Covering Tanks with Netted Drones: Unconventional Techniques for Protecting Armored Vehicles

30
Covering Tanks with Netted Drones: Unconventional Techniques for Protecting Armored Vehicles

Western military thought continues to seek ways to protect armored vehicles from UAVs, which have become the main aerial threat to ground forces during the Ukrainian conflict.

Unconventional protection concepts were presented at the IAV 2025 (International Armoured Vehicles 2025) conference in Farnborough, England tanks using dronesAt this point, these are just ideas, not solutions that can be immediately applied on the battlefield.



One proposal shown at IAV 2025 envisions a “flock” of small quadcopters covering a column of tanks by holding a camouflaged net over them. The concept’s developers plan to use a Kevlar net, which would make it lightweight. However, it is unclear how such a covering would work in windy conditions.


Another concept involves creating active cover for moving tanks from the UAVs themselves. They will fly above the MBT, creating a kind of aerial minefield. Loitering munitions attacking the tanks will fall into this “shield” or will be actively destroyed by the UAV defenders. In a similar way, they can cover other troop formations, such as infantry columns.
30 comments
Information
Dear reader, to leave comments on the publication, you must sign in.
  1. +2
    5 February 2025 09: 41
    "A children's toy" that until recently NO ONE took seriously has caused a stir and made the wildly important and serious uncles and aunties move their brains.
    1. 0
      5 February 2025 09: 48
      It's easy to come up with ideas - it's harder to implement them!!! And who will protect these copters from attacks from above, and a drone can easily slip under the net...?!! am
      1. +4
        5 February 2025 10: 01
        .... sawyers and pranksters, and nothing more. laughing
    2. -3
      5 February 2025 09: 48
      The guys didn't have the guts to use a nuclear EMP
      1. +1
        5 February 2025 13: 27
        A regular microwave magnetron in a tin can on a stick, pointed towards an approaching drone, from 10-30 m will simply burn out all the electronics and it will simply fall to the ground... or its detonator will work and it will explode. You just need to keep an eye on it and point it towards the threat and turn it on for a few seconds.
        And a nuclear EMP will cover everyone indiscriminately.
        1. +1
          5 February 2025 19: 56
          Quote: bayard
          A regular microwave magnetron in a tin can on a stick

          These are fakes from Kriosan laughing The Listva mine clearing machine works on this principle, but they won't even deign to equip tanks with them. It's a question of energy. Listva blocks remote detonation during manual mine clearing and forces the electronic fuse to work, and only at 50-70 meters. A simple contact fuse, like an RPG shot, is of no use to it. And a drone flying by inertia, even having lost control and with burnt-out microcircuits, ten or twenty meters from the target, will most likely hit the target. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have had one advantage throughout the entire period of the Second World War and now - drones. And until recently, an overwhelming one. And catching up with them is problematic. And Listva is based on microwaves, not EMP. It's a question of energy. Only special ammunition has a sufficient level of energy. Firstly, it can be used in the form of an airborne, low-power explosion, and we will receive negligible damage to the environment. These are ready-made special ammunition for SAMs. One high-altitude explosion can knock out all of Ukraine's electronics, but it will also knock out all of the satellites. We need a smaller zone of destruction and to avoid hitting our own units, so it's airborne. The video of the nuclear SAM test is described as high-altitude, but of course airborne. One person is preventing the enemy's defeat, and Zelensky has already been declared a subject of the treaty.
  2. +4
    5 February 2025 09: 41
    And what if it's winter, heavy snowfall?? Snow will settle on the net, drones won't be able to withstand such a mass, they will fall together with the net.....
    No, really. They came up with some kind of crap. Perverts.
    1. +4
      5 February 2025 09: 49
      Perverts are spot on!! Literally and figuratively. The main frog is worth something.))
    2. 0
      5 February 2025 09: 49
      Nexcom, a flock of drones, and what if one or two units have a technical failure? The network camouflages if I understand correctly, but does not protect in itself, so the enemy's "bird" will still see it in the infrared or some other spectrum. And it will point to the column that is in the arsenal.
      1. +4
        5 February 2025 09: 51
        And the net won't help against artillery and missiles - they'll just cover the column, not with drones, and that's it - the target isn't a single, "fat" one. Okay, not artillery and missiles - FABs with UMPK. Will the net help much? They'll blow the column to smithereens. But they came up with nonsense...
    3. -1
      5 February 2025 09: 56
      Quote: Nexcom
      No, really. They came up with some kind of crap. Perverts.

