't even been seen yet. A turtle tank covered in explosive reactive armour. I heard one of them once sunk an entire carrier strike group and it doesn't even swim!
The problem with putting reactive armor over a sheet sheet metal cage is the reactive armor destroys the sheet metal cage when it detonates. Without the heavy armor backing it the reactive armor just destroys things.
Of course it swims that's why they put logs on them
@@vonSchwartzwolfesure but we’ve seen ERA on cope cages so it’s not going to stop the Russians from doing it.
A Ukrainian soldier did say it takes a lot of drones to take them out.
No Tank is invincible but hey if that extra armor makes the enemy expend more power and gets you closer to enemy. Then why not, just keep using it.
Dead is still dead. And "almost" doesn't count. These sacrifice all of the combat ability of the vehicle for the dubious defense against just one threat.
@@obsidianjane4413this. These tanks lose a whole level of versatility in doing this. They can’t exploit a breakthrough, they’re vulnerable to heavy weapons, they can’t go against tanks, etc. I think it’s too many drawbacks for too little gain. They need mutual support rather than creating a sheet metal teepee. This once again proves the importance of balancing between mobility, armor, and firepower.
@@obsidianjane4413 Dead is dead, soldiers will die in war. So if a tank is still going to be sent into the enemy defense line, why not choose the tank with extra armor instead of a regular tank. Those tanks are working better than tanks with no cage.
@@obsidianjane4413 That one threat was the only threat the Ukrainians had in abundance (?) at this time of shortages. All these sacrifices to the combat ability are made to a handful of tanks to clear a path for the rest of the army to do their work.
@@mt8956 I have yet to see any evidence that one of these has successfully breached a defense.
I have been thoroughly enjoying watching your breakdowns of the evolution of the turtle tanks. From the original bbq’s, to the sheds and turtles with additional features. Great work!
I would think that chain link fencing would be a better covering. Or just using fishing nets so that the drone gets tangled up instead of impacting a hard surface.
Not really sure how the drones work but assuming they go off touching anything then hitting something like a chain link fence would destroy it meaning you would only need one drone to get rid of its protection
Some of the drones just drop ordinance.
But yeah, most of them are FPV"kamikaze" drones now.
There's a picture out there of a Lancet drone tangled in a chain link fence mounted to what looked like a Ukrainian artillery vehicle. It kind of makes sense for an artillery gun to get a screen like that since the biggest two threats to them are drones and counterbattery fire. It's much less useful on a tank since they're exposed to many more threats like mines and AT missiles that don't care about the screen.
This is true but there's a variable amount of detonation methods that can be used for a warhead than your standard issue primer cap for example a lot of drone operators in ukraine have been using steel wire trigger mechanisms for their payloads that can easily be configured into a shape that would be preferable to catch onto thin strips of material plus fish nets and chains are vulnerable to getting holes thorn through their links from flying pieces of shrapnel
@@crabsticks4232 The drones dont use impact fuses, they are remotely detonated
Boy that sure went from "how are they going to counter these??" To "turns out you just hit them" pretty fast
We need entertainment my brotha!
It's how I imagine we treated actual turtles the first time humanity discovered them.
They're not actually countering them though. These tanks aren't destroyed, they're just disabled or abandoned. The drones are largely meant to take out the engine or the driver, not much else. What do you think happens when the rest of the army advances from the path being cleared by the mines? They fix the tanks and move them up again. And since they're only barebones 1 man tanks, even if they do get the driver, Russia's not losing a whole lot compared to losing a whole crew with full armaments.
@@peoplez129 they destroyed several ancient T62s and early T72s, which were only suitable for being written off for scrap, and are already declaring almost victory over the entire army of the Russian Federation, very Ukrainian, while losing territories every day
@@hexagontactical This is a question of genuine curiosity. Why do you think the war is still being fought?
the turtle tank was a temporary solution for antidrone warfare. i don't think they expected it to stop artillery / mines.
this seems to more of a russian battlefield mcguyver moment to try and continue using damaged tanks / use a stopgap measure to protect against drones where CEW systems are lacking.
Yep just like the US military welding armor on humvees and putting sandbags on the floorboards for IEDs.
The thing is, the more you push your enemy when it comes to stopping these assault tanks, the better you can observe = strike and destroy them.
What is the sole purpose of these attacks.
You don't conquer an area with a 2-3 tanks and some infantery. If you take infantery with you, it's again to keep pushing the enemy and for further suveillance of the enemy and forcing them to move or at least react.
You don't even see the real threat in general, which is the vast amount of artiller, aviation, missile systema and alike.
Overall you mainly see 1% of this war on the internet and that 1% is domination by the drones, since it was the coup regime in Ukraine mainly got left and the use that for PR victories.
@@jsimmons9969 presumably.
@@miriamweller812 no, you don't. most of these videos are probably PR stunts or just small-scale snapshots.
Literally in the video, he said the tank had mine clearing tool on the front. Did you even watch?
