Russia's New 'Hedgehog' Tanks Burn Out Transmissions, Sink In Water

First the Russians tried the turtle tank, then the porcupine tank. Both were thought to be impervious to FPV attack drones. In reality on the battlefield, not so much.

Their latest innovation is the hedghog tank, which looks like an impassibly overgrown thicket. It does appear somewhat more effective against drones. But there are two problems. And they're big ones: the hedgehog is so weighted down with additional metal that it tend to sink in Ukraine's infamously marshy, muddy fall, winter, spring landscape. If it even makes it that far, because the extra weight causes its transmissions and gear boxes to burn out after a few kilometers. JL

David Axe reports in Trench Art and Igor Kossov reports:

Fitted with a front-mounted mine-roller and wrapped in layers of explosive reactive armor and anti-drone chains, cage armor and wire spines, a hedgehog tank—like its cousins the turtle tank and porcupine tank—weighs tons more than its engine and transmission can reliably handle. So it’s sluggish. That might not be an issue on firm, dry ground. It’s a huge issue while fording one of the many rivers that thread across the 700-mile no-man’s-land. And Russian crews complain that hefty, improvised armor shells break the transmission on their tanks after just a few kilometers. One such tank “didn't even make it 10 kilometers before one of the side gearboxes failed.”   If the armor shell is mounted on the turret, it burns out, making the turret impossible to rotate

The most absurdly up-armored tank type so far in Russia’s 45-month wider war on Ukraine is, with its layers of improvised anti-drone armor, ugly as sin.

But that doesn’t mean the type isn’t effective for its designed purpose: eating dozens of Ukrainian first-person-view drones while clearing mines and leading an assault group toward its objective.

If the modified tank has a weakness, however, it’s mobility. Fitted with a front-mounted mine-roller and wrapped in layers of explosive reactive armor and anti-drone chains, cage armor and wire spines, a hedgehog tank—like its cousins the turtle tank and porcupine tank—weighs tons more than its engine and transmission can reliably handle.

It’s sluggish. That might not be an issue on firm, dry ground. It’s a huge issue while fording one of the many rivers that thread across the 700-mile no-man’s-land.Russian crews complain that hefty, improvised armor shells break the transmission on their tanks after just a few kilometers. 

According to interview excerpts posted by Russian tank historian Andrei Tarasenko, mounting this “tsar mangal” style turtle armor on the tank’s chassis quickly overloads the gearboxes. 

One Russian tank “didn't even make it 10 kilometers before one of the side gearboxes failed,” an interviewee told Russian outlet Vault8. This tank was equipped with a makeshift shell made out of cables.  

If the armor shell is instead mounted on the turret, the weight burns out the driver, making the turret impossible to rotate, especially by hand. 

Passing along his colleagues’ words, Khartia spokesman Volodymyr Dehtiaryov said that improvised armor that weighs several tons does take Russian tanks out of order quickly.

However, he added that the Russians don’t seem to mind losing tanks in this way, as long as they are able to get close enough to inflict enough damage to Ukrainian positions. 

According to Tarasenko’s post, the Russians are also complaining about shortages of reactive armor, especially the modern Relikt system. Russian crews are trying to make up for the shortage with improvised solutions. 

“On the turret cheeks, there’s a homemade version from garage workshops — sheet metal shaped like factory plating with an explosive insert from the UR-77 mine-clearing line charge. It works about 50/50 at a 45 degree angle,” the Russian crewman is quoted as saying. 

Tanks struggle to evolve in the age of drone warfare

Tanks often lead Russian mechanized assaults, absorbing drone attacks with their bolted-on armor, clearing mines with their front-mounted rollers, and firing their cannons to suppress Ukrainian troops.

This add-on armor comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and weight profiles, evolving over the course of the full-scale invasion from simple cages, to solid steel sheds, to an arrangement of bristling cables, resembling the quills of a porcupine.

There is evidence to suggest that improvised armor is effective at letting the tanks survive more hits from certain types of drones, like FPVs. Some Russian assaults hinge on whether the defenders can run out of drones before the Russians run out of vehicles to overwhelm their positions.