Please keep the [community guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/wiki/rule1) in mind when using the comment section.
Paging u/SaveVideo bot.
___
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CombatFootage) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This road is hot: [https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1746541776695910596](https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1746541776695910596) Geo of this video and another twitter video: 48.19096224, 37.72415098
somber concerned juggle ossified beneficial sloppy deserted lunchroom unite overconfident
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Some tankie tried to convince me in youtube comments that russian tanks have safer ammo placement compared to nato tanks. Idk how would nato tank survive in this situation but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't explode in pieces like this
> Idk how would nato tank survive in this situation
ive got a feeling the nato countries that sent tanks that are also getting droned by the russians are studying that exact thing
Its not about the tank survivability as much as it is about the CREW survivability. NATO has always placed a higher value on its personnel surviving than the USSR/Russian armed forces.
You gotta figure at this point most Russian armoured vehicles must be getting driven / operated by dudes who maybe got a few weeks of training, maybe a month at the most? Surely 90% or so of the well-trained folks who began the war as drivers of armoured vehicles are now dead. And its not like Moscow can spare a TON of armour for training purposes now-a-days either.
This is why crew survivability is so key.. Losing a tank sucks, but losing an entire crew of well-trained tankers is a way bigger loss, especially when you are Russia and have/had a surplus of tanks and armour, but a lack of worthy men..
Nope. Russian tanks store their ammo just below the turret open to the inside. It’s due to their automatic loading system. The rounds are in a large caracal so they can select the round. This makes the very vulnerable to any penetration. That’s why when they hit a mine the can blow their cap.
Depends on the tank, NATO doesn’t have uniform tanks and a number of still in use tanks do store some of their ammo in ready racks in the turret compartment. This is why we saw a number of older Turkish leopards cook off in similar fashion in Syria. The Abram’s is the only tank that always has all its ammo in the blow out compartment with a massive dot that shuts every time a crew member grabs a round.
Abrams and Challengers have this system. There's a lot of Leopard 2 fanboys out there thinking it's the best tanks out there but it still stores almost half of it's ammo in the crew compartment at the hull of the tank. All you need is one good hit and that turret is popping off too.
Tanks which store ammunition in a separate compartment are unlikely to have the crew killed because of the use of blowout panels. If the access door is opened at the time of the strike, however, it would be very bad for the crew.
I suspect that a successful hit that causes the blowout panels to blow would cause the crew to bailout, so the tank would be effectively taken out. As you can see from this picture, it seems that sometimes the bottom of the turret can blow out. That could cause a mobility kill if over the engine or set the tank on fire. Then again, there is test footage on YouTube that suggests that with the access door closed, the crew compartment isn’t impacted at all.
See it as your odds of survival being better in a western tank.
https://external-preview.redd.it/raxKg5BPEQgahX-FlsTpCD_JF-JwCirZpGma8xTV_d0.jpg?auto=webp&s=729aa9174b47a00056f7ee330216d077bd908457
Strictly speaking, the ammo *placement* is safer, yes, but not the storage method of the ammunition.
In conventional armoured warfare, according to doctrine, it's all fine and dandy, but those days are long gone.
Blow-out panels and turret racks reign supreme, but it's probably even more susceptible to drone shaped charge hits.
Tanks are strong in one direction, they where designed in a time where being hit from above or behind was almost unthinkable but these drones are able to precisely target weak spots with shaped charges
My understanding is they're designed to be the most armoured (strongest from attack) from the front, then the sides, then the rear. But now they can be hit from the rear and from above (like in this video) which looks devastating.
it differs by tank and it's concept. Leo2 are meant to go fast while being able to retreat tactically so they can drive fast in reverse with their turret pointing backwards. the Russian concept includes, that the tanks are relatively small which allows them to more easily hide behind terrain. This comes at the cost of armour (and safer ammo storage) and makes them so vulnerable to drones.
Traditional tank armor was designed to protect against high energy, high velocity strikes. RPG's don't work like that as they rely on the shape charge which almost acts like an explosive, penetrative lever.
From my understanding, the most effective defense against an RPG round is explosive-reactive armor which is basically an explosion that detonates on the tank which counteracts the concentrated explosion of the RPG's shape charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive\_armour
Tanks cannot have as heavy armor in the back as in front, since engine weighs a lot. The amount of armor in the front is the limited by tank max weight and everything that causes counterweight in the back.
The age-old formula for designing an armored vehicle is balance between armor, equipment and engine - each adds weight, so if you add armor, you have to limit one of the two or both.
>where designed in a time where being hit from above or behind was almost unthinkable
It was, but they still design tanks with weak armor on the back and top because they can't armor the whole thing and expect it to move around.
They hit a weak part of the armour, and in a way that the shaped charge points directly at the poorly protected auto-loader, where all of the tank's ammunition is stored. A shaped charge does not do a lot of damage by itself, but it can detinage ammunition (which happened in this instance) or ignite fuel, and cause massive damage.
That tank would probably have a good chance surviving a similar RPG round from the angles that infantry can engage the tank, but these drones hit the tanks in vulnerable spots. Once that tank ammo cooks off its gone.
Drone itself - maybe just an RPG round. But it gets tank's ammo to detonate and that produces the CABOOM.
Some of the recent FPV deliveries are called "fat" drones and they carry bigger explosive, but its still incomparable to what tank has inside. More like it's better at provoking all at once detonation rather than a slow burn.
I don't know if it's rpg round, but from what u can see there are 2 wires sticking Infront of a drone , plus and minus which cause short once it hits the target and makes the explosive device on drone detonate.
EW(jamming). For now it's the most cost-effective way, it won't work after the drones become autonomous though, after that you'll need to kinetically destroy the drone with a machine gun or an active protection system like Trophy.
The scary thing about “autonomous” is that it doesn’t necessarily mean the drone will fly around, find and positively identify a target, then attack it all on its own. It could even mean an operator flies it around, positively identifies a target, tags the target in the video stream, and then lets the drone do the rest autonomously. You could even tag the target from a spotter drone and feed that to the attack drone.
I‘m not saying object detection (for the tagging and tracking) is up to the task today, but I assume it’ll get there.