Battlefield modifications to tanks has a long history , during WW2 many crews added extra armor and sandbags ect , also makes me think of the all metal armor suits Italian infantry made and wore during WW1
Some of those WW2 modifications made them more vulnerable.
@@desmo750f1 like the concrete one, they were only usefull against the Old Anti tank weapons, like Panzerfausts and Bazooka
Its bulky, inefficient, and cut your visibility, but its basically the only real countermeasure against fpv drones most of the army has, and they do work for that purpose, all things considered.
Its a death sentence if it gets in a fight against other armor though.
But hey, if you have a tank that doesnt have a turret laying around, might as well just slap a steel rectangle and a mine plow on it and use it as a mine clearer.
i doubt they ever get far enough to actually encounter any Ukrainian armor.
It took an attack from 40 drones to disable one of the turtles.
@@АлександрФорт-д4ь Normal tanks aren't al lthat easy to destroy either, they often take many hits .
@@pod11th31 Abrams usually requires 3 drones.
@@pod11th31 Usually 1 shaped charge is enough to cook the crew or detonate the ammo. The turtle is made to counter drones with charges since they are the primary weapons against russian armor. So their idea is not bad at all.
One thing we learned from this war is that the era of tanks is nearing its end.
I can see this leading to the development of a specialized breaching vehicle with low firepower but with carzy countermeasures, probably using the modernized T-80 main hull, since there are some in storage.
If you think about it, you can make these things, cheaply in less than a day, you only need a tapemeasure, an average welder and an anglegrinder. Basically it's free protection to get you closer to the enemy.
Assuming you don't get stuck or go in the wrong direction
Yeah, where they can hit you in the face with anti-tank weapons...
Where they can be lured into a tank trap.
Why not?
Old WW Atlantic Wall defence tactics in the lowlands.
You can still see the remnants of tank traps that were built around the Hague, Noordwijk, etc.
And the battle of Kursk. Go study that. It was a huge multilayer defensive structure built to blunt the Germans.
@@paulkroon4931 Russians also use drone scouts
@@andrewstrongman305 The front of the tank has the best armor, so its not as big of an issue as having a drone on top.
The concept makes sense but using a tank like the T72/T62 doesn't make sense. If they were to use the T50 series tanks with the same waste materials found in the warzone. Equipped with mine plows, multiple EW system's without any sort of ammunition so it doesn't detonate when hit by FPV.
This is probably why Shoigu was rotated out of the MOD and replaced with a more economic minded leader.
From the Armarta to this
That's not a development... this is a separate branch..
@@oliveryt7168 They both have 1 thing in common, they barely exist and there's only 5 of them in total
Verry informative with no sighns of bias thats how I love my news +1 subscriber
Thank you for the sub!!
People be saying its worse, but the other option is not making it to the frontline because of a single drone rather than getting hit by multiple
Yup. And, if most of these are already damaged tanks(like turret damage), then they certainly aren't "worse", rather "useless to useful".
@@RyTrapp0 Useless to useful? They stop dead in their tracks even with FPV drones, how can they be useful?
@@mosesracal6758 If I was in Ukraine/Russia, I might be able to offer you some insight into the exact use cases here. Since I'm not, I'll just refer you to TAB's previous videos through the evolution of these tank mods and Perun's recent video.
But, if you can't find a use for a mobile tank with a damaged turret, I'll argue that you aren't trying very hard. I mean, using an already damaged tank to lead the way through a mine field is a hell of a lot better than using a perfectly good tank. Blow the tracks off of the broken one, whatever - it saved you from blowing the tracks off of a good one and having yet another damaged tank.
(with that said, I'm not exactly impressed by the track width mine clearing attachment, kinda think I'd like to cover the full width of my vehicle personally lol, especially if you're clearing a path for following vehicles)
@@mosesracal6758 just like abrams and leopards 2....at least those "useless" tanks are moving the lines on the right direction...
@@charlieperaltaf cope
This is exactly how war works, unless of course you have a huge technological advantage over your enemy. Today your polished tanks in battalion tactical groups are heading towards the capital, and tomorrow you are screwing a piece of iron fence onto a 60-year-old tank so that it can live on the battlefield for an extra couple of minutes. The point is that no matter what you come up with, your enemy will find a way to counter it with something.
These are old mothball tanks. This is how war works because it's the most efficient and cheapest way of getting things done. Russia hasn't even sent its polished tanks in. It's saving all of its modern stuff, which is smart, because why send a shiny new expensive tank to do something an old tank can do for a fraction of the cost.
@@peoplez129That they found so far
Every tank has a hard time they aren’t throwing Abrams out there anymore for a reason😂
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144 I don’t quite understand why there is laughing face when more than half a million people have already died without any significant reason. But in any case, not one of the Western tanks was ever considered some kind of invulnerable machine. Their task is actually to protect the lives of the crews, while in Russian tanks people are literally sitting on shells.
@@peoplez129 Maybe if Russia had sent their new tanks then they'd take Ukraine in few weeks instead of bleeding their resources and manpower on a country with 4 times smaller population for 2 years already.
Unless there aren't any polished new tanks ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
The ‚Scorpion‘ is actually an interesting concept, if it works, it should definitely be copied.
