Russian tanks in Ukraine are sprouting cages

It's just incredible how people who are seeing pictures and lack the imagination to understand what purpose they serve then assume it must be no real purpose and that the folks who are doing it are just absolute morons.

Perhaps it's not there for when you're out and about and actively being seen by the enemy. Perhaps it's there for when you're hiding in the woods and you want to hold a tarp off of the top of your tank so that you can get in and out easily. Perhaps it's there to hold up camo netting for hiding the tank better while stopped in the woods. Perhaps the mesh on top is to hold up branches that you cut down to try and better hide your tank while you're in the woods, not moving.

I'm not saying that any of these reasons are THE reason. I'm suggesting that if some idiot on the internet (me) can come up with some reasons that aren't entirely moronic it's too bad that better informed folks aren't trying a little harder to imagine what they might be used for.

This is improvised slat armor[0]. It is intended as defense against projectiles that use shaped charges[1] which are most effective when detonated at a designed distance from the target. The slat armor is meant to detonate them at a larger than optimal distance.

It is not expected to defend against all weapons, rather it's part of defense in depth. Whether it's effective against shaped charge projectiles will largely depend on the construction and spacing of the slats. To dismiss it outright displays a pretty shocking level of ignorance or agenda on the part of TFA.

Edited to add:

I read T-entire-FA via the archive link up-thread. There is meaningful discussion of slat armor in it. I remain convinced that there's room in the taster portion of the article to suggest that the improvised armor isn't a purely ignorant addition to the tanks. I would further suspect that hinting at substantive analysis below the fold stands to sell more subscriptions to The Economist than what they've included, which is, at best, one-sided.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slat_armor

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaped_charge

I would be very surprised if they were useless. Even if they were just racks for hanging chaff that disrupted FLIR targeting scopes, repelling hand thrown molotov cocktails, or as the article states, bouncing drone dropped IEDs and RPGs, and preventing blocks of rubble from covering the hatch when it pushed down walls and buildings, the cost/benefit of such a hack seems plausible. A lot of our western messaging about the invasion is not very powerful and "cope cages," and "useless," are weak and backbiting. Snide doesn't win, it's a loser attitude, and the staff at The Economist above all should understand this. It was the conceit that cost them their empire, I don't see how they should expect it will win any more wars.

The picture shows an empty cage with thin bars, far apart. You would want sandbags or steel plating on the cage, so that it works properly.

The idea is that it reduces the effectiveness of two stage anti-tank weapons. Where the weapon first has a sacrificial payload that gets any reactive armor to explode...then the real payload to penetrate the normal armor. The cage is supposed to get the first, sacrificial, payload to explode without setting off the reactive armor.

They do supposedly work (at least some reduced effectiveness of the weapon, in some way) if they are done right. That is, that they are wide enough to cover the incoming attack angle of the anti-tank weapon...and dense enough to keep the reactive armor from going off on the first payload.

> They have indeed been mockingly dubbed by Western analysts as “emotional support armour” or “cope cages”.

That got a chuckle from me

It looks like these things would impair entry/exit.

Are there other ways to enter a tank? Walking dead S1E1 leads me to believe you can get in through the bottom?

That's not first stage armor, roflmao. These are molotov guards. Most of the bottles will bounce off this and break open elsewhere and keep the upper crew hatch clear of fire.

A common problem I've seen with Russian tanks is that they're supposed to be protected by soldiers on the ground. Tanks are vulnerable as we've seen. They aren't supposed to be driven in by themselves, infantry is supposed to go in first and check there is no threat before the tanks arrive. Of course this feels more risky.

> Slat and bar add-on armours are a lighter and cheaper way to counter RPGs, though even if used correctly they are, literally, hit or miss protection. The spacing of the bars or slats is crucial. If a rocket hits a bar it makes little difference, for its warhead will detonate anyway. But if it gets trapped between bars it will probably be damaged in a way which means that the signal from the nose-mounted fuse cannot reach the detonator.

Is that correct? I thought the idea was the slats were supposed to trigger the warhead to detonate, but at an unexpected distance where it couldn't defeat the armor.

Tanks with cages come from the southern districts. They are not intended against Javelins or NLAW. They are against UAV launched weapons and loitering munitions like Harop used in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and they probably work against those.

Slat armor is effective against HEAT rounds when the slat is the right size and right distance (slat must be hit before the warhead explodes). Those cages are too low for Javelins and probably against NLAW (top attack)

There was discussion of this fairly early on in the invasion and the consensus from experienced military seemed to be they were totally useless.

It's amazing/depressing how much ingenuity goes into killing people.

It reminds me of this:

"Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas Fucking Edison."

-- "Cryptonomicon", Neal Stephenson

If they're actually armor, this is the idea: https://streamable.com/8y9z00

Two caveats though:

- This kind of armor is pretty much useless against modern weapons.

- They may not be intended as armor at all, but serve another purpose.

Really enjoyed this article on « statistical armor » (of which this is presumably an example)

https://www.tanknology.co.uk/post/statistical-armour

Perhaps it is as simple as a way to keep heads out with out being pelted with rocks by angry civies or a way to attach sun/rain cover. I imagine that it gets hot and stinky inside on long trips.

Probably to stop the NLAWs, watch how the rocket explodes above the tank here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hupsUq-fzq8

priort reading the article my first idea was it's base for camouflage netting to hide the shape of the tank and mask it/soldiers, it's odd to me it's not mentioned in the article at all

If it can disrupt when anti-tank missiles pre-fire their molten metal arm or piercer, then it can serve its purpose.

Paywalled

IANAL, but I think this might be infringing on US patent 9280157B2.

> The last possibility, then, is that the gibes about the cages being emotional support armour are actually correct, and that they have been added simply to improve morale by convincing the troops inside that they are safe. As Dr Benham-Crosswell notes, soldiers often take the view that every little helps.

Once again, the general point of the article is "Russian army is soooo imcompetent, of course Putin is going to loose".

I would not mind reading that into a cheap "troop-morale-boosting" stand-up act.

However, even though I understand the Economist stands against pretty much everything Putin stands for - shouldn't we expect a little less blatant wishfull thinking and propaganda ?

As an alternative, what would a _relevant_ source for info about the current warfare (a decent primer on who has what weapons, what they can do, etc...) be ? One that would aknowledge that _maybe_, the Russian army is not entirely made of clowns ?

>They have indeed been mockingly dubbed by Western analysts as “emotional support armour” or “cope cages”.

Really, Economist? I know they are a blend of news and perspective, but this is cheap and uninformed. @daedlanth here mentions it is a Molotov deflector, and the Economist has a "related story" on that very page about breweries in Ukraine making Molotovs! Goodness.