The ‘ cheeks’ of the cast turret are hollow, allowing additional advanced armours to be inserted that significantly extend protection against some types of threat.Įxplosive reactive armour (ERA) is added to the outside of the vehicles and is most easily visible in the triangular armour that sits on the front of the tank turrets, although it protects the glacis too. The turret armour on Russian tanks is also relatively capable to the front of the tank. The angle of the armour – 68 degrees – increases its line-of-sight thickness to 547 mm for some of the earliest T-72 designs – it may be more for others. The frontal armour of the slope at the front of the hull, known as the glacis, typically combines high hardness steels with composites or materials like fibre glass that are known to be challenging for weapons like the RPG-7. Most of Russia’s tanks are well protected to the front.

However, if we consider the design of Russian main battle tanks – and this also applies to the Ukrainian, Polish, Chinese, Indian and many other tank fleets – these images are both less shocking, and less useful in analysing Russian armour.

They give the impression that Ukraine has found the antidote to tank warfare. Images of these tanks left as nothing more than burnt hulls, their turrets separated from the rest of the vehicle and thrown violently into a nearby ditch, may appear shocking. As the conflict has progressed, these images have come to include some of the more advanced tanks in Russia’s arsenal: the T-80BVM and T-72B3M. Some of the very first images to emerge from the war in Ukraine, apart from the devastation caused by Russia’s long-range missile strikes, were of burning Russian armoured vehicles.

Modern battle tank designs