Interesting, sure. But it's basically a death sentence for the crew
Smoke grenades and duplex war-heads.
Duplex charge punches a hole in the shell, primary charge perforates armor.
Smoke is useful in getting turtles to stop and wait for the smoke to clear.
Driver visibility is already poor...smoke in the turtle shell blinds driver...nobody drives a tank blind.
Just subbed....here from Matsimus' video. Great job! I think the turtle tank concept is really just a field-expedient evolutionary stopgap. What will likely eventually happen is that some sort of EW solution preventing or interfering with the control of FPV drones will end up being attached to tanks/AFVs or perhaps there will be some sort of hunter/killer drone designed to defeat/shoot down the current generation of drones, in the same manner that fighter aircraft in WW1 made the observation balloon coordinating accurate long-range fire in that war obsolete. Anything like that will force the FPV drones to become exponentially more capable/more expensive to the point that commonly available drones won't be as effective and will overall lessen the impact of the drone. In the meantime, turtle tanks seem to actually work in some instances.
2:20 After over a century, the A7V returns to the battlefield. Standoff armor was probably more effective before the advent of readily-available guided munitions. If you're firing high-explosive shells at a tank, it will damage or destroy the standoff protection on that area of the tank. That point would then be vulnerable to a second HE shell striking exactly in the same area where the extra armor was gone. But even with today's advanced sighting technology, hitting the same exact place with two shots in a row would be virtually impossible. Now, however, one explosive drone can blast a hole in the standoff armor, and a second one can be flown directly through that hole to strike the vehicle proper.
Saw images making a Blyatmobile where they managed to weld the shell to both turret and body, turning the Cold War era MBT into a WW2 era assault gun.
Honestly the shells remind me of cope cages…
Not even sure if you can call them cope cages with any seriousness anymore if they are working
@@smokedbeefandcheese4144
They might possibly work against FPV drones but they were originally devised against basic NATO MANPADS, iirc - against which they were and still remain entirely useless.
@@-----REDACTED----- Bullshit, cope cages come from Syria where they were used to defend against ISIS drone drops.
Secondly, MANPADS? What.
Seems that these are made as the first wave just to clear mines and defenses. 100 extra feet is worth it, especially if the driver doesn't know he is not going to be able to turn around when he gets his exposed tracks destroyed.
Why wouldn’t they know that?
what they DO clear out is the Tank pool.
They are older tanks used as mine clearer's that other vehicles follow. They have been set up with FPV defense physical and electronic but they are not invulnerable. Seems like by and large they have been doing the job they were intended for
They Ignore Western tanks getting destroyed by Russia and then talk crap when Russian mine clearing recon vehicles get destroyed.
@@Crosshair84 This, Leopard and Abrams minesweepers got taken out before even getting anywhere close to Russian defensive lines. These turtle tanks plowed through villages, ran several loops and even returned home safely in many cases.
@@rogerc6533 Exactly. It's not a matter of "Not getting destroyed". It's a matter of "How far does it get before it is destroyed?". The Turtle demining vehicles are proving to be plenty survivable for the task they are intended for. (Not the tasks that people in the West imagine in their heads.)
@@Crosshair84 Yep, it's all propaganda. They will never give Russia its military strategy dues. If this was the US vs another country, they'd be writing books about the great military strategy being employed. But since it's not, they're either ignoring or down talking everything. Russia's losing almost nothing, because these tanks are old mothball fleets that would otherwise be sitting unused, and they're not being destroyed, they can be repaired and put back in service once the rest of the forces advance from the mines it cleared. My guess is that even the drivers aren't being taken out, but rather, when they're targeted with drones, they just abandon the tank and go meet up with their forces, who then move up and recover/repair the tank. So most of these drone attacks are literally attacking empty tanks, and not even necessarily disabling them, which means that they can be put right back into service very quickly.
@@Crosshair84 Funny how before this video Zs were hailing these things as the best tank ever made, the tone suddenly shifted quite a bit.
The key factor is whether the assault troops manning the tank get to walk away from a series of hits /mines when leading the column - in which case they are a positive - especially if you are using captured vehicles or old T62 as the donor vehicle andnot modern T90
Could someone explain the point of the jammer to me? My understanding is the FPVs are p much flying grenades. While i'm sure it's better than nothing. The jamming range on those look almost point blank. Or the feed doesn't cut out till it's almost touching the armor. At that point you just set a trajectory, and hope. Seems to be working
Seems using fiberglass tent poles and rip stop netting would be more effective against smaller FPV drones, dropped mortar shells and grenades, etc.
So, something I learned recently is they use contact wires to cause detonation: munition would still go off
Those tanks carry anti-drone equipment underneath the steel plates, so they are quite effective.
I love how all the comments just suddenly assume that the Russians use turtle tanks in extended military engagements when their function in reality is more akin to a battering ram that allows everything else to come up behind it. 🤓”It cant fight other tanks”, “It has lower visibility etc… yeah its called have support assets near by to help the tank out. Those tanks get Recci drones, artillery and usually combined arms infantry units supporting the tanks.
