Daily media review from Defence24 mentions that russians soldiers have to create tank armor themselves. Apparently, russian military bloggers "talked to russian tank crews" and started a trend of urging "volunteers" to produce metal containers for modules of explosive reactive armor.
The call for producing Kontakt-1 ERA modules was allegedly caused by shortage of reactive armor supplies to the russian army, notes German war analyst Patrick Senft. Although it is still not clear what is the reason for the armor deficit: be it a logistical problem or lack of industrial capacity to produce them in large numbers. The analyst says without ERA, "protection against anti-tank fire from grenade launchers or hand-held launchers such as the Javelin drops by up to 80%."
Read more: rUssians Are Equipping Tanks With "BBQ grills" Right at Factory Hoping Not to be Roasted by Javelin: What Does the New Version Look Like
On the part of Defense Express, the news about russians intending to make Kontakt-1 modules by own hands sounds unusual.
For at least the product itself is technologically complex to a fair extent: each Kontakt-1 module must be equipped with two 4S20 elements with a combined mass of 5.3 kg (without the holders), the container for 4S20 has to be resistant to rifle fire and incendiary substances. On top of that, all these modules have to be compatible with each other and work in complex, the total weight of which installed on a tank reaches 1.2 to 1.5 tons.
Earlier the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) pointed out a trend in one of its research materials – the russian troops started to chaotically cover their tanks with Kontakt-1 reactive armor, and it forced Ukrainians to spend more ammunition to take them down. Sometimes the only viable option was to immobilize the armored vehicles by aiming at the tracks.
Defense Express recently reported that russians began to equip their tanks with slat armor cages right off the assembly lines which means that making "grills" was put on mass production rails. Here we also took a look at the russian novelty – installing Kontakt-1 modules on top of the slat cage and explained how it is supposed to work.
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