Cheap drones beat Russia's newest tank defense in its combat debut

Russian tanks equipped with the Arena-M active protection system entered combat for the first time on July 22, when Russian forces launched a company-size armored assault in Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian defenders repelled the attack and released footage showing kamikaze drones destroying at least seven T-72B3A tanks, some of which were carrying the Arena-M system meant to shoot incoming drones out of the sky before they hit.

The system did work, at least partially. Ukrainian soldiers and war correspondents Dmytro Putiata and Rob Lee reported that Arena-M intercepted some incoming drones during the assault, but Ukrainian forces still needed between 15 and 20 drones to knock out each tank. Arena-M is the latest version of a Soviet-era system that uses radar to detect and intercept rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles. Russian engineers have worked to adapt it against drones since 2019, but small first-person-view drones fly slower and less predictably than the munitions the system was built to stop, and each launcher carries only about a dozen countermunitions, far short of what a saturation attack demands.

“The Arena-M [active protection system] demonstrated effectiveness and will likely be improved.”

— Rob Lee, war analyst, Foreign Policy Research Institute, on X

The economics behind the fight are the real story. Remotely piloted Ukrainian drones capable of destroying an armored vehicle can cost as little as $400 each, so spending a dozen or more of them to kill a tank worth millions is still a lopsided trade in the attacker's favor. The Institute for the Study of War wrote in an August 9 assessment that Arena-M "likely will not be an effective countermeasure to Ukrainian [FPV drones] alone, as the system can be overwhelmed and only increases the cost and effort required" of the defenders. The same asymmetry shows up wherever cheap, distributed hardware meets expensive, centralized systems built for a different threat. Open AI models are reshaping who holds chip power in a completely different arms race through the same dynamic.

• Tanks destroyed in the July 22 Donetsk assault: at least 7 T-72B3A vehicles
• Drones needed per tank kill: 15 to 20
• Countermunitions carried per Arena-M launcher: about 12
• Cost of a single FPV kamikaze drone: as little as $400
• European tanks slated for the rival Trophy system: 400 Leopards, via EuroTrophy

The same pattern has already shown up outside Ukraine. During Israel's ground campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, small Hezbollah quadcopter drones struck Merkava 4 tanks fitted with Rafael's Trophy active protection system despite the system still carrying countermunitions, according to Ukrainian outlet Defense Express. Miles of fiber-optic cable connected Hezbollah's drones to their operators, an innovation that emerged from the war in Ukraine and makes the drones immune to radio jamming. Such drone strikes reportedly became the leading cause of Israeli soldier deaths in Lebanon after an April ceasefire. Despite the mixed record, the EuroTrophy joint venture still plans to fit 400 European Leopard tanks with the Trophy system.

Russia's earlier fixes weren't much better. Before Arena-M reached the front, Russian crews had already tried bolting extra armor plating onto their tanks and welding on so-called "cope cages." Some units covered vehicles in porcupine-style metal spikes nicknamed "turtle tanks." Ukrainian forces adopted similar improvised armor of their own. None of it solved the underlying problem: the added weight and bulk limited a tank's mobility and its ability to use its main gun, while drones adjusted their angle of attack to find the gaps. Mass armored assaults have become rare on the modern battlefield partly for this reason, with infantry infiltration in small groups increasingly replacing the kind of tank columns that first tested Arena-M in July.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.