      The net cannot be to the ground, which means there is a chance to come in from the side. The piles of covering UAVs will not have time to work on the drop from above, if they are not covered with a solid "roof" (until the first gust of wind). No.
      1. +1
        5 February 2025 10: 39
        ....the next "ideas" are imperial cruisers and portable Death Stars with Jedi troops.....
        1. -2
          5 February 2025 11: 07
          It's enough to send stormtroopers with machine guns, like in "Starship Troopers"
          whoever survives will become citizens of the US no Canada wassat
          1. -1
            5 February 2025 11: 13
            It's better to train the arachnids and rent their superbrain - the Americans have less and less of their own...
  3. The comment was deleted.
  4. +1
    5 February 2025 10: 13
    Is it not possible to defend yourself with net throwers and buckshot instead of smoke grenades?
  5. 0
    5 February 2025 10: 15
    Well, okay, we've raised the network. What next? Rain, wind? And how will the ground air defense forces work? Through a "shield of drones"? Who will cover this shield then? Another shield? And what if an "enemy" drone hooks this network and starts "tugging" it, along with the carriers?
    1. -1
      5 February 2025 11: 08
      Which drone will fly in? The light one will get tangled, the heavy one won't reach because the air defense on the march can cut it off by going through the gaps in the net, and the electronic warfare as well as the machine gun fire at a large target are not hindered by the net. All conditions are successfully met.
  6. +5
    5 February 2025 10: 17
    If we develop this concept, without denying ourselves anything, then in the end there will be a cloud of small, like sparrows, drones, flying side by side, accompanying the equipment, and protecting simply with their body, kinetically. And if we continue to fantasize, then this swarm should, upon detecting an attacking object, rush towards it in a crowd.
    I understand that this is fantasy, but the video from Chinese shows with swarms inspired this)
    1. 0
      5 February 2025 11: 10
      how many drones are there in the second picture no armored vehicles are needed
      1. 0
        5 February 2025 12: 20
        Quote from: nepunamemuk
        how many drones are there in the second picture no armored vehicles are needed

        good And if you imagine that this flying minefield will fall on her, it looks absolutely fantastic)
  7. +2
    5 February 2025 10: 27
    The first star wars had force fields, too bad it's science fiction
  8. +1
    5 February 2025 10: 37
    Well, as an option with a light nylon fishing net in 2-3 layers with hanging on the sides will do. True, it will not be very possible to stealthily overtake the column, it will be visible anyway, but it can be used locally. The question is in the coordination and interference protection of the drones carrying the net.
  9. -4
    5 February 2025 10: 51
    Western military thought continues to seek methods of protecting armored vehicles from UAVs

    When a life-or-death war begins, drooling and puffed-up cheeks will not count. In a mortal combat, the winner will be the one who will use any means to destroy the enemy... If it is necessary to use an EMP - they will use it, if it is necessary to "glaze the territory" - they will set it on fire... And they will not run after drones with nets for catching butterflies and throw goat poop at them.
    * * *
    I cannot understand with my mind who advised our Supreme Command to fight the Western gang with the methods it is fighting now? And why didn't it try the experience of the victors? Maybe it decided to correct to its heart's content, until...?
  10. +2
    5 February 2025 11: 14
    One landmine would be enough to rip through this sheet. wink
  11. +2
    5 February 2025 11: 31
    There is such a method: to throw deliberate disinformation to the enemy, so that he starts to disperse scientific and production forces and try to understand the slipped false concept. Perhaps this nonsense is from the same series, but you can't fool us :)
  12. +1
    5 February 2025 11: 34
    This bourgeois idea was criticized... "here and now"! And yet, I dare to admit! The ideas described in the article (both the first and the second...) were invented by me, too, a long time ago! Moreover, the idea with the net-"canopy" was "initially intended for protection against small-caliber cluster bombs! (At the end of the last century, during the civil wars on the territory of Yugoslavia, the Serbian offensives were repeatedly thwarted due to the massive use of cluster bombs by NATO aircraft!) Later, this idea was transformed into the idea of ​​​​an "air minefield" (AMF), capable of fighting not only UAVs, but also artillery shells and rockets! By the way, AMF can also serve as a means of object air defense (up to protecting ships!) P.S. Don't throw slippers at me! I've already hidden under the sofa!
  13. 0
    5 February 2025 11: 35
    During the Great Patriotic War, German planes had their wings clipped with steel cables tied to balloons. Now you can experiment with steel cables, only untwisted at high speed. The price is three kopecks, a rod, a motor, a cable. Something like a country house trimmer))). The blast wave will tear off the grate, the net, the steel plates, and the "trimmer", but if desired, you can prepare a large number of them and activate them as they are destroyed.
  14. +1
    5 February 2025 15: 32
    The energy costs of maintaining such a grid are beyond reason.
  15. 0
    6 February 2025 01: 00
    Actually, these drones themselves are easily vulnerable. Blow up a few attack drones with pellets above them and the whole network will go down. Then you can burn tanks as usual.
    A regular barbecue turns out to be both simpler and more reliable.
  16. 0
    6 February 2025 13: 54
    it is clear that in all this. the matter is with the turrets or the APS, otherwise it will be difficult to solve this problem