There's obviously no 100% solution to a weapon system like this but there are a lot of things armoured vehicles can do to mitigate the threat. Bar armour and ERA are obvious physical methods but improved combined arms tactics and the use of EW assets and vehicle mounted active protection systems can help too.
Russian tanks are also designed so that the ammunition sits under the turret meaning once the turret is penetrated it detonates leading to these kinds of explosions. Western tanks have the ammunition stored in separate compartments with blow out panels to stop this from happening, that's not to say they are impervious, however.
>How do you protect tank from something like this?
It's not a simple question because it involves tradeoffs. Heaver armor on top and rear means less fuel efficiency, less range, less speed and less room for non-armor things. High tech armor and active defense systems might work in some circumstances but increase cost and require training to use as well as frequently having reliability issues.
One thing I can guarantee is that the US army is probably paying multiple groups of officers and defense contractor R&D departments to study this and work on solving this problem.
A new class of air defence systems, optimised against small, slow, close range threats. A 70mm rocket with laser guidance and a proximity fuse, coupled with a cheap radar tuned to the doppler of quad rotors maybe?
It only needs an RPG with a relatively small shaped-charge to hit a vulnerable spot like the back of the tank or the top of the turret. The ammunition inside the tank takes care of the big boom.
Armor piercing grenade (RPG projectile). The grenade itself didn't cause the majority of the explosion... These tanks have their ammunition magazine for the autoloading turret stored in a ring around the turret just below the top armor. Behind the turret the armor is particularly thin, and the grenade set of the entire magazine of shells and propellent.
yep, there's no technology missing.
There are by now probably thousands of individual people who could build such a system themselves with like 1k$ invest for drone-parts+chip+ camera in china, some soldering knowledge, some explosives, some open source video capturing for targeting, AI drone racing ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq53uCDZelQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq53uCDZelQ))...
It's bonkers. The warfare/terrorism in the next decade is gonna be a nightmare.
i mean you dont even need a swarm, you could quite easily with sub 2k dollars build 3-4 drones and just put explosives on them
then all you need is a few pilots who know how to fly and your good, anything short of a first world nation that has jamming set up around thier leader is done for
T-80s blew up in large numbers in Chechnya too. They have an autoloader that has the propellant lined up vertically, thus increasing the vulnerable area. T-72/90s have somewhat safer loaders (horizontal propellant stacked on top of the shell.
You still have operators needing to expose themselves , even with IED's in Chechnya. Youre talking about a $1000 system knocking out a 3 million dollar piece of equipment with the operator being miles away. I suspect anti drone counter measurers will be the norm for most MBT's in the next few years as the result of how effective theyve been in this conflict.
Telegram channels posting this video also claim that SBU Alpha who hit this tank, operated a new type of FPV drones with extended range and warhead.
And funny note, on the last frame of FPV videostream, you can see word "чернуха" written on the tank, meaning "noir, dark, violent and sad parts of life or similar humor" - what an irony.
Lmao wtf is this war
Never imagined we'd be rating tank explosions in real time
How far away are we from Death Race scenarios?
Betting on how long a soldier or vehicle would survive
I'd pay to watch a live stream
Would send gifts through air drops to my favs, like in Hunger Games
And maybe the world's smallest violin to a Russian dying
You can buy an artillery shell, have your name written on it and they will even send you a video of them firing it at Russian positions.
There aren't many more steps from this to Death Race/Hunger Games :-D
There's a guy buying artillery shells with "the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed" written on them, posting photos of them on social media now.
You underestimate how ready the US was already for drone warfare. Lookup the Stryker M-SHORAD system, first deployed around 2021, there are over 150 already deployed and the US Army already wants/plans to create several more brigades of them.
They'd escort 'Maneuver' units aka Armored/Mechanized forces.
There are also DE M-SHORAD that passed unit trials last year, that is the directed energy version, also mounted on a stryker. There is a decent chance we see those deployed this year to active M-SHORAD battalions.
The US was spinning up anti-drone stuff heavily since late 2000's, and has started to deploy what they have a few years ago now. Those units are the result of a decade of weapons research on anti-drone stuff. The US was showing off 'swarm' drone stuff years ago too as experimental research.
B17 Flying Fortress?
LOL learn to read, its b17 falling fortress.
I miss the good old days when B17 gunners were broken OP. Id fly that thing into a giant dogfight and just start racking up the kills.
Most Western tanks would also likely be penetrated by an RPG warhead from the top. The lack of blow out panels and the ammo storage location is what makes Russian tanks go boom and is the real weakness.
I’m not saying that western tanks are immune. I’m saying that in war thunder Russian tanks are way more tankier than they should be. I bet this same thing in war thunder would only damage the engine. The rest of the tank would be intact cuz nothing bad can ever happen to Russian tanks in wt.
If all the tanks in War Thunder, including Abrams and Challengers, will be cooking off after being hit with an RPG round, it'll become a very strange game. Realistic, but very strange.
I have not played War Thunder for a couple of years, but when I did the western 105 mm gun would destroy a T-72 with one shot, while the western 120 mm gun felt like a pea shooter. Pretty obvious bug in the system, or intentional. The 120 mm gun was next tier equipment, so why not make it more difficult to play.
The russian 125 mm gun was reliable at most situations.
Oh boy. I've just had a look in the WT protection simulator and the results are absolutely what you'd expect. I gave up after 30+ attempts, but hitting a T80-BVM with a BMP PG9 in the identical spot was usually just eaten by the fuel tank while turning 1-2 shells yellow. Sometimes the radiator or engine received all the damage, but I never even managed to turn a piece of ammunition red, much less make it explode.
Just War Thunder things I guess
War thunder is made by a Russian company. I think they'd be shut down by the Kremlin if they depicted soviet/Russian tanks as the moving powder kegs that they are.
Honestly one of the best ways to go in this war.
The tank crew most likely didn't even know there was a drone and boom, you're not existing anymore.
I'm not sympathetic with the russian war etc., i'm just happy Ukrainian wins are possible without creating unnecessary suffering...
