Russians Weld Anti-Javelin Missile Cages Onto Tanks Outside Ukraine
WORLDHAL TURNER 21 FEBRUARY 2022 HITS: 20511
With the use of force seemingly necessary to confront NATO’s encroachment toward Russia’s Borders, the Russians are improving their tanks to render Javelin anti-tank missiles useless. Cages are being welded to the tops of tanks to cause the Javelins to detonate BEFORE they impact the top of the tank, theoretically rendering the missiles useless.
Much media attention has been given lately to the fact that western governments in NATO have been supplying advanced weaponry to Ukraine, fearing a Russian invasion of that country is now imminent. One of the advanced weapons given en-masse to Ukraine, is the Javelin anti-tank missile from the USA.
The FGM-148 Javelin is an American man-portable fire-and-forget anti-tank missile in US service.
It uses automatic infrared guidance that allows the user to seek cover immediately after launch, as opposed to wire-guided systems, which require the user to guide the weapon throughout the engagement.
The Javelin’s High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) warhead is capable of defeating modern tanks by hitting them from above (i.e. “top-attack”) where their armor is thinnest, and is also useful against fortifications in a direct attack flight. As of January 2019, over 5,000 Javelin missiles have been fired in combat.
A top attack weapon is designed to attack armored vehicles from above as a form of plunging fire, as the armor is usually thinnest on the top of the vehicle. Ideally, it will penetrate perpendicular to the attacked surface. The device may be delivered (often as a submunition) by an anti-tank guided missile, mortar or artillery shell, or even an emplaced munition such as a mine.
Top attack munitions use either a high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead for direct impact or near impact, or an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) warhead for over-flight of the target.
The top attack concept is fairly new and was first put into service by the Swedish in 1988 with the Bofors RBS 56 BILL top-attack anti-tank missile.
As shown in the photo at the top of this story, the Russians have been welding metal cage-like structures to the tops of their tanks. In THEORY, when a soldier from an enemy force (Ukraine?) fires a Javelin missile, and the missile flies upwards so it can then strike while coming vertically down, perpendicular to the tank top, the Javelin will hit the metal cage FIRST, thus causing its warhead to detonate BEFORE it actually strikes the tank armor.
In THEORY, the force of the detonation would then be dispersed mostly OUTSIDE the tank, and not affect the armor at all, or at least less than a direct impact would. In THEORY, the tank survives the Javelin missile.
A second improvement seen on Russian tanks outside Ukraine is “Reactive” armor. These are small square packets attached to the outside of the tank, shown in the image below:
These rectangular boxes contain explosives that detonate when something hits them hard enough – something like an incoming round from another tank, or an incoming missile.
The idea is that the force of the incoming attack is instantly blasted backward, away from the tank, before it actually strikes the tank armor. This explosive charge outside the tank lessens or deflects the energy of the item that is attacking the tank itself. When the energy of the attacking item is lessened or deflected, then the attack may not penetrate the tank armor, thus saving the tank.
None of these technologies existed in World War one or two. They didn’t exist in the Korean war or the war in Vietnam. They started being developed before the Iraq-Kuwait war, and saw action in those conflicts, where the technologies proved very valuable in protecting tanks.
Man-portable missiles, however, have also seen great technological improvement over the years, so it may prove interesting to see if $20 worth of steel cages, can defeat a Javelin which cost tens-of-thousands of dollars each.
The Russians have an interesting history with such simple developments.
For instance, when NASA deployed the Apollo Space program, they spent millions to develop a pen with an internal, manual ink pump, to push ink upward to the pen tip, while an astronaut was laying in his chair in space without gravity. As the astronaut pushed on the pen to write, the push caused the pump to be depressed, thereby pushing ink upward toward the pen tip.
Rather than spend millions to develop such a thing themselves, the Russians simply used pencils. They worked just fine.
It appears the world will get to see these technologies in action very shortly. The massing of Ukrainian troops along the borders of two breakaway states, Luhansk and Donetsk, has been met by the massing of Russian troops on the nearby Russian Border.
Luhansk and Donetsk are populated by majority Russian-speaking people. Ukraine has outlawed the speaking of Russian in the country, and appears to be trying to ethnically cleanse Russians; which is Genocide.
As a member state of the Untied Nations, Russia has a Responsibility-to-Protect whenever genocide is taking place, and the Russian Army is now positioned to undertake that responsibility.
So while the West describes Russia as having “massed troops to invade Ukraine” the reality is that Ukraine has massed its troops to commit Genocide, and Russia is ready to step-in to defend the helpless civilians in Ukraine who face slaughter at the hands of the Ukraine Army.
A military from one country, entering another country to defend civilians from slaughter, is not an “invasion.”
Perhaps if the government of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, was not engaging in ethnic cleansing, there would be no need for the Russian Army to enter. Sadly, the government in Kiev seems to be literally influenced by actual NAzis; as Ukraine troiops on the battlefield are, in some cases, flying the Swastika Flag over their foxholes in the battlefield.
Russians beat back the Nazi’s once; they most certainly can do so again.
