Arena-M

Russia's radar-cued hard-kill tank shield, and the first serial Russian active protection system credited with shooting down FPV drones rather than only missiles. In its documented combat debut one T-72B3A destroyed seven drones, exhausted its magazine, and was then destroyed itself.

Overview

Arena-M is a hard-kill active protection system (APS) developed by the Kolomna Machine-Building Design Bureau for Russian main battle tanks. It combines a radar that detects incoming threats with turret-mounted launch silos firing explosive interceptors that destroy the threat before it reaches the vehicle. The concept dates to the Soviet-era Arena programme; what makes the M variant significant is that it has been credited with intercepting first-person-view attack drones, the weapon that has done more than any other to make armoured manoeuvre difficult in Ukraine.

The system's combat debut came in July 2026, fitted to T-72B3A tanks during a Russian mechanised assault in the Dobropillia direction of Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. Its performance in that action is unusually well documented for a Russian system, because the Ukrainian unit that fought against it described what happened: one Arena-M-equipped tank shot down seven FPV drones before its magazine ran dry, and was then destroyed. Ukrainian accounts put the cost of killing an Arena-M tank at 15 to 20 FPV drones, against a handful for an unprotected one.

That single engagement contains the whole assessment. Arena-M works, and saturation defeats it.

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