Ukrainian drone footage of an attacking Russian convoy has revealed a strange vehicle rolling across the battlefield – a tank appearing to wear a metal tent on its head.
Juriedly assembled with what appears to be a large metal structure resembling the roof of a hangar, the vehicle was seen leading a convoy towards Krasnohorivka, a town in Donetsk, in clips uploaded to Telegram by Ukrainian forces on April 9. The vehicle was first deployed on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Ukraine said the attack was ultimately repelled, but the modified vehicle, nicknamed the “turtle tank” online, became an internet star for its comically heavy armor.
Since the early days of the war in Ukraine, Russian engineers have been seen installing crude metal structures on their tanks to better protect the occupants from anti-tank fire. Ukrainian tanks were later seen following suit. Military observers, doubting their true effectiveness, often call these “survival cages”.
But the “turtle tank” goes even further, with sheet metal covering its body so extensively that the vehicle can barely rotate its cannon, as shown in a separate video posted online by open source Telegram intelligence channel CyberBoroshno. The close-up shows what looks like a T-72 covered from front to back by the roof-like structure.
CyberBoroshno later posted that, based on the images, his team had geolocated a hangar housing the “turtle tank.” It said Ukrainian forces struck the building and posted drone footage of the crashed vehicle online.
Since then, several similar Russian vehicles have been spotted online. A day after the “turtle tank” became famous on the Internet, account X open source Ukraine Battle Map posted a photo of another tank covered with a tent-shaped metal structure.
And on Tuesday, Ukrainian activist Serhii Sternenko published two photos of another vehicle covered in pallets, but this time equipped with an electronic jammer to ward off drone attacks.
Sternenko said the Russian vehicle was spotted near Krasnohorivka, where the original “turtle tank” was seen.
The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside of normal business hours by Business Insider.
The extreme tank modifications come as Ukraine turns to strikes with first-person view unmanned drones, which are cheap and often flown with explosives into the weak points of armored targets.
Drones are so widely used in warfare that they have sparked interest in unmanned aircraft that are becoming a vital part of modern conflicts elsewhere.
The evolution of these weapons has, in turn, pushed troops to experiment to increase their chances of survival on the battlefield. On April 5, Ukrainian forces said they had captured a Russian tank covered entirely in electronic jamming equipment, although the vehicle was still seen being destroyed by a first-person view drone.
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