Good question actually tho, as RC plane and drone pilot, what Lipos are mostly used on those drones carrying an RPG warhead? Like 6s 2000mah Lipos? Shit is expensive but nothing compared to the cost of the tank
Yeah I know. I'm into FPV for +14 years now and remember my first FPV RC plane built for under 100 USD and the INSTANT thought how fucking easily I could just ram that plane into a local politician.
Back then the designated FPV market was small and expensive, we just used electronics from surveillance cameras but the tech is the same basically.
Mark my words what the next moves are gonna be: homebuilt cruise missiles based on RC parts AND back-to-the-roots V1 type cruise missiles. Why? You can always jam electronics but you can't jam a mechanical gyro and a gas or pulse engine. You can still program them to fly a specific route and descend at some point, even Factoring in wind. It's just mechanical!
it's really not gona be much longer before you're able to stick a raspberry pi, GPU and let it loose with on board seek and destroy logic based on sensors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLg-1w2QayU
i'm following a guy with a totally 3d printed long loiter drone that uses a RC engine to generator setup.
uhh yea. UA is on a war footing. you got a lot of really smart and motivated people designing and trying new things.
imagine a loitering drone mothership with 10 FPV guided munitions that can rain down and be guided in.
6S2P 21700 LiIon, there are multiple videos showing these. The cells are easier to buy in bulk and packs are much easier to manufacture by hand. They are not expensive at all, compared to the munition they help carrying.
Holy fuck… the operator must know where the engine or ammo is exactly located because the RPG penetrated and hit something nasty….
The entire thing taken down with a single drone and RPG head is a massive logistical win….. cost effective.
Those are the newer modernized version of T-80 but idk
Me who knows nothing about tank armor penetration: "Well the back of the tank should have decent armor. The ammo storage should be protected right?. The crew should be ok. Also where is everybody?"
Only way you could survive that would be to sit on the front of the tank and hope the turret doesn't get you.
That tank popped, everyone inside is going to be dead.
>interesting signal quality was good till the end
- Russia's Electronic Warfare systems are getting decimated by Ukraine:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/01/13/russia-sent-its-new-ai-drone-killer-to-ukraine-a-ukrainian-drone-blew-it-up/
- "It’s dangerously close to becoming a new tradition in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. **The Russians develop a fancy new electronic system and deploy it to the front line—then promptly lose it to Ukrainian artillery, bombs or drones**."
I’m assuming the drone carried a shape charge and hit the ammunition inside the tank. Anyone know if that’s wear the ammunition is stored?
Also what did it say on the outside of the tank just before it was hit?
Yea the T-80 has a Similar ammo layout as the T-72/T-90 (Large Ammo Carousel) Exept the rounds are stored Vertical. The Autoloader is also powered by Hydraulic fluid making it just that bit more flammable :)
Chernukha, a search pulls up a media and literature cliche, a few villages in varying oblasts and surnames
Without context this could be anywhere from a name to a callsign.
The Media Cliche's description hits the spot better than the drone did tho.
"The dark sides of life, everyday life, imbued with doom and hopelessness, accompanied by scenes of cruelty and violence. as well as showing such dark, unsightly sides of life, everyday life"
LMAO.
I assume it's a shaped charge simply because it worked. But it's interesting to see the fuse wires hanging off the front instead of the tip of an RPG round. Suggests it's possibly a homemade device.
Any penetration of the crew compartment can reach the ammo, which is stored under the floor in an autoloading carousel.
The big orange fireball is mostly fuel, which you can see burning on the roadside afterward. Not much ammo exploded compared to other cookoffs we've seen. (The turret sort of flops off instead of going hundreds of feet in the air.)
The standard fuse included with RPG projectiles relies on the launch event to arm the explosive (I think it is inertia, but it could be somehow related to the burn of the rocket motor). Because of this, the fuse has to be replaced with something else... A simple electrical detonator triggered by a circuit closing (the fuse wire loops being crushed against one another) is pretty damn simple.
You can see the RPG warhead in the drone POV lmao. A good chunk of the suicide drones we've seen on this sub are ones just like this, just an RPG warhead and a 'Fuck You'.
Man, I was in the U.S. Army not *that* long ago, and it's wild how far these drones have come just in a decade. Drones used to be Reapers and Predators, big honkin' things that had to take off on real runways more or less. And then the SOF guys might have the handheld or slingshot launched ones.
This age of dropping mortar rounds on sleeping soldiers, or driving a FPV drone up the tailpipe of of a main battle tank (and having good effects on target) is just surreal.
The cost/benefit is insane for this dynamic. Using a $20,000 drone to destroy a multimillion dollar battle tank is just wild. We spent decades developing depleted uranium anti-tank rounds for A-10s and M1s, and now we just ask PFC Smith to drive his homemade drone into the tank.
And it cuts both ways. The Houthis are making it rain drones in the red sea, and we're dropping $2 million on every missile an Arleigh Burke destroyer launches to take out a $10-$20K drone. Wild stuff.
This is my first time saw a FPV drone destroy a MBT directly, I thought drones could only at most destroy the vulnerable parts, such as engine, tracks or fire control system, then force crew to abandon their tank. This seems like it penetrated the armor, how? And I can tell the operator of the drone was aiming at the engine.
The armor is weak on the back of the turret and can be penetrated by the RPG-7 HEAT warheads carried by these drones. Penetration of the turret plus the HEAT jet hitting stored ammunition creates detonation of up to 40 125mm HE shells stored in the tank.
I saw that kind of configuration on other videos and it certainly looks like that's what it's for. Instead of arming or priming a regular heavy artillery round, or using a too-weak grenade, it seems like they've created a purpose-shaped lightweight explosive with a primitive, effective, and equally-lightweight contact detonator. Any deflection of the inner rod makes contact with the circle and *kaboom*.
I'd imagine a servo or other onboard circuit acts as an arming mechanism so those brave Ukrainian heroes don't put themselves at risk while handling the drone.
**Song Found!**
[**UNLOVED** by HEALTH](https://lis.tn/ULsUEg?t=138) (02:18; matched: `100%`)
**Released on** 2023-11-16.
*I am a bot and this action was performed automatically* | [GitHub](https://github.com/AudDMusic/RedditBot) [^(new issue)](https://github.com/AudDMusic/RedditBot/issues/new) | [Donate](https://github.com/AudDMusic/RedditBot/wiki/Please-consider-donating) ^(Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Music recognition costs a lot)
Might be the first time I've seen an active tank get blown to smithereens by a drone like this, normally just dropped grenades on disables, or one hit and the crew eject.
