Turtle Tanks Lost The War.
- Yigal Levin
- 1.05.2026, 8:32
How Russia went wrong and ended up in a technological dead end.
OSINT researcher Jakub Janowski, who runs the Oryx list, has written an article in which he describes the history of Russian skull tanks, and makes the argument that these tanks are a dead-end branch of military technology development.
Some of Jakub's theses:
Traditional tank protection concentrated on the frontal armor. This tended to leave other parts of the tank vulnerable. This prompted tank builders to create new types of protection: passive (armor enhancement, dynamic protection, additional structures on the tank) or active (systems for warning the crew of an attack, smoke screens, signal jammers, and ammunition interception systems).
Active protection systems are more technologically advanced and therefore longer to develop and install than passive protection. The Russians had an active defense system, the Afganit, but in practice it was only installed on the T-14 Armata, and it is still not seen in the combat zone. Accordingly, the Russians switched to an artisanal solution - the installation of screens-mangals. These screens were ineffective against Javelin ATGMs, but in some cases helped against grenades dropped from drones.
In 2024, with the delay of U.S. aid, the Ukrainians dramatically increased their use of FPV drones. After suffering significant losses, the Russians began to develop two solutions for defense. The first was tank-mounted REB equipment, but the Ukrainians responded by developing their own communications systems, and fiber-optic drones emerged. The second solution was the further evolution of mangal screens. Mangals also began to be combined with REB means and with anti-mine trawls.
The resulting turtle tanks had an obvious advantage over FPV drones: it often took 10-15 units to immobilize them, and 30-50 units to completely destroy them. However, this advantage was not decisive: Ukraine was increasing production of drones to millions per year, and spending dozens of them on a tank eventually turned out to be an acceptable price.
In turn, due to the transformation into "turtles" tanks received many disadvantages: poor maneuverability, load on the undercarriage, limited visibility, limited turret rotation angles, inability to install smoke screens and complicated evacuation of wounded vehicles. Further development of drone munitions further reduces the balance between the advantages and disadvantages of turtle tanks.
Jakub believes that the disadvantages of turtle tanks are eventually so critical that the tank ceases to fulfill the role on the battlefield that it originally performed - that of a mobile armored vehicle. Therefore, turtle tanks will not appear in the arsenal of other countries, and future solutions will clearly lie in the development of active protection.
As an example of good active protection, Jakub names the Israeli Trophy, which has proven itself in real battles. However, he notes that its ammunition is limited and clearly insufficient for combat in the context of millions of UAVs annually, which can be seen in Ukraine. Discussions and work are now underway in Israel to develop new active defense units.
Yacoub notes ongoing developments (notably by the Ukrainian company DONS) that resemble fully autonomous machine gun turrets, and believes that the active defense of the future will move in this direction. This presents multiple challenges for the tank industry: installation of additional sensors, computers for guidance, additional energy sources to power them, development of threat-identifying software.
The tanks of the future will probably have to sacrifice part of their frontal armor to allow them to carry the above improvements. However, no single system can carry protection against all threats, and sacrificing some protection against some threats in favor of others is a natural process.
Igal Levin, Facebook