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The Russian military has built wild-looking “turtle tanks” to shield its vulnerable tanks from the dangers of exploding drones. A new one showed off in a video this week featured a fold-out metal bed.
The highly unusual add-on speaks to how the war is forcing adaptations to the ever-present threat of drones on the battlefield, as well as how deadly exploding drone strikes on tanks and military vehicles can be.
A video that appears to be from Russian-state media outlet Zvezda began circulating around social media on Thursday. It shows a rather large metal structure built on top of a T-80 tank. The sides are covered except for the front, where the tank’s main gun extends out of chains.
The armored shell with the gun sticking out, which resembles a turtle with its head stuck out, earned the vehicles the nickname “turtle tanks,” though the Russians call them “Tsar Mangal,” referencing the anti-drone armor and past Russian weapons.
In the video, Russian soldiers talk about the adaptation and how the metal shell protects from drones. At one point, one of the troops shows a retractable metal bed built into the side of the wall, noting that soldiers can rest in between combat.
Business Insider could not independently verify the details of the video, including when or where the video was taken. Footage featuring the same tank design appeared in a Russian Ministry of Defense video on Telegram earlier this week, and that video has since been shared on YouTube. That video indicated action somewhere around Donetsk.
This new turtle tank design appears to be the latest to come from the Russian side, which has been welding strange armor on its tanks and vehicles to help protect from drone attacks. Ukraine, too, has also been doing this, though not quite like this.
For both sides, drones, particularly small first-person-view drones have become a persistent problem, with operators flying them through open tank hatches, causing massive explosions, or directly into a vehicle’s most vulnerable areas.
Cage armor began appearing on tanks and armored vehicles last year, signaling that Russia and Ukraine were working to adapt to the growing threat of drones.
Photos of the first attempts at cage armor showed fairly crude designs, such as simple netting around the sides and tops of the tanks. The armor has since become much more complex, as demonstrated by Russia’s new turtle tank.
The turtle tank, though, remains one of the more unusual designs seen in the war. Although it may be an effective solution to the drone problem, at least some of the time, it also takes away one of the advantages of Russian tanks, making them easier to spot and shoot on the battlefield.