Damn you didn’t know this and felt the need to explain it once you finally learned? What you typed has been known for a month now.
@@mugs2169 >What you typed has been known for a month now.
has it..... i thought poster was saying.... it wasn't........... and providing....................... examples,,,,
But the turtle tank doesn't do anything but die. It's useless. Chinese golf carts are more survivable. You guys should stick with that.
Where in the video did you see "combined arms infantry units supporting the tanks"?
@@chillinleeit clears mines.
they could make a double layered turtle tank. two layers of sheet metal. perhaps a triple turtle. or even the dreaded quad-turtle.
oh.
wait.
did i say dreaded? i meant to day dreadful.
No no, you're not wrong. It just depends who you ask since it'll be dreaded by the crew.
that extra weight on the transmission, the tank wouldn't even move, it's physics, when they add that armor, the extra weight burns more fuel, lower speed, and moveability. As others have pointed out, no egress but we all know that is not a priority. There is a tradeoff to adding anything to a vehicle. While they do get credit for doing something, this is not how a cutting edge country solves problem. We had an issue in Iraq with IEDs for those that can remember, we stuck what they called a Rhino on the front of most mine clearing vehicles and all it was was a box with a glow plug in it, to use the heat to set off the IED, the stand off meant life or death, so yes, there will always be ingenuity on the battlefield, but this seems like a local solution and the bigger issue is that Russian should have the capability to address a changing battlefield in real time, but then again, we did see the stealing of toilets and washing machines.
@@blkted2945and their engines are already notoriously underpowered.
Not that it would matter, there are still weak spots, there are plenty of drones that can damage them.
There are fpv drones that can level houses, the tracks are still vulnerable.
The most logical step imo is either just turning an at mine into a drone and flying it directly in front of it's track would totally destroy it.
@@blkted2945 Thankfully it's a tank that was developed to be all-terrain, not Chally 2 that can't handle slightly moist morning soil.
The answer to the question is still open after watching the video. The purpose of the turtle tank might just be to make destruction of them much more costly and the video does not destroy this feeling.
I saw a lot of shots when the turtle tank got a lot of hits, but did not lose its mobility and successfully returned back to base. I think we're going to see something new soon, as the Russians try to find simple ways against drones.
Again, excellent analysis. It's interesting how much these tanks are reminiscent of WWI tanks, especially the German A7V...history does repeat itself.
I know you and the others making this same comment think it's a real big brain idea you've come up with, but beyond extremely superficial resemblance they are nothing alike.
Someone's mad they didn't think of it@@patrickbateman312
@@patrickbateman312 Of course you are absolutely correct. Nothing alike at all. Poles apart. Great comment, keep it up.
@@dbaider9467 they are literally nothing alike except, as mentioned, in the most superficial way possible.
The entire discourse about the turtle tank has been bizarre considering that its a limited phenomenon with a few examples from basically a few battalions of a singular AC on a very limited section of the front where they've had essentially no effect. The heavily modified and uparmored MTLBs thats been seeing large deployment across the entire Donbas front are a lot more interesting in context of fixing bad Soviet armor designs (and reaffirmin western designs), matching current Russian doctrine, and kinda countering drones/ATGMs
The Russians thankfully arent emulating the costliness of western afv design. Western designs are pathetic in cost effectiveness and the west has also been pivoting to lighter afvs closer to the weight of Russian tanks for quite some time now.
@@rogerc6533 Not really if you look at any acquisitions. Even Russia is looking to heavier and larger IFVs and tanks long term via Armata and Boomerang since it will increase infantry survivability significantly. Chopping up MTLBs to allow troops that don't have to either squeeze into and die in a tin can or ride on top of a BMP that gets hit by a drone, ATGM, mines, or direct fire has been the major through point of the war and explains why certain IFV manufacturing lines have been resurrected or not
Short term, sure, they're escaping that costliness (though really the West is only sending ~30 yo systems they're divesting from tbh), but at the massive cost of man power and long term they're avoiding that because they haven't had a growing population for ~15 years and can't rely on central Asia immigration considering geopolitics of the region
@@rogerc6533 You do know that the move to lighter tanks is not due to cost or support issues but the fact that the west has had to shift into a more offense orientated idea and feel the need for a lighter tank since the infrastructure in the areas to be invaded is so shit.
@@Svenne-man-1880 Isnt what you said exactly what a support issue is? But point taken, part of the shift was influenced by experiences in low intensity wars but the current high intensity war only reaffirms that overly complex solutions have no place when the battlefield rapidly devolves.
Welcome back Sturmpanzerwagen A7V 😊
This is the first time in history where we might witness a Shed fly to space
Man i love these new combat cubes.
Yes. The main advantage was they weren’t facing artillery and more heavy hitting armaments as the war became more about drones. Now that Ukraine has been resupplied on that end, these setups will quickly become metal coffins again. It’s just how things will progress.
The Russians noticed overreliance on drones, tried to take advantage, but by the time it was in use, Ukraine has a full deck again.