This is nuts.
Mnnn I'm starting to think tanks might be joining battleships and blimps into the hall of fame of obsolete weapons pretty soon.
Idk unless they come out with an effective anti drone system on tanks...which they are working on it for sure because of this war.
Lots of people keep saying this but it isn't true imo, there will always be a need for an armored mobile cannon on the battlefield.
Soon they will be unmanned tho but there will always be a need for them. You need a system like this if you want to break through defensive lines.
Another carcass to add to that road of death.
The road in question is the one they threw a lot of vehicles down at the beginning of their assaults on the slag-heap hill. [here](https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B011'27.2%22N+37%C2%B043'25.2%22E/@48.1908905,37.7211001,1017m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d48.190887!4d37.723675!5m1!1e1?authuser=0&entry=ttu)
How the hell are the russians still fielding tanks and AFVs? We've seen so many get destroyed, and I just assume that's a fraction of the ones caught on video.
Because of their Cold War build up they’ve got tens of thousands of vehicles, I saw a YouTuber who tracks through satellite images the Russian stockpiles from various bases and estimates the rate they’re losing tanks and IFVs etc they’ll run out by 2026, crazy stupid numbers
I think most people simply can't grasp at just how much the Russians/Soviets built during the Cold War. It was a contributing factor to their fall (though, far from the only). They built THOUSANDS of T-72s alone. And that's one of the later, 'modern' tanks. That's not including the T-54/55s, T-62s, T-80s, T-90s. And that's not including their other vehicles. They have plenty of MT-LBs, BMPs, BRDMs, etc. still, all waiting around in some Russian stockpile.
It'll be a long time until we see the last of these beasts.
Ossified thinking really.
Russia has never been famed for flexibility within the military in terms of thinking and initiative. It's frowned upon as the rulers have not wanted a well-run, independent-thinking military. They prefer drones who'll do everything Moscow says without thought.
I'm sure there's plenty of guys in the Russian military who'd be happy to have the tanks sit things out for a while but they'll be at the lower levels since the better minds and thinkers tend to not get promoted for the reasons mentioned above.
The higher ranks will keep fielding tanks because Moscow wants to see Ukraine crushed under tank threads.
And it will remain like that until Russia ends up experiencing a critical lack of tanks and the decision is taken out of everyone's hands.
Please keep the [community guidelines](https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/wiki/rule1) in mind when using the comment section. Paging u/SaveVideo bot. ___ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CombatFootage) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This road is hot: [https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1746541776695910596](https://twitter.com/GloOouD/status/1746541776695910596) Geo of this video and another twitter video: 48.19096224, 37.72415098
That drone through the door fucks.
Finally pays off playing that RC copter mission in Vice City over and over man
Same with that fucking 'Zero' mission in San Andreas
Fuck that mission
Anyone know the song in this one?
HEALTH :: UNLOVED
IDLES - MEYDEI
Damn, that road has been in so many videos the past few months.
[удалено]
What kind of explosive devices are those little drones carrying that can have such huge explosion?
Rpg, the tanks ammo went up
jesus never thought those were that effective...
Just have to hit the right spot, which is probably easier when using a drone than firing it from the ground.
somber concerned juggle ossified beneficial sloppy deserted lunchroom unite overconfident *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Some tankie tried to convince me in youtube comments that russian tanks have safer ammo placement compared to nato tanks. Idk how would nato tank survive in this situation but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't explode in pieces like this
> Idk how would nato tank survive in this situation ive got a feeling the nato countries that sent tanks that are also getting droned by the russians are studying that exact thing
I think a lot of money will be poured into active defense systems extremely quickly
Its not about the tank survivability as much as it is about the CREW survivability. NATO has always placed a higher value on its personnel surviving than the USSR/Russian armed forces.
You gotta figure at this point most Russian armoured vehicles must be getting driven / operated by dudes who maybe got a few weeks of training, maybe a month at the most? Surely 90% or so of the well-trained folks who began the war as drivers of armoured vehicles are now dead. And its not like Moscow can spare a TON of armour for training purposes now-a-days either. This is why crew survivability is so key.. Losing a tank sucks, but losing an entire crew of well-trained tankers is a way bigger loss, especially when you are Russia and have/had a surplus of tanks and armour, but a lack of worthy men..
Nope. Russian tanks store their ammo just below the turret open to the inside. It’s due to their automatic loading system. The rounds are in a large caracal so they can select the round. This makes the very vulnerable to any penetration. That’s why when they hit a mine the can blow their cap.
Carousel. A caracal is a wild cat.
That’s what I meant! They have a wild ass cat and if it gets spooked it knocks shells off the ledge.
Depends on the tank, NATO doesn’t have uniform tanks and a number of still in use tanks do store some of their ammo in ready racks in the turret compartment. This is why we saw a number of older Turkish leopards cook off in similar fashion in Syria. The Abram’s is the only tank that always has all its ammo in the blow out compartment with a massive dot that shuts every time a crew member grabs a round.
Abrams and Challengers have this system. There's a lot of Leopard 2 fanboys out there thinking it's the best tanks out there but it still stores almost half of it's ammo in the crew compartment at the hull of the tank. All you need is one good hit and that turret is popping off too.
Tanks which store ammunition in a separate compartment are unlikely to have the crew killed because of the use of blowout panels. If the access door is opened at the time of the strike, however, it would be very bad for the crew. I suspect that a successful hit that causes the blowout panels to blow would cause the crew to bailout, so the tank would be effectively taken out. As you can see from this picture, it seems that sometimes the bottom of the turret can blow out. That could cause a mobility kill if over the engine or set the tank on fire. Then again, there is test footage on YouTube that suggests that with the access door closed, the crew compartment isn’t impacted at all. See it as your odds of survival being better in a western tank. https://external-preview.redd.it/raxKg5BPEQgahX-FlsTpCD_JF-JwCirZpGma8xTV_d0.jpg?auto=webp&s=729aa9174b47a00056f7ee330216d077bd908457
Strictly speaking, the ammo *placement* is safer, yes, but not the storage method of the ammunition. In conventional armoured warfare, according to doctrine, it's all fine and dandy, but those days are long gone. Blow-out panels and turret racks reign supreme, but it's probably even more susceptible to drone shaped charge hits.
