Wooden pallet full of jamming devices
Ukrainians capture improvised anti-drone tank
April 11, 2024, 11:46 p.m
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Drones are a constant threat in the war in Ukraine. To better protect their attack columns, Russian troops have upgraded a T-72 into an anti-drone tank. In the event of an attack in the Donetsk region, the improvised defense system poses a challenge for the Ukrainians.
The ongoing threat posed by drones on Ukraine’s battlefields sometimes leads to extraordinary developments. In the east of the country, Ukrainian troops have now fallen into the hands of a modified Russian T-72B3M main battle tank that was equipped with several jammers.
As the Austrian portal “Future Zone” reports, among others, the jamming devices for drone defense were temporarily tied to a wooden pallet with ropes and mounted on the roof of the tank. The makeshift device is said to have blocked the control of several Ukrainian drones using different radio frequencies during a local Russian attack near the village of Terny in the Donetsk region a few days ago.
According to the Ukrainian military blog Defense Express, the T-72B3M led the Russian attack column and was apparently tasked with protecting the formation from attacks by FPV drones. However, the attack was repelled by elements of the 95th Airborne Brigade and the 60th Mechanized Brigade. The anti-drone tank was ultimately damaged by a kamikaze drone and abandoned by its crew. According to their own statements, Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov Brigade were later able to recover the tracked vehicle in a night-and-dagger operation and examine it more closely.
According to Defense Express, the “crown” of the tracked vehicle consists of six Chinese-made patch antennas and several interference devices, powered by batteries and a generator. The interference range of the structure is therefore 500 to 800 meters for DJI Mavic drones and 50 to 150 meters for drones with the ExpressLRS radio system. In addition, the captured vehicle is likely to give the Ukrainians further insights into Russia’s electronic warfare, but these are not publicly communicated.