Full deck?
Were did those arty shell‘s come from if i may ask?
This will just further the development of FPV drones
In a few years... the squids from Matrix opening the tanks with lasers and tentacles
Tandem Charge FPV
Which in turn will further the development of anti drones measures.
Or do you think Russia isn't developing non makeshift responses? lol
That's how this works.
Yes, militaries engage in arms races, that is how it tends to work lol
@@CALIMA2000 Tandem grenade for FPV drone? it has a larger caliber, greater weight and longer length! Try to hit with a tiny shaped charge when your signal is jammed, and you’re also talking about tandem charges!
And even if it’s tandem, what will change? It will cock in the same way as a regular non-tandem charge, it will cock a meter or half a meter from the armor, like a regular shaped charge, it will still have to deal with dynamic protection and the main armor, and the cumulative jet will also need to pass the air bag between the armor and a barn!
The essence of a tandem charge is to cock the dynamic protection so that the moving elements of the dynamic protection container do not dissipate the cumulative jet very strongly, and not to pierce plywood! The second charge of the tandem charge will be cocked in the same way as a regular non-tandem charge during a collision with the barn plywood!
The comander is blind, the gunner is almost blind and the driver... well he is less bad...
And none of them can probably get out of its hit
Good thing there is only the driver in those tanks.
Commander is blind despite the fact that you get drone reconnaissance support ? Ok
" Turn left" ah yes, just as good as seeing....
The driver is completely fine
The turtle tanks do make sense, and there is a tradeoff in even further reduced vision and movement of the gun. The extra weight is an issue, just as when people started "uparmour" their tanks in WWII using sand bags or extra metal.
However, like everything else there will be countermeasures to the counter measures, even if the most important counter measure is blowing up refineries and depots..
Excellent video and breakdown!!
Thank you!! Thanks for watching.
In principle the idea isn't bad, its just that the support they receive is a pile of scrap metal they need to weld on by themselves.
In principle, the idea is incredibly stupid. You are sacrificing most of the design attributes of the original tank (mobility, rotating turret, low profile, visibility) in an attempt to improve its survivability against a narrow range of threats.
Yeah, but making the "shell" out of proper armour would make the vehicle far too heavy.
@@jrd33 Unironically a chain umbrella would work better
the number 1 threat to tanks are FPV drones...@@jrd33
@@jrd33 Which of those attributes are important when tanks can't even cross fields? FPV drones are more mobile, your side's drones can provide situational awareness. NATO tanks are superior in most attributes over their eastern counterparts and they did not do any better.
Most of the time these shed tanks are used as breakthrough or mine clearers, soaking the hits and clearing a path for the rest of the army. And that narrow range of threats was the primary method of attack the Ukrainians had available to them at this time.
Don't know until you try...
AKA learning everything the hard way.
Turtle tanks take *more* drones. They are not immune to drones.
In trying to protect against the drones, they've traded away mobility and situational awareness which ironically makes them even more vulnerable to the original tank hunters, the artillery and mines.
Those turtleshells are gonna help any explosives that gets past them by concentrating the effects of the explosion onto the tanks themselves.
So two things. One is the emotional impact of the weapon and second is the practical. Practical is easy, if it offers any improvement in combat in an otherwise equal battlefield, it's worth using. First is the more important. Look at WW2 tanks. Often, they had sandbags and random crap around them. Soldiers did that to add protection to their tanks. Did it work? No. But it made the soldiers feel better and therefore perform better. That's the key. Higher motivation to do something is obviously going to get better results.
I’d like to hear a tank crew comment on how accurate they can be if they can’t traverse the turret! Especially if their target is moving.
What makes you think they can't traverse the turret? Those shells aren't going to stop a turret that delivers over 20,000lbs of force. Those barrels will turn like there's nothing there.
For the millionth time. These vehicles only have a driver in them. They are recon/de-mining vehicles.
They seemingly don't carry any ammo so that doesn't matter.
@@Crosshair84 The captured one had an entire squad mounted on it.
Javelins & TOWs are back. So are 155s. They finally say they have more than enough 155s.
Javelins and TOWs were always there...
@@glebb..3416 they were running a bit low on them so I think this person just means they got the supply topped up
For Javelin and TOW you need a line of sight and you need to be outside or at least near a big opening which exposes you to being spotted by drones which are for sure circling above if they are preparing to attack that position.
Goal of the turtle is mostly to clear mines and expose enemy positions and its doing its job well.
btw every one of those 155 fired carries a risk because Russians have a lot of counter battery radars.
As a former arty officer, I have never been told by anyone that there are more than enough 155's.
@@phlexy People are applauding the drones, but what they don't realize is most of these drone operators are in a bombed out building somewhere nearby, quickly becoming behind enemy lines as the days pass, so they can't do anything but sit there and hope to not be discovered. But what it means is these drone attacks are essentially suicide missions, because they're never going to make it out of there as the Russians advance, and when they get there it's not going to be just one lone tank clearing mines, it's going to be a whole battalion around them with all the things swarming to look for them. So these aren't quite the victories the propaganda wants people to believe.