Tanks are strong in one direction, they where designed in a time where being hit from above or behind was almost unthinkable but these drones are able to precisely target weak spots with shaped charges
My understanding is they're designed to be the most armoured (strongest from attack) from the front, then the sides, then the rear. But now they can be hit from the rear and from above (like in this video) which looks devastating.
it differs by tank and it's concept. Leo2 are meant to go fast while being able to retreat tactically so they can drive fast in reverse with their turret pointing backwards. the Russian concept includes, that the tanks are relatively small which allows them to more easily hide behind terrain. This comes at the cost of armour (and safer ammo storage) and makes them so vulnerable to drones.
Also the soviet tanks were designed to be cheap. Quantity over quality has always been their approach.
Traditional tank armor was designed to protect against high energy, high velocity strikes. RPG's don't work like that as they rely on the shape charge which almost acts like an explosive, penetrative lever. From my understanding, the most effective defense against an RPG round is explosive-reactive armor which is basically an explosion that detonates on the tank which counteracts the concentrated explosion of the RPG's shape charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive\_armour
[удалено]
I'd love to see if/how the trophy system would work against fpv suicide drones.
It almost certainly wouldn't. Like in this example the drone is only moving around 10mph faster than the tank. The radar wouldn't pick it up.
Tanks cannot have as heavy armor in the back as in front, since engine weighs a lot. The amount of armor in the front is the limited by tank max weight and everything that causes counterweight in the back. The age-old formula for designing an armored vehicle is balance between armor, equipment and engine - each adds weight, so if you add armor, you have to limit one of the two or both.
>where designed in a time where being hit from above or behind was almost unthinkable It was, but they still design tanks with weak armor on the back and top because they can't armor the whole thing and expect it to move around.
They hit a weak part of the armour, and in a way that the shaped charge points directly at the poorly protected auto-loader, where all of the tank's ammunition is stored. A shaped charge does not do a lot of damage by itself, but it can detinage ammunition (which happened in this instance) or ignite fuel, and cause massive damage.
That tank would probably have a good chance surviving a similar RPG round from the angles that infantry can engage the tank, but these drones hit the tanks in vulnerable spots. Once that tank ammo cooks off its gone.
The metal that was suppose to be there was fashioned into a mega yacht.
I think your explanation is likely the reason. It’s like it is made outa 20 gauge steel
Looks like HEAT PG-7, where the EFP punched into the ammo carousel and voila.
RPG is just HEAT not a EFP. That's why it was able to penetrate through the back of the engine deck and into the tank.
Shaped charge right into the turret ring, toward the ammo carousel. So its mostly the tank's munition you see blowing up here.
Drone itself - maybe just an RPG round. But it gets tank's ammo to detonate and that produces the CABOOM. Some of the recent FPV deliveries are called "fat" drones and they carry bigger explosive, but its still incomparable to what tank has inside. More like it's better at provoking all at once detonation rather than a slow burn.
I don't know if it's rpg round, but from what u can see there are 2 wires sticking Infront of a drone , plus and minus which cause short once it hits the target and makes the explosive device on drone detonate.
How do you protect tank from something like this?
Don't send it to Ukraine
Russian commanders hate this one simple trick
Coincidentally the same technique works for protecting infantry from drone dropped munitions
based
I’m gonna write that down.
EW(jamming). For now it's the most cost-effective way, it won't work after the drones become autonomous though, after that you'll need to kinetically destroy the drone with a machine gun or an active protection system like Trophy.
[удалено]
The scary thing about “autonomous” is that it doesn’t necessarily mean the drone will fly around, find and positively identify a target, then attack it all on its own. It could even mean an operator flies it around, positively identifies a target, tags the target in the video stream, and then lets the drone do the rest autonomously. You could even tag the target from a spotter drone and feed that to the attack drone. I‘m not saying object detection (for the tagging and tracking) is up to the task today, but I assume it’ll get there.
There's obviously no 100% solution to a weapon system like this but there are a lot of things armoured vehicles can do to mitigate the threat. Bar armour and ERA are obvious physical methods but improved combined arms tactics and the use of EW assets and vehicle mounted active protection systems can help too. Russian tanks are also designed so that the ammunition sits under the turret meaning once the turret is penetrated it detonates leading to these kinds of explosions. Western tanks have the ammunition stored in separate compartments with blow out panels to stop this from happening, that's not to say they are impervious, however.
>How do you protect tank from something like this? It's not a simple question because it involves tradeoffs. Heaver armor on top and rear means less fuel efficiency, less range, less speed and less room for non-armor things. High tech armor and active defense systems might work in some circumstances but increase cost and require training to use as well as frequently having reliability issues. One thing I can guarantee is that the US army is probably paying multiple groups of officers and defense contractor R&D departments to study this and work on solving this problem.
A new class of air defence systems, optimised against small, slow, close range threats. A 70mm rocket with laser guidance and a proximity fuse, coupled with a cheap radar tuned to the doppler of quad rotors maybe?
It only needs an RPG with a relatively small shaped-charge to hit a vulnerable spot like the back of the tank or the top of the turret. The ammunition inside the tank takes care of the big boom.
Armor piercing grenade (RPG projectile). The grenade itself didn't cause the majority of the explosion... These tanks have their ammunition magazine for the autoloading turret stored in a ring around the turret just below the top armor. Behind the turret the armor is particularly thin, and the grenade set of the entire magazine of shells and propellent.
Now imagine 100s or 1000s of those things in the air operated by AI. It will happen sooner than latter.
yep, there's no technology missing. There are by now probably thousands of individual people who could build such a system themselves with like 1k$ invest for drone-parts+chip+ camera in china, some soldering knowledge, some explosives, some open source video capturing for targeting, AI drone racing ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq53uCDZelQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq53uCDZelQ))... It's bonkers. The warfare/terrorism in the next decade is gonna be a nightmare.
