- Adding thousands of metal "hairs" to a tank helps to protect the tank from first-person-view drones
- The Russians first fielded these hairy "hedgehog" tanks this fall
- Now the Ukrainians are building their own hedgehogs, hoping to reduce the impact of Russian FPVs
In their never-ending effort to protect armored vehicles from the tiny first-person-view drones that are everywhere all the time all along the 1,100-km front line of Russia's wider war on Ukraine, Russian forces have introduced a number of bizarre innovations.
The resulting "cope cages" and "turtle," "porcupine" and "hedgehog" tanks are ungainly and, frankly, ugly. But they work. In fact, they work so well that Ukrainian forces usually copy each modification for their own armored vehicles.
The latest Russian anti-drone innovation is no exception.
Adding thousands of metal "hairs" to the existing anti-drone cope cages on a growing number of hedgehog tanks, the Russians have inspired the Ukrainians to do the same.
Now "both Russian and Ukrainian forces are modifying their tanks into so-called hedgehogs," the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team observed.
"This is the progress we're making," one Ukrainian mechanic narrated in a recent video appealing to supporters for donations of industrial-grade aluminum cabling. Mechanics unravel the cabling into individual metal threads and weld a bundle with around 100 of the threads onto a tank's cope cage.
A single hedgehog might boast 900 bundles for a total of 90,000 metal hairs. Each hair can detonate an incoming FPV before it strikes a tank's hull.
The cost of protection
There are downsides to do-it-yourself anti-drone armor, of course. All that extra weight can quickly ruin a vehicle's gearbox.
And the heavier turtles, porcupines and hedgehogs are prone to getting mired while trying to cross rivers and streams. But a loss of mobility is a small price to pay for extra protection.
To be fair, Ukrainian forces have managed to eventually knock out even the most heavily up-armored Russian tank. But they have to use more and more of their precious FPV drones to do it.
One heavily up-armored Russian turtle tank, which sported an add-on metal shell or shed, deflected around 25 Ukrainian mines and first-person-view drones before the 26th munition—a drone—finally disabled it during an assault toward the city of Siversk in eastern Ukraine late last month.
From cope cages to hedgehogs
Turtle tanks aren't even the latest and toughest up-armored Russian vehicles. Cope cages were in use before Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022. Turtle tanks first appeared in the second year of the wider war. Porcupine tanks with a few thick metal spines showed up early this year. The first hedgehogs crawled onto the battlefield in the fall.
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First spotting each new species, defenders' laughter quickly turned to begrudging respect. “Everyone laughs at the design of their sheds, but in fact they work like Hell,” one Ukrainian blogger wrote about the Russian turtles. The DIY vehicles can eat “a lot of FPVs,” the blogger pointed out.
The more FPVs a given vehicle can absorb before succumbing, the likelier the vehicle is to survive an assault across the drone-patrolled no-man's-land, potentially leading accompanying infantry-laden vehicles to the relative safety of some new underground position.
It's in this manner that the Russians gain ground: securing a new lodgement with a few infantry and then gradually expanding it with reinforcements. Not every vehicle and soldier needs to survive the drone barrage; it only takes a few to begin the slow accumulation that will eventually overwhelm outnumbered Ukrainian defenders.
Why Ukraine copies Russian armor
From mockery to respect to mimicry, Ukrainian forces have followed the Russians' lead—first deploying cope cages, then turtles.
One Ukrainian turtle belonging to the 24th Mechanized Brigade, holding positions outside the ruins of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, rolled through Russian artillery and drone bombardment to evacuate wounded Ukrainian troops back in the spring.
"Our armor again withstood multiple FPV hits and was able to take the fighters to a safe place," the brigade reported.
The Ukrainian hedgehogs should be even more effective. And now at least one Ukrainian mechanic, the one in the recent video, is pleading for more donations of industrial cable. "We need them," he intoned. Every three tons of cable makes a new hedgehog that can ward off Russian drones.
