In 1916, British engineer William Tritton designed a new kind of tank that he believed would protect the crew from the greatest threat that tanks—then new in mechanized warfare—faced on the battlefields of World War I: artillery.
That “Flying Elephant” tank was, in essence, a heavy-duty tractor fitted with guns and wrapped in steel plating up to three inches thick. The armour covered the chassis like the floppy ears of a thick-skulled elephant, apparently giving the tank its name.
One hundred and eight years later, some enterprising Russian engineers modified at least one tank in a way they clearly believed would protect the crew from the greatest threat that tanks—now workhorses of mechanized warfare—face on the battlefield in Ukraine: small explosive drones.
They mounted atop the tank a roof of steel armour that covers the entire vehicle and even protrudes halfway along the length of the tank’s main gun. It’s a modern Flying Elephant, and it participated in a recent attack on Ukrainian positions around Krasnohorivka, in Donetsk Oblast in the east.
A Ukrainian drone spotted the ungainly tank, and befuddled Ukrainian drone operators circulated a screenshot on social media. One open-source intelligence analyst compared the apparent T-62, T-72, T-80 or T-90 tank to a turtle. “This confirms my suspicions that the ‘T’ in ‘T-90’ stands for ‘turtle.’” Astraia Intel wrote.
What’s especially tragic about the bizarre modification is that, besides blocking the turret’s traverse and—owing to its obvious weight and size—seriously impeding the tank’s mobility, this particular add-on armor also won’t work.
That’s because Ukrainian FPV drone operators are adept at maneuvering their two-pound drones to hit tanks where they’re weakest. For the Russian Flying Elephant, that would mean ducking the FPV underneath the outer lip of the roof-like armor.
If you doubt a drone pilot can pull off the maneuver, consider a recent incident around Berdychi, also in Donetsk Oblast. Harried by drones, three Russian troops took shelter underneath an immobilized Russian tank. So a drone operator simply guided the next drone into the narrow space where the Russians cowered: underneath the tank and between its treads.
Laugh if you must at the unfortunate crew of the Russian Flying Elephant, but don’t laugh for long. Battlefield improvisations are responses to new threats. As the threats endure, the improvisations become more sophisticated—until they’re no longer improvisations.
As drones became the main threats to tanks in Ukraine in the months following Russia’s wider invasion of the country starting in February 2022, the Russians—and later, the Ukrainians—borrowed a method from combatants in Syria and began welding crude metal roofs and cages onto their tanks.
Two years later, cage armor is standard not just on many Russian and Ukrainian tanks, but also on Israeli tanks taking part in the invasion of Gaza.
And improvisation doesn’t apply only to armor. The Russian and Ukrainian militaries are also attaching different combinations of radio jammers and antennae to various vehicles in the hope of immobilizing incoming drones. Some of these jammers are bizarre, but that doesn’t mean they can’t work.
The Russians and Ukrainians are also creating entirely new vehicle types by mixing and matching spare chassis and weapons—again responding to battlefield conditions until the responses become standard practice.
Perhaps most notably, the Ukrainian territorial forces bolt old MT-12 anti-tank guns to old MT-LB armored tractors to produce a new kind of self-propelled tank-destroyer: the MT-LB-12.
“Why go to the trouble?” asked weapons historian Matthew Moss. “Perhaps the most likely answer is speed into action. While an MT-LB towing an MT-12 can in theory get the gun into action in under two minutes, the creation of this ad hoc tank-destroyer allows the gun to be brought into and out of action faster.”
All that is to say, don’t scrutinize the design of the Russian Flying Elephant. Scrutinize the intent. As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its third year, the Ukrainians ramp up drone production to more than 100,000 FPVs a month and Russian tank losses exceed 2,600, Russian tankers face an existential choice: adapt or die.
After all, “anything that moves on the battlefield is seen and hit with a drone,” said Samuel Bendett, an advisor to Virginia-based CNA focusing on Russian military technology.
Rather than die, the Russians are adapting. And as crude as the Flying Elephant’s roof armour is, it points to the coming era of mechanized warfare, where every tank must have extra protection from drones.
Source: Forbes