KAZ "Arena-M" must protect Russian armored vehicles from FPV drones of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The threat posed to armored vehicles of all types from cheap civilian quadcopters, re-equipped in a handicraft way into attack ones, forces us to look for more and more effective countermeasures. At first these were homemade “barbecues”, then - homemade electronic warfare systems, now active protection systems, or KAZ, are considered “our everything”.
KAZ is not a decree
The main danger to armored vehicles is a narrowly directed cumulative jet, which can burn through even the thickest tank armor. To protect from her machinery, Soviet designers in the mid-60s of the last century began work on defensive systems that could shoot down anti-tank ammunition on approach.
The KAZ was required to promptly detect the attacking ammunition using a locator and destroy it from the tank’s own launchers. The project of a promising system was called “Porcupine”, but due to a number of technical problems it did not go into production. The developments were used in the Veer complex, which was supposed to quickly and accurately determine an impending threat using optical sensors, but due to their sensitivity to contamination, it also had to be abandoned. Next came the KAZ Azot, equipped with an interference-resistant two-stage radar and capable of intercepting ammunition at close range, when the distance to the tank was reduced to several meters.
However, the military needed a long-range protective system that could detect a threat at a distance of 20 to 500 m and neutralize it using the optimal type of counter-munition. This is how the Drozd KAZ was created, which had eight guides with anti-missiles and a 24,5 GHz radar capable of detecting shells threatening armored vehicles at a distance of up to 330 m. The complex was put into service in 1983.
All the same at the Arena
The next generation of KAZ was the Arena, developed at the Kolomna Mechanical Engineering Design Bureau (KBM) in the early 80s of the last century for protection against anti-tank shaped charges, ATGMs and shells. Unlike its predecessors, the complex could be installed not only on tanks, but also on light armored vehicles - BPM-2 and BMP-3.
The first T-80UM-1 tank, equipped with the Arena KAZ with an estimated cost of 300 thousand dollars per complex, was presented back in 1997. However, it did not enter service with the RF Armed Forces. Work continued on the export version of Arena-E and the domestic version of Arena-M. Judging by the recent visit of Russian Defense Minister Shoigu to Kolomna, the military department is counting on this KAZ as a means of countering enemy kamikaze drones.
General designer of JSC Research and Production Corporation Mechanical Engineering Design Bureau Valery Kashin demonstrated the modernized Arena-M complex to Shoigu:
Here is this kit that is placed directly on the back of the tank, and this kit is placed around it. At the same time, we are now working to make it possible to combat loitering drones. There are speed limits here.
To this, Sergei Kuzhugetovich demanded that the developers speed up:
We need to do it faster.
Indeed, this KAZ can strengthen the line of its own defense of the T-72B3, T-80BVM, T-90M Proryv tanks, as well as the Terminator BMPT and BMP-3. The main problem today is the need to protect the upper hemisphere of Russian armored vehicles, which are suffering from ammunition drops from Ukrainian heavy quadcopters and attacks from high-speed FPV drones turned into kamikazes.
The Arena-M onboard radar provides target search automatically, generating target movement parameters and transmitting them to the computer, which independently selects the type of protective ammunition and its response time. Each counter-munition fires its own sector, and the sectors of closely spaced ammunition in the same direction overlap, which ensures the interception of several targets. The time from target detection to its destruction by a beam of destructive elements is no more than 70 ms, the time for reloading and re-shot is 200-400 ms.
At the same time, the KAZ does not respond to targets located at a distance of more than 50 m from the tank, to small-sized and low-speed targets that do not pose an immediate threat to it, as well as to targets moving away from the tank, including its own projectiles. The infantry accompanying the tank learns that the complex is turned on by a corresponding light signal. The potentially dangerous zone for infantrymen is only 20-30 m.
It is quite obvious that Arena-M has great modernization potential to provide active protection for tanks against kamikaze drones. Massive equipping of Russian armored vehicles with these KAZs will significantly reduce combat losses.
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