“Karna La Vera (KLV)” is a milblogger that specializes in posting videos of military equipment being destroyed collected from both sides of the war in Ukraine. On Friday KLV posted a compilation recording on YouTube of a series of multiple Russian first-person view (FPV) attack drones striking a Ukrainian Leopard 1A5 main battle tank in an unidentified area of the combat zone.
While it is not possible to confirm that the images show the same main battle tank, the vehicle in the video has some common characteristics that suggest it does feature in each segment: it is carrying non-standard additional armored protection and has a distinctive, camouflaged “cope cage” covering the turret and crew compartment.
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Images of the Leopard tank showed it standing stationary in an area of trees. While in this position it was hit in quick succession by five quadcopter FPV drones: three striking the frontal area and two more to the rear, left side. The tank withstood these initial attacks and moved out from cover.
It began to move along a road, before stopping for some unknown reason at which time it came under attack again, taking three more drone hits to the engine and transmission compartment. This was apparently still not enough to immobilize it, as it began to move forward again before being hit another two times, the last hit stopping the tank and causing it to begin to burn.
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The Ukrainian military issues news site Militarniy reported that while it was unclear if the tank crew were able to escape but suggests that as the majority of the hits were not to the crew compartment and the interval between hits was such that it would have given them time to get out.
The survivability of the tank and its crew was undoubtedly due to the additional protective equipment provided to the Leopard 1 by the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Main Armored Directorate. The tank was originally designed in the 1960s when the main threat to the tank was seen to be “face-to-face” engagements with enemy tanks making the priority for the designers of the Leopard frontal protection, high mobility and firepower.
The threats to the tank on the Ukrainian battlefield include attacks from every direction by FPV kamikaze drones or “bombers” dropping weapons from above as well as modern “tandem” and “top attack” anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), hence the need for enhancements to the basic tank to provide “all-round protection.”
For Ukraine’s (and Russia’s) current tank fleet these include metal overhead “cope cage” screens and netting over the turret and engine compartments intended to cause the premature detonation from above and provide sufficient “stand-off” to prevent penetration. These are supplemented by grille-like slat armor over vulnerable areas to the rear and sides of the tank to resist shaped charge warheads from ATGM and drones.
On top of all that Ukraine’s Leopards and other armored vehicles have been fitted with explosive reactive armor (ERA) – a series of explosive filled boxes, designed to detonate when impacted by the enemy’s weapons and thereby to disrupt or destroy attacking anti-tank missiles and armor piercing rounds.
A December Militariy report told how a similarly up-armored M1A1 Abrams tank from Ukraine’s 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade was hit by at least six Russian fiber-optic controlled FPV drones, but the crew escaped unscathed and, as the tank commander said, the “ the Russian FPV crews hit the [now immobile] tank with several more drones… but it was not destroyed and can still be saved.”
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