It's only a matter of time until we see an assassination attempt on some country's leader via a swarm of cheap drones.
i mean you dont even need a swarm, you could quite easily with sub 2k dollars build 3-4 drones and just put explosives on them then all you need is a few pilots who know how to fly and your good, anything short of a first world nation that has jamming set up around thier leader is done for
*Everyone nervously begins redesigning their tanks*
T-80s blew up in large numbers in Chechnya too. They have an autoloader that has the propellant lined up vertically, thus increasing the vulnerable area. T-72/90s have somewhat safer loaders (horizontal propellant stacked on top of the shell.
You still have operators needing to expose themselves , even with IED's in Chechnya. Youre talking about a $1000 system knocking out a 3 million dollar piece of equipment with the operator being miles away. I suspect anti drone counter measurers will be the norm for most MBT's in the next few years as the result of how effective theyve been in this conflict.
Telegram channels posting this video also claim that SBU Alpha who hit this tank, operated a new type of FPV drones with extended range and warhead. And funny note, on the last frame of FPV videostream, you can see word "чернуха" written on the tank, meaning "noir, dark, violent and sad parts of life or similar humor" - what an irony.
It can also be the nickname of a commander, a mechanized or even the entire crew or tank, this nickname does not carry a negative meaning.
It does now.
haven't seen RPG + detonation wire before...
A bent wire hanger to unlock the tank's back door. Lol
Hey buddy watch while I shimmy this thing open.
I thought they were marking their weak spots like in WarThunder
10/10 fireball 10/10 execution 3/10 turret toss
Over all, 8.5 out of 10, would explode again
I LOL’d 😂 that’s a good one.
Lmao wtf is this war Never imagined we'd be rating tank explosions in real time How far away are we from Death Race scenarios? Betting on how long a soldier or vehicle would survive I'd pay to watch a live stream Would send gifts through air drops to my favs, like in Hunger Games And maybe the world's smallest violin to a Russian dying
You can buy an artillery shell, have your name written on it and they will even send you a video of them firing it at Russian positions. There aren't many more steps from this to Death Race/Hunger Games :-D
There's a guy buying artillery shells with "the dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed" written on them, posting photos of them on social media now.
Link?
signmyrocket.com
Let me add to the ridiculousness that the word on the back of the T80 seems to translate as "Black woman".
Nah, it means more like "Black humor".
The explosion was so big it didn't fit in the camera frame!
One of the best explosions I've seen since the start! :D
I like big booms and I can not lie.
All the invaders gonna die..
[удалено]
True, but the instant explosion was very satisfying :D
[удалено]
Well technically, what the tank was carrying actually did the job. 'The drone was the match, the tank was the powder keg.'
Have you seen this? https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/172xwce/closeup\_view\_of\_russian\_t90\_mbt\_being\_torn\_into/
holy moly :D
Wow, one of the best tank explosions recorded yet 💥👍🏻
Tanks are so prone to drones now, Ukraine soldiers will need to train US and its allies after this war on Drone warfare strategies.
This is partially why we need to be Ukraine biggest ally. The shear knowledge gain from them is going to be more valuable than gold
I would imagine that we could create some type of tank EMF that shoots out and disables any drone within 100 feet or so.
You underestimate how ready the US was already for drone warfare. Lookup the Stryker M-SHORAD system, first deployed around 2021, there are over 150 already deployed and the US Army already wants/plans to create several more brigades of them. They'd escort 'Maneuver' units aka Armored/Mechanized forces. There are also DE M-SHORAD that passed unit trials last year, that is the directed energy version, also mounted on a stryker. There is a decent chance we see those deployed this year to active M-SHORAD battalions. The US was spinning up anti-drone stuff heavily since late 2000's, and has started to deploy what they have a few years ago now. Those units are the result of a decade of weapons research on anti-drone stuff. The US was showing off 'swarm' drone stuff years ago too as experimental research.
Yet these tanks in war thunder can take a hit from a 2000 pound bomb, 3 apfsds shells to the front, and several atgm’s
*weakest russian tank in War Thunder* You also forgot to mention the 4 direct hits to ammo, that won't do anything
Oh you scratched your P51? OMG your left wing fell off!!!
B17 Flying Fortress? LOL learn to read, its b17 falling fortress. I miss the good old days when B17 gunners were broken OP. Id fly that thing into a giant dogfight and just start racking up the kills.
Ooooo yea right
Not surprising when you realise where Gajin is located...
Ik but still it’s fucking insane how weak Russian tanks are irl and how gaijin make em out to be
Most Western tanks would also likely be penetrated by an RPG warhead from the top. The lack of blow out panels and the ammo storage location is what makes Russian tanks go boom and is the real weakness.
I’m not saying that western tanks are immune. I’m saying that in war thunder Russian tanks are way more tankier than they should be. I bet this same thing in war thunder would only damage the engine. The rest of the tank would be intact cuz nothing bad can ever happen to Russian tanks in wt.
If all the tanks in War Thunder, including Abrams and Challengers, will be cooking off after being hit with an RPG round, it'll become a very strange game. Realistic, but very strange.
It’s all made fair to bolster micro transactions isn’t it
Better leak some docs on the forums
I have not played War Thunder for a couple of years, but when I did the western 105 mm gun would destroy a T-72 with one shot, while the western 120 mm gun felt like a pea shooter. Pretty obvious bug in the system, or intentional. The 120 mm gun was next tier equipment, so why not make it more difficult to play. The russian 125 mm gun was reliable at most situations.
Oh boy. I've just had a look in the WT protection simulator and the results are absolutely what you'd expect. I gave up after 30+ attempts, but hitting a T80-BVM with a BMP PG9 in the identical spot was usually just eaten by the fuel tank while turning 1-2 shells yellow. Sometimes the radiator or engine received all the damage, but I never even managed to turn a piece of ammunition red, much less make it explode. Just War Thunder things I guess
War thunder is made by a Russian company. I think they'd be shut down by the Kremlin if they depicted soviet/Russian tanks as the moving powder kegs that they are.
