Russian military school trains crews of “shed-tanks”
4 November, 2024 Russian T-72B3 in the "tank-shed" format at the Kazan Tank School of the Russian Federation, October 2024. Photo: RIA Novosti Russia's only tank military school has begun training crews on tanks with the solid anti-drone superstructures, which have become popular at the front.
This became known from a report by the Russian ZvezdaTV channel. Based on the experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the Kazan Higher Military Tank Command School has introduced into the tanker training course exercises on driving vehicles with the solid anti-drone superstructures, also called turtle tanks or shed-tanks. According to the representatives of the military university, the use of such home-made modernized vehicles has proven to be highly effective in battles saturated with attack drones.
In particular, they cite as an example an episode where such a vehicle allegedly withstood "a hit from about a hundred FPV drones."
A Russian tank with shed at the Kazan Tank School of the Russian Federation, October, 2024
However, the superstructures themselves still remain a grassroots initiative and are built from the scrap materials by the tankers themselves or, in the case of the vehicle in the photo, by the military school. The report showed cadets practicing maneuvering and interacting with units on a modernized T-72B3 tank with a "shed". The superstructure significantly limits the field of view and the ability to fire.
View from the inside of a Russian tank-shed, October 2024
In addition, Russian tankers are also practicing underwater combat vehicle control, evacuation in the event of flooding, and evacuation from a hit-and-run vehicle.
Separately, the future officers are also trained to operate unmanned systems, such as Mavic drones or FPV copters.
Tank-shed
The concept of maximizing tank protection at the expense of other characteristics was invented by the Russian military in the context of the non-stop assault tactics, where vehicles are sent to the prepared positions in the frontal attacks until they exhaust the defense. Such vehicles mostly lose the ability to fire and actively participate in combat, focusing on making passages through minefields and focusing enemy fire on themselves, moving at the head of a mechanized column of assault vehicles. For this purpose tanks are sheathed from all angles with the metal structures, the steel sheets, nets, and other improvised materials.
The vehicles are also equipped with mine trawls and the dome electronic drone jammers.
In fact, such "sheds" can only move towards the enemy positions as "icebreakers" for armored vehicles that follow them, and then retreat back.