Russia wants its tanks moving again after two years of Ukrainian drones freezing its armored assaults, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported. Its main bet is a tank-mounted system that fires interceptors at incoming drones. The system worked on at least one tank, but Russia lost it anyway.

Since 2022, cheap Ukrainian FPV drones have turned the open approach to any position into ground where armor rarely survives, forcing Russia into slow, infantry-led assaults and years of experiments to armor its tanks against drones.

The shield shot down some drones. Ukraine still killed the tank.

In early August, footage surfaced of Ukrainian drones destroying a Russian tank fitted with the Arena-M active protection system in the Dobropillia sector of Donetsk Oblast. Militarnyi identified the vehicle as a T-72B3A, side number 133, and Militarnyi reported that Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) released the clip. ISW geolocated the footage near occupied Volodymyrivka, east of Dobropillia.

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Dmytro Putiata, a Ukrainian combat drone specialist who posts as kriegsforscherD, spoke with the unit involved. On that tank, Arena-M shot down seven drones before its magazine ran dry, he said.

"Unfortunately, it works," Putiata wrote.

It still wasn't enough. Ukrainian crews finished the tank off with more drones. It took 15 to 20 first-person-view (FPV) drones to kill each vehicle, Putiata said. Footage shows the tank moving with its interceptor cells empty. It was the first time the Arena-M was credited with shooting drones down in combat.

Russia keeps sending tanks into that ground for a reason

Russian forces are experimenting with new technology to restore mechanized maneuver and break out of positional warfare—the static, trench-like fighting that has defined the front, ISW reported. They are fitting tanks with active protection systems to help armor survive in the "kill zone," the open ground where drones and other weapons destroy almost anything that moves.

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ISW judged that Arena-M alone cannot shield Russian assaults from the drones, let alone the rest of Ukraine's weapons. Russian commanders have largely kept tanks off the roads because drones kill them faster than factories rebuild them. In these assaults, the tank's job is less to fight than to survive long enough to drop infantry closer to Ukrainian lines. Russia will likely keep trying to restore maneuver even after its late-July mechanized assault in the Dobropillia sector failed, ISW added.

Why Russia wants the shield: the cages don't let tanks fight

The bolt-on armor carries a cost. Cope cages and "turtle" shells weigh tanks down and often jam the turret so the main gun can't aim. That trade-off is part of why Russia wants Arena-M: protection without the bulk, so a tank can still move and shoot. Russia recently sent tanks stripped of the welded cages, carrying the shield instead.

Arena-M is not new. Active protection systems like it were first built to stop anti-tank missiles, and Russia adapted this one to catch drones. The system's lineage dates back to the late Soviet era, and Russian industry has for years claimed mass deployment that never came. Designers worked on fitting it to T-72B3 and T-90M tanks since at least 2019, yet only single vehicles turned up by 2024—some used to shoot a propaganda film rather than fight.

Ukraine is testing a new electronic-warfare solution to protect heavy bomber drones and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) from cheaper FPV drones. The project has reached field testing, with several prototypes sent to military units, RBC-Ukraine reports.

Ukraine's war has become a laboratory for the economics of unmanned combat, where a mass-produced quadcopter can take down platforms that cost dozens of times more, forcing both volunteer foundations and defense firms to look for asymmetric answers on the electronic side of the front.

$20,000 bomber vs. $300 drone

The gap runs more than 60-to-1. Liuba Shypovych, head of the Dignitas foundation, told RBC-Ukraine that a heavy bomber can cost around $20,000, while an FPV drone capable of damaging or destroying it can cost about $300. Shypovych said the bombers are particularly vulnerable because they are relatively slow and less maneuverable than smaller FPVs, and that shootdowns are becoming increasingly frequent.

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Yet Ukraine cannot simply stop using the larger drones. According to Shypovych, they are used to deliver water, food, and ammunition to positions that are difficult or impossible to reach by ground. The military therefore approached Dignitas with a request to protect the platforms, and the team is working on the task together with the company Aura.

The jammer has a problem of its own

Equipping a heavy bomber with electronic warfare creates an unusual technical problem. The bomber needs a communications link with its operator, but the same EW system designed to disrupt an incoming enemy FPV could also interfere with that control channel. The problem extends to UGVs, including platforms used to evacuate wounded soldiers. Shypovych said the goal is to develop EW that can counter hostile drones without cutting the Ukrainian platform's own communications.

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From the test range to the first units

Dignitas and Aura are testing the systems at training grounds and have already sent several samples to military units. Shypovych expects the solution to be ready in roughly two months.

The effort comes as Ukraine rapidly expands its use of unmanned ground systems. Kyiv has set a target to contract at least 50,000 UGVs, with robots already taking on logistics and evacuation tasks in high-risk zones. Ukrainian forces have already received 1,028 UGVs through the DOT-Chain Defense marketplace, with the systems handling logistics, evacuation, mine-laying, and combat. Ukrainian Vampire bombers have also been upgraded to shrug off Russian jamming and even hunt the jammers themselves.