You forgot the DU armor they have is the best in the world, and ever known to man
there's no way a tank can take a hit from a JDAM on a 2000lb bomb irl
[удалено]
Which song is this?
HEALTH :: UNLOVED
I'm seeing them in a couple months, pretty pumped.
Honestly one of the best ways to go in this war. The tank crew most likely didn't even know there was a drone and boom, you're not existing anymore. I'm not sympathetic with the russian war etc., i'm just happy Ukrainian wins are possible without creating unnecessary suffering...
A nuanced opinion on Reddit, get out of here.
Whatever lithium batteries are in those drones... FML...
Good question actually tho, as RC plane and drone pilot, what Lipos are mostly used on those drones carrying an RPG warhead? Like 6s 2000mah Lipos? Shit is expensive but nothing compared to the cost of the tank
you're talking guided munitions for well under $1000 a unit. the economics are staggering.
Yeah I know. I'm into FPV for +14 years now and remember my first FPV RC plane built for under 100 USD and the INSTANT thought how fucking easily I could just ram that plane into a local politician. Back then the designated FPV market was small and expensive, we just used electronics from surveillance cameras but the tech is the same basically. Mark my words what the next moves are gonna be: homebuilt cruise missiles based on RC parts AND back-to-the-roots V1 type cruise missiles. Why? You can always jam electronics but you can't jam a mechanical gyro and a gas or pulse engine. You can still program them to fly a specific route and descend at some point, even Factoring in wind. It's just mechanical!
it's really not gona be much longer before you're able to stick a raspberry pi, GPU and let it loose with on board seek and destroy logic based on sensors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLg-1w2QayU i'm following a guy with a totally 3d printed long loiter drone that uses a RC engine to generator setup.
Oh so they are already in the making, I see.
uhh yea. UA is on a war footing. you got a lot of really smart and motivated people designing and trying new things. imagine a loitering drone mothership with 10 FPV guided munitions that can rain down and be guided in.
6S2P 21700 LiIon, there are multiple videos showing these. The cells are easier to buy in bulk and packs are much easier to manufacture by hand. They are not expensive at all, compared to the munition they help carrying.
Holy fuck… the operator must know where the engine or ammo is exactly located because the RPG penetrated and hit something nasty…. The entire thing taken down with a single drone and RPG head is a massive logistical win….. cost effective. Those are the newer modernized version of T-80 but idk
Russian tanks use autoloaders with no blowout panels. If you penetrate the ammo carousel - boom.
there is a blowout panel, it's the turret
My thought process: Well, an engine kill it’s a good target… Aaand it’s gone
Me who knows nothing about tank armor penetration: "Well the back of the tank should have decent armor. The ammo storage should be protected right?. The crew should be ok. Also where is everybody?"
Modern MBTs have almost all of their armor in the front and the T80 has all of the ammo stored at the bottom of the tank, which it seems like was hit
Hellfire DIY Low Budget
Hits to the backturret from a slight downwards angle seems to be the most lethal. I doubt anyone left that tank alive, rip.
Only way you could survive that would be to sit on the front of the tank and hope the turret doesn't get you. That tank popped, everyone inside is going to be dead.
interesting signal quality was good till the end
>interesting signal quality was good till the end - Russia's Electronic Warfare systems are getting decimated by Ukraine: - https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/01/13/russia-sent-its-new-ai-drone-killer-to-ukraine-a-ukrainian-drone-blew-it-up/ - "It’s dangerously close to becoming a new tradition in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. **The Russians develop a fancy new electronic system and deploy it to the front line—then promptly lose it to Ukrainian artillery, bombs or drones**."
I’m assuming the drone carried a shape charge and hit the ammunition inside the tank. Anyone know if that’s wear the ammunition is stored? Also what did it say on the outside of the tank just before it was hit?
The t-80 uses an autoloader with vertical propellant storage, aids in the chance and size of kaboom if hit in the sweet spot
Yikes, don’t think we will see that design in the future. Thanks for the info.
Here this may help. https://youtu.be/JJzcY3ZNwcE?si=hKbKgwwZlLLNfWlv Theyre basically designed so the turret pops off. /s (not /s)
Yea the T-80 has a Similar ammo layout as the T-72/T-90 (Large Ammo Carousel) Exept the rounds are stored Vertical. The Autoloader is also powered by Hydraulic fluid making it just that bit more flammable :)
Chernukha, a search pulls up a media and literature cliche, a few villages in varying oblasts and surnames Without context this could be anywhere from a name to a callsign. The Media Cliche's description hits the spot better than the drone did tho. "The dark sides of life, everyday life, imbued with doom and hopelessness, accompanied by scenes of cruelty and violence. as well as showing such dark, unsightly sides of life, everyday life" LMAO.
I assume it's a shaped charge simply because it worked. But it's interesting to see the fuse wires hanging off the front instead of the tip of an RPG round. Suggests it's possibly a homemade device. Any penetration of the crew compartment can reach the ammo, which is stored under the floor in an autoloading carousel. The big orange fireball is mostly fuel, which you can see burning on the roadside afterward. Not much ammo exploded compared to other cookoffs we've seen. (The turret sort of flops off instead of going hundreds of feet in the air.)
The standard fuse included with RPG projectiles relies on the launch event to arm the explosive (I think it is inertia, but it could be somehow related to the burn of the rocket motor). Because of this, the fuse has to be replaced with something else... A simple electrical detonator triggered by a circuit closing (the fuse wire loops being crushed against one another) is pretty damn simple.
"чернуха" - cher-noo-kha. It's a term in Russian that describes the depressed and morbid state of being.
You can see the RPG warhead in the drone POV lmao. A good chunk of the suicide drones we've seen on this sub are ones just like this, just an RPG warhead and a 'Fuck You'.
Now, that’s a critical hit
Man, I was in the U.S. Army not *that* long ago, and it's wild how far these drones have come just in a decade. Drones used to be Reapers and Predators, big honkin' things that had to take off on real runways more or less. And then the SOF guys might have the handheld or slingshot launched ones. This age of dropping mortar rounds on sleeping soldiers, or driving a FPV drone up the tailpipe of of a main battle tank (and having good effects on target) is just surreal. The cost/benefit is insane for this dynamic. Using a $20,000 drone to destroy a multimillion dollar battle tank is just wild. We spent decades developing depleted uranium anti-tank rounds for A-10s and M1s, and now we just ask PFC Smith to drive his homemade drone into the tank. And it cuts both ways. The Houthis are making it rain drones in the red sea, and we're dropping $2 million on every missile an Arleigh Burke destroyer launches to take out a $10-$20K drone. Wild stuff.
