• Skua@kbin.earth
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    5 hours ago

    It has a active protection system which can handle incoming missiles, that will be a solid defence against drones too. Russia has developed an APS which they’ve used successfully in the invasion, but they only had it ready a few months before their full-scale invasion started, so it’s only on newly-built or fully-refurbished tanks. It also has the drawback that it was initially designed to deal with missiles; Ukraine figured out that it could eventually be overwhelmed by just sending enough drones at it to drain its relatively limited ammo, something that would be impractical with expensive missiles, but until then it apparently handles incoming drones pretty effectively. The Challenger’s one has the benefits of being designed with the knowledge of what drone warfare looks like

    It’s also worth noting that nobody publishes videos of drone attacks failing. A cheap little quadcopter with a grenade strapped to it is, ultimately, jut a way to throw a grenade unusually far. A tank like this can shrug off a grenade. Attacking them requires bigger, heavier, more expensive drones carrying bigger, heavier, more expensive munitions. Or you use the drone to sight artillery. But the point remains that even in the age of drone warfare, tanks are still harder to kill. There’s a reason both sides are still using them