5 days ago
What the Army is doing to keep its tanks alive against drones
Despite the claims of internet experts, tanks and other armor aren't obsolete, but they have a major problem.
On modern battlefields, main battle tanks that were once the lords of the plains are being taken out by cheap quadcopter drones that some had written off as toys for idle hobbyists just ten years ago, despite their almost immediate weaponization by militant groups. Other threats, like loitering munitions, and a proliferation of anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) with top-attack capability like the Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW), make this one of the most dangerous times for armor since the British Mark I became the first tank to see combat on Sept. 15, 1916, on the Somme.
With armor facing threats like never before, the Army is requesting $108 million in the fiscal year 2026 budget for technology to enhance its survivability. Leaders are funding a modular suite of protection technologies that can be added to current and future armed vehicles to keep them relevant and survivable.
The branch, with thousands of Abrams tanks and armored vehicles like the Bradley and Stryker, is building the future fleet to detect threats early, disrupt them with jammers or sensor spoofing, defeat them with interceptors or directed energy weapons, and disappear using camouflage, signature reduction, and deception.
At the heart of this new approach is the Modular Active Protection System (MAPS). It is essentially an operating system for vehicle defense, designed to let the Army, or anybody else, mix and match sensors, launchers, jammers, and countermeasures across its vehicle fleet. A MAPS-compatible Bradley or Abrams could field different defensive kits depending on the mission or threat environment.
One of the key components of MAPS is the hard-kill interceptor — typically short-range projectiles designed to knock out incoming rockets, ATGMS, or drones. They're most commonly called active protection systems (APS). Systems like Trophy and Iron Fist have seen real-world success on Israeli vehicles. The Iron-First Light Decoupled was chosen to protect Bradleys while the Trophy APS has been on Abrams for some time.
These systems have their drawbacks, however. They can be easily overwhelmed, require reloading, and are expensive, though a bargain if they keep a vehicle and the crew alive.
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According to the budget documents, $92 million of the $108 million requested is going to manufacture top attack defenses, commonly called 'cope cages.' The design hasn't been finalized, so it's yet unknown how effective they will be against drone-dropped munitions, which active protection systems can struggle with due to their angle of drop and the speed of the falling munition. Systems like Iron Fist are being updated to deal with this particular top attack threat, but as we mentioned, it can be easily overwhelmed.
Another big piece of how the Army plans to protect against small drones is lasers, particularly the 50-kilowatt units mounted on Directed Energy Maneuver Short Range Air Defense, or DE M-SHORAD Stryker variants. These systems have undergone multiple rounds of testing and have been deployed to Europe and the Middle East. In these tests, the lasers proved capable of downing small drones, but not without problems. Soldiers identified that the weapon's power draw, which is significant, was complicated by the need to remain mobile and move often. Things like dust, rain, fog, and other common environmental elements on a battlefield also proved to be an issue.
Leaders are also aware that the harder you are to see, the harder you are to kill, so they're investing in other passive protection measures. Technologies such as signature management paint are mentioned in the budget, but other efforts like noise-reduction and modular camouflage systems are being implemented as well. Reducing the electromagnetic, thermal, and acoustic signatures emitted from a vehicle can give crews time to identify a threat before it identifies them, and allow soldiers to employ whatever countermeasure is appropriate.
What still remains to be seen is how effective all this will be, and if it can keep armor from sliding into irrelevance. In our latest YouTube video, we get deeper into what all these systems do well, what they don't, and if this will just turn tanks into even more expensive targets.
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