Nice hat tip to Perun for the assault shed.
He was kind enough to mention me in his last vid :)
War is always about one side coming up with new technologies, even if it is a sheet metal frame, and the other side learning to counter it. Things like that can make the difference between a win and a loss. One side is always in pursuit of the advantage. As they should be. Its been that way since men were fighting with clubs. It will never change.
Considering the amount of armour that a tank has, what is the benefit of adding a few sheets of thin metal to it ?
The damage from most of these FPV attacks are superficial in nature. It takes several to disable a tank, and even more for a turtle tank with the extra protection. So scorch marks don't mean a thing, fire doesn't even mean a thing. Considering the amount of mines being cleared by these turtle tanks, Russia is definitely gaining. And they're using their old mothball fleet of tanks to do it, not their best stuff, so they're technically not losing anything, because these are tanks that would otherwise be sitting unused in a field, so it gives use to old hardware that would otherwise have no use. On top of that, these tanks are largely being manned by a single person, along with not carrying anything extra like armaments, so when they do lose a tank they're not losing as much as one would from fully equipped tanks, while as the rest of army advances from the rear, they can repair damaged tanks and put them back in service.
So a tank sitting abandoned, doesn't mean it's a total loss, it just means it's taking a break for a while. Now imagine what that means when Russia does repair them as they move up. It will be as if they lost almost nothing, bolstering their army. And Ukraine clearly can't afford to send drones at abandoned tanks to damage them more and make sure they stay out of commission, because these drones don't actually have the capability to completely destroy tanks, they're largely meant to just disable them and take out crew, so pretty much all of these abandoned tanks are still operable with some repairs.
One thing to keep in mind about these mines, is they're not just Ukraine's first line of defense, they're also essentially Ukraine's last line of defense.
Cope post .
@@balaclavabob001 I'm sorry that you must feel the need to cope then.
A T-72B3 isn't their oldest stuff, though, it's an upgrade package from 2011 - so this theory kind of falls flat.
Weird how Ukraine has a near infinite number of last lines of defense according to Russians.
I am wondering: are drones not effective against tracks? None of the turtle tanks seem to bother about protecting their tracks…
Fairly small target I would think.
They are but the drones would rather go for the engine deck for a better chance of immobilizing it, the engine deck is still open at the back anyhow
They're more likely to lose tracks to mines, and you definitely don't want to enclose your tracks to trap a mine explosion inside the shell.
I bet you also think that police can just shoot the knife out of a criminals hand. Hitting things from a distance is actually pretty hard. You only see the videos of FPV drones that hit. Many more miss. Hitting the engine deck or rear of the turret is hard enough as it is.
@@Crosshair84 There was a case many years ago that happened in Vancouver, BC.
An officer shot at a fleeing suspect and hit him in the back of the knee, pretty much crippling him. The suspect sued on the grounds that the officer deliberately knee-capped him.
When the officer got to speak: "Your honour, it was at night, in poor lighting, the suspect was 30 yds away, and I was using a standard issue .38 special. I was aiming for main body. I was lucky to hit him at all. If you want, I can bring in ballistics experts who will confirm what I am saying."
Lawsuit was dismissed.
The use of attack drones has achieved so many benefits for the defenders, not the least of which is that the Russians have had to commit much time energy and materials into fitting theses crude additions, the use of which severely limits the use of the tanks’ main guns, increases weight, restricts visibility and makes it a night mare for field maintenance which is a major drawback in action wherever engine, etc, parts require access or removal and replacement.
It’s possible that crews have a better chance of serving a drone hit but I reckon that exiting a stricken tank must be a major headache.
The major problem is that this tactic doesn’t appear to stop the vehicles from being disabled, which somewhat defeats the object.
im surprised they dont cover the tracks
thats the classic weakpoint of a tank and where the fpvs are aiming
It's probably to maintain access in case they throw a track.
I was trained in infantry anti-tank work during The Cold War, and I was thinking all the way through; "Damn they are making it easy for me".
Imagine going to these lengths to protect a... wait for it... tank. If a tank needs additional protection that's been hastily cobbled together in the field then something has gone very wrong. Not to mention that any additional protection is basically negated by the fact you've now cut off all situational awareness and severely limited movement of the main gun. Absolute madness.
Nothing went wrong just a new weapon emerged on the battlefield.
This weapon is pretty effective countered via the cage.
@@crisdangerous1 A kamikaze drone with a warhead strapped to it is no different than being hit by an ATGM, yet traditional armor has always been used against those.
Russians saw pictures of bedspring armor on Berlin T-34s and thought it was a great idea for modern day
it is, if it detonates a shape charge an extra feet or two away from the armor.
@@noticing33have you stated this video? Bedsprings might’ve been better only because they’re easier to see through.. now you have full metal plates over you which means NO visual on anything you can’t see men from your side tanks coming from your side let alone a drone anywhere in the air.. it doesn’t matter if it stops the first drone there’s plenty more where that comes from along with above artillery which will collapses this whole structure on top of the tank not allowing crew to disembark or leave so better have water and rations with you
@@caylumhenderson9396 they don't need all round vision. They go ahead and turn around, ww2 tanks tdidn't have drones support and GPS.