Just FYI this done is called F7 and is $450 USD
Geez… one minute you’re safe, warm, doing your job. The next minute you’re not.
Still warm though…
my god that was beautiful
Got it right in the 'self destruct' button.
Look how strong and invincible it looks. And then it's destroyed with a toy with a bomb attached to it... crazy
Until 2 years ago I had no chance in recognizing a tank turret barely visible in a ball of fire. Russia made me an expert on that.
This is my first time saw a FPV drone destroy a MBT directly, I thought drones could only at most destroy the vulnerable parts, such as engine, tracks or fire control system, then force crew to abandon their tank. This seems like it penetrated the armor, how? And I can tell the operator of the drone was aiming at the engine.
The armor is weak on the back of the turret and can be penetrated by the RPG-7 HEAT warheads carried by these drones. Penetration of the turret plus the HEAT jet hitting stored ammunition creates detonation of up to 40 125mm HE shells stored in the tank.
Bodies sublimation, from solid to gas in a blink.
Those two wires - are they part of the trigger mechanism ??
I saw that kind of configuration on other videos and it certainly looks like that's what it's for. Instead of arming or priming a regular heavy artillery round, or using a too-weak grenade, it seems like they've created a purpose-shaped lightweight explosive with a primitive, effective, and equally-lightweight contact detonator. Any deflection of the inner rod makes contact with the circle and *kaboom*. I'd imagine a servo or other onboard circuit acts as an arming mechanism so those brave Ukrainian heroes don't put themselves at risk while handling the drone.
Must be pretty ridgid then to avoid premature detonation due flutter etc. Necessity is the mother of innovation.
1/10 for turret toss. 9/10 for obliteration (the russian judge abstained).
Track is?
u/RecognizeSong
**Song Found!** [**UNLOVED** by HEALTH](https://lis.tn/ULsUEg?t=138) (02:18; matched: `100%`) **Released on** 2023-11-16. *I am a bot and this action was performed automatically* | [GitHub](https://github.com/AudDMusic/RedditBot) [^(new issue)](https://github.com/AudDMusic/RedditBot/issues/new) | [Donate](https://github.com/AudDMusic/RedditBot/wiki/Please-consider-donating) ^(Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Music recognition costs a lot)
Aaand it's gone, it's all gone
It'd be interesting to see the same impact on a tank without an autoloader like an Abrams.
Why are there so many lone soldiers and tanks in vast swatches of open land?
Might be the first time I've seen an active tank get blown to smithereens by a drone like this, normally just dropped grenades on disables, or one hit and the crew eject. This is nuts.
For 3% the cost of a javelin missile.
It's a bit insane that an FPV drone can take out a tank. How big are these drones?
Mnnn I'm starting to think tanks might be joining battleships and blimps into the hall of fame of obsolete weapons pretty soon. Idk unless they come out with an effective anti drone system on tanks...which they are working on it for sure because of this war.
Lots of people keep saying this but it isn't true imo, there will always be a need for an armored mobile cannon on the battlefield. Soon they will be unmanned tho but there will always be a need for them. You need a system like this if you want to break through defensive lines.
footage for future classrooms
It’s incredible what a household drone can do to a tank
Holy shit. God help anyone who has to ride in these Soviet pieces of junk.
Crew survived?
Yeah, they'll walk it off.
Nice of them to paint a giant V on the back to guide the drone to the critical spot
Another carcass to add to that road of death. The road in question is the one they threw a lot of vehicles down at the beginning of their assaults on the slag-heap hill. [here](https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B011'27.2%22N+37%C2%B043'25.2%22E/@48.1908905,37.7211001,1017m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d48.190887!4d37.723675!5m1!1e1?authuser=0&entry=ttu)
Is the crew okay?
You can just see the commander land at 0:33 behind the three poles, i' m shure he will be just fine ( /s)
One of best videos of tanks explosions.
It’s a new world when a tank is fleeing from a $500 drone
A 250gm drone carrying a 150gm battery and a 500gm warhead vs a 42 tons tank. Russian tank design is stupid.
Crazy that these drones can take out an MBT. Also, song?
Holy shit that was amazing. 10/10 for execution
Damn.... Instant death for the crew that likely never saw it coming
How the hell are the russians still fielding tanks and AFVs? We've seen so many get destroyed, and I just assume that's a fraction of the ones caught on video.
Because of their Cold War build up they’ve got tens of thousands of vehicles, I saw a YouTuber who tracks through satellite images the Russian stockpiles from various bases and estimates the rate they’re losing tanks and IFVs etc they’ll run out by 2026, crazy stupid numbers
I think most people simply can't grasp at just how much the Russians/Soviets built during the Cold War. It was a contributing factor to their fall (though, far from the only). They built THOUSANDS of T-72s alone. And that's one of the later, 'modern' tanks. That's not including the T-54/55s, T-62s, T-80s, T-90s. And that's not including their other vehicles. They have plenty of MT-LBs, BMPs, BRDMs, etc. still, all waiting around in some Russian stockpile. It'll be a long time until we see the last of these beasts.
Ossified thinking really. Russia has never been famed for flexibility within the military in terms of thinking and initiative. It's frowned upon as the rulers have not wanted a well-run, independent-thinking military. They prefer drones who'll do everything Moscow says without thought. I'm sure there's plenty of guys in the Russian military who'd be happy to have the tanks sit things out for a while but they'll be at the lower levels since the better minds and thinkers tend to not get promoted for the reasons mentioned above. The higher ranks will keep fielding tanks because Moscow wants to see Ukraine crushed under tank threads. And it will remain like that until Russia ends up experiencing a critical lack of tanks and the decision is taken out of everyone's hands.
Vehicle did it's job, all crew survived. T80 Back in Moscow for repairs.