🤫 Can every tank be fitted with an air defense system, active protection and other equipment turning it into a miniature S-300? And should it? In the 1980s, the Americans considered this and proposed a different approach: a dedicated vehicle called BODYGUARD that would carry all these sophisticated devices. The BODYGUARD concept is a specialized platform for security and area protection, intended to escort convoys, tank sections and platoons. Its primary task is to establish a protective perimeter using electro-optical countermeasures, electronic warfare, decoys, obscurant screens and active protection systems. The vehicle weighs between 15 and 17 tonnes and has a crew of two, although the design also envisaged fully robotic or autonomous operation. Survivability is provided by lightweight modular composite armor that can be adapted to specific missions, alongside technologies that reduce its multispectral signature. Its mission equipment provides 360-degree coverage and includes laser and radar warning systems, acoustic detectors and an identification friend-or-foe system. Many people now associate the tank’s “revival,” meaning its ability to perform its tasks, with the emergence and widespread adoption of active protection systems. But is that really the case? Take Kaplya, a drone payload developed by the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, VNIITF. It is a 140-mm explosively formed penetrator with a copper and zirconium liner, capable of penetrating a tank’s vulnerable aspects, such as its sides and roof, from tens of meters away. Similar developments exist in Ukraine and other countries. A drone carrying such a payload therefore simply stays outside the engagement range of active protection countermunitions, while reactive armor of the flat directional type fails to react to the explosively formed penetrator and is penetrated. Of course, this problem can also be addressed, but all of this would turn the tank into what Zvezda recently described: a T-14 Armata upgraded into a short-range surface-to-air missile system. In my view, that is a dead end. An even bigger problem than the tank’s vulnerability is its high cost and slow production rate. This approach, involving active protection and a hybrid tank/SAM system, would drive that cost even higher. #info #tank #SAM #UAV #FPV #EW #Armata
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