@@noticing33 Russia also doesn't have GPS, that's a US system and their own constellation is being jammed.
A thought I had is for small weak drones normally depending on precision hits at seams is to add some aluminum powder and ammonium nitrate to the charge which sends hypersonic grit at ignition able to etch even sapphire camera lens. These tanks seem to have no driver view hence the camera would have to be replaced.
With at least some of these it seems that the tracks have been thrown off, which makes me think that immobilization may be a simple tactic being used to counter them.
The crews wouldn't realistically be able to repair during an assault, and static armor can be hit with artillery or ATGMs. The sheds make it so that they can't really return fire themselves, and if they are the mine-clearing vehicles in the assaults then the assault is effectively stalled until the sheds can be recovered and repaired off the field of battle, since they're blocking the lane they were clearing, which would be even more difficult if they're under fire.
Being stuck in a 'turtle tank' that's on fire inside the shed, there's some quality nightmare fuel.
It's going to be *VEEERY* interesting to see what new tank development looks like over the next decade.
nightmare fuel INDEED
Theres hatches on the bottom of the tank to crawl out though.
Fire on a tank doesn't necessarily mean any danger at all. You could pour jet fuel on a tank and have it burning for hours and the crew inside could be cozily sipping tea.
@@peoplez129 That's why molotov cocktails disabled dozens of tanks in the early war?
And yet they are advancing and gaining ground so it dont matter
Probably matters to the guys using them.
@@TheArmourersBench No, they know their duty.
@@TheArmourersBench Better than being dragged off the streets as cannon fodder with barely months of training, inadequate air cover and a critical ammunition situation to go eat FABs. If this goes on for another few years, they will have to even force the elderly and women off the streets to fight. Ukraine should surrender even if it means giving up the eastern half of the country.
@Shinshocks555 I see you are a fan of the "to the last h*hol" doctrine eh?
@@rogerc6533 Why are you describing the situation in Russia?
The title makes it sound like the tide was in favor of them at some point
didn't Russia capture like 20 villages in a month?
because it is. This aid package will not last for any real amount of time whilst Russia continues their FAB attacks and mass production of all arms with impunity. A single turtle tank can eat dozens of FPV drones. Ukraine cannot sustain this.
@Shinshocks555 Just realized your delusion. YES, they did capture around 20 villages in april-may bruh
@@evil_eye-04 Oh man 20 villages in a single month, how terrifying that's almost comparable to the western front in WWI!
@@rogerc6533 You've been saying this for two years, do you never get tired of the fact that Ukraine does in fact continue to sustain this?
Honestly this kind of underlines how ahead of its time the strv 103 was. Not putting the main gun on a turret would make it so much easier to add counter-drone equipment to it
"hey kommander, our tanks blow up too easily when hit", their reply " just weld a protective box on top and lock your turret facing forward position"
I prefer the term "Shoigus Shitbox" to describe these tanks
Firstly due to the superb quality of their construction and secondly from the reaction of the crew if they are hit and can't get out
These were obviously made by soldiers themselves, not as some centrally planned design
Come up with whatever cope term makes you feel good inside.
is filled with tack welds what they expect
@@vittoriovenetov9655I don't think the crew needs a Cope term to feel good inside. The regular term works.
@@vittoriovenetov9655 No one is coping over these tanks except Ruzzians.
DPU is self sharpening and incendiary. Going back to classic AP is obviously the key here.
how can you strap an ap shell on a drone?
So the weight of that shit means that it carries less ammo? So whats the point make a tank more blind that it is, less capable of doing what a tank does? Still get blow out just a bit harder than the normal ones. I dont get this war anymore.
It's not fighting other tanks. It's main goal is to prevent fpv drone attacks which are more of a threat than other tanks right now. It can still provide fire support to any infantry that might be along with it.
The point for the crew is to stay alive, I guess. And I can't blame them for it.
The less ammo you have the lower chances of the ammo carousel detonating.
Because they're attacking infantry positions with the tank.... they're Supporting infantry... but just very poorly 🤣
@@Drownedinblood Yeah but a FPV RPG-7 warhead cares not for corrugated iron, and most tanks seem to bite the dust before they ever get to do infantry support.
I don't think the tide was ever on the side of rolling garden sheds, but their utility is as undeniable as the opportunity costs imposed by their design... I can't help but be reminded of the glorious mobile paperweight created by Bob Semple. Who would have thought this would be what the most violent war covered by the mainstream media (in any sort of meaningful depth and frequency) of this century would end up looking like?
Well, that is to say, the deadliest popular war that occupies significant media attention, that is. Of course, most people tend to forget the Yemeni Civil War, wars in Ethiopia, and genocidal cleansing in Sudan.
They look like the Sandcrawlers from Star Wars :D
>Thumbnail is a photo of the turtle shell clearly being effective and doing its job
The shell being able to block an attack doesn't mean it's necessarily effective. Not to mention we don't even know if what the thumbnail shows is an example of it working, looks to me like it might as well be immobile.
The question comes down to if the extra supposed protection is worth not being able to turn the turret, not being able to quickly bail out of the tank, not being able to see anything from the tank in pretty much any direction but forward, also being much easier to spot and probably being a slight bit slower thanks to the added weight.
I'd venture that just not being able to see probably means running into more danger than the little protection it lends.
I think it was effective more because of Ukraine having ammo shortages and/or relying more on FPV drones
There was a footage of Ukranian SoF capturing a tank with an anti-drone eletronic warfare system, so perhaps they have studied that and managed to find a way to circunvent the interference
US just send kamikaze drones with lock-and-forget ability, basically the drone has AI inside to self-navigate.
@@superspies32 Yep. They can send a signal back, they just can't receive. Most people think these things are manned, they're not. They're clearly almost completely on auto pilot, not just because of the jamming, but because of the targeting too. I've seen drones dropping grenades that are literally bouncing off the lip of the tank into a window. A person with a remote simply can't do that, the drone is clearly using precision guidance based on self awareness of where the payload is that it's carrying, relative to the position it needs to drop from to be successful. When you're looking through a drone camera, you simply have no sense of that kind stuff to position yourself perfectly relative to where your payload is, especially not with a camera that is essentially a wide angle smartphone camera that distorts things.
So these drones are definitely almost completely automated. You essentially fly it a little, push on a touch screen where you want it to go, and it takes over the rest. I think they probably even have modes based on the tank design. So they can simply press a button that says "attempt to drop grenade in viewport", and it hovers over the target, looking for object recognition that has been preprogrammed, knowing where it needs to be relative to everything else in the image, that was dialed in by the US military through software and testing. And of course these things are designed to still operate even when being jammed, because despite all the jammers that Russia is using, they're not being impeded by them.
The jammers are clearly used in hopes that jamming the operator keeps them from being able to do anything else intelligently, forcing the software to take over, which could lead to a less intelligently driven final approach. On top of that, the turtle shells are also probably messing with the object recognition of the software, since things aren't quite looking like the software would expect. So when jammed, the drone software still attacks, it just doesn't quite know where the best place to attack is like a human would, so it just rams into the closest thing it can.
@@peoplez129 Wait so now the turtle tanks are remote controlled? I thought they just had a single driver? What's next? They're actually holograms?
The turtle tank is the best expression of how the war is going for RuZZia. A Nazi tank that isn’t capable of firing sideways or backwards, has very limited visibility for the driver, is slow and inflexible and has a high visibility at all times for the enemy. Basically everything wrong from a military standpoint. My take is - they are so embarrassed to only having the capacity of fielding Rusty T-55 and T-62‘s that they decided to cover them up with layers of metal to hide the fact. That’s the only logical explanation for this utter nonsense.
Something that I think about looking at the design of these cages, is how difficult they must make crew escape. Russian tanks aren't exactly famed for fantastic crew preservation, but if the tank is on fire at the front it looks like you are mostly trapped and awaiting being cooked. Obviously this isn't even thinking about having a ~45 degree cone of vision out of the direct front of the tank only.
I think that 'innovations' like this would go a long way to making crew preservation in an already strained recruitment system sooo much worse. This is purely my thoughts, but I imagine the crews that would engage in crew modifications like this are probably on the more veteran side too (in the video early on, we heard that those were guards tankers, who are meant to be significantly better trained).
Interesting breakdown. Thx for the copacetic video.
The Mobile-Shed does not do well when subjected to large does of H.E.
Nothing does, an Abrams certainly couldnt.
Abrams can take much more punishment
@@christiandauz3742 No they cannot. There are multiple videos of them getting taken out relatively easily.
@@rogerc6533 Man you are coping desperately.
@@Crosshair84 So easily that only one or two has been disabled.
but i thought Russia has been losing the war this entire time and loses 1,000,000 people per day?
dont worry ivan, theyre covering 50-100 meters a day and ukraine is a very small country, so i bet theyre winning within the next 5-10 years!
@@theworstvow so ur making fun of russian advances lol! , look at kharkiv alone made more than ukraine did in 3 months XD
@@theworstvow simpleton mind. I'm sure you would be very popular in world war 1.
@@sharoyveduchi Luckily the times where my country fought a war have long passed so I don't need to worry about that.
@@Giganibba511Russians are conquering nothing but rubble. The resistance is too stubborn to be worth it.
It's interesting to find someone with almost the same acronym
You deserve more views bro
Very kind of you to say, thanks for watching!
What I don't get is this.. already a Russian tank is a coffin on treads.. but this some how makes it even worse.. so now when the Tank starts burning.. you're now trapped under a metal shell..
The difference is the fire is on the outside of the tank instead of inside.
it eats up dozens of fpv drones and keeps on surviving. Its more resistant than any Nato MBT.
These are de-mining vehicles. There is only a driver inside.
@@Crosshair84 And that somehow negates them being death traps?
Went from grill to a smoker. The green egg.