Russian T-90M Tanks with Arena-M can now Shoot Down incoming Missiles

The Russian Army’s most capable operational class of main battle tank the T-90M has benefited from a long anticipated major boost to its survivability with the integration of the Arena-M hard kill active protection system.

While it remains uncertain what designation T-90M’s with the latest upgrade will receive, it has been confirmed that the first batch of vehicles with the systems has been ordered.

The T-90M previously integrated only the Shtora soft kill protection system – which unlike hard kill systems did not actively engage incoming projectiles but instead alerts the crew and helps tanks to mask themselves.

The Arena-M by contrast uses a radar system to continuously monitor the surrounding environment for incoming threats, and when detecting an incoming projectile tracks it automatically, calculates its trajectory, and deploys protective munitions to intercept and destroy it before it impacts the tank.

The most well known system of its kind is the Israeli Trophy, which has been integrated onto the country’s Merkava IV tanks since 2008 – albeit with not insignificant initial performance issues.

Russia has been developing a hard kill active protection system since the 1990’s, with the Arena system having seen multiple variants developed.

The enhanced Arena-M variant was first showcased in 2018, and was announced by officials in 2020 to be scheduled to begin integration on T-90M tanks by 2025.

The requirements of the conflict in Ukraine, and escalating conflict with NATO, are thought to have added considerable urgency to development.

The Arena-M can intercept rockets, missiles and high explosive anti tank shells traveling at up to 1000 meters per second, and can do so 50 meters away.

Promotional materials for the system claim that it can counter top-attack missiles, like the Javelin fielded by Ukrainian forces and the Bulsae-4 recently acquired by Russia from North Korea, with the system exploding in two directions – both downwards and upwards – to help facilitate this.

The widespread availability of Javelin missiles captured from Ukrainian forces from early 2022 has been widely speculated to have influenced the system’s performance requirements.

The lack of a hard kill active protection system had left Russian tanks increasingly behind the cutting edge.

One of the latest tanks to feature such a system was the North Korean Chonma 2, while across Ukraine’s western border the Polish Army has from late 2022 deployed a growing number of South Korean K2 tanks with the famous KAPS active protection system.

Nevertheless, Western tanks have also remained behind in fielding such systems, as recently demonstrated by the vulnerability of the M1A1 Abrams, Leopard 2 and Challenger 2 in combat in Ukraine.

Both the United States and Germany have commissioned Israeli support to integrate the Trophy active protection system onto their own tanks to help reduce their vulnerability.

The Trophy system has been seen in action in the Gaza Strip during recent hostilities, in some cases protecting Merkava IV tanks from rocket propelled grenades, forcing local Palestinian paramilitaries to adopt a range of approaches to counter it.

One of the simplest has been approaching tanks from the rear and planting explosives directly on their hulls, which has proven possible in urban environments.

While the Arena-M is expected to face similar limitations in city fighting situations, due to the close proximity from which ambushing infantry can launch attacks, across most of Eastern Europe the wide spaces in which the vehicles are expected to engage Ukrainian and NATO forces makes them potentially highly valuable.

With the T-90 having been very widely exported, while the large majority of the tanks are fielded by clients abroad rather than by the Russian Army itself, the Arena-M’s success has the potential to facilitate its export as part of modernization packages for other clients’ T-90 fleets – most notably those of India and Algeria.

If successful, the Arena-M is likely to also be considered for integration onto other Russian tanks, including the T-80BVM and a new T-80 variant currently being prepared for production, which will boast superior mobility to the T-90M.

While Russia has also developed a superior active protection system, the Afganit, for its T-14 tank, the scheduled service entry of the T-14 near the end of 2024 may initially see the tanks also integrate the Arena-M, or else an evolved variant of the Afganit that benefits from lessons learned deploying the Arena-M in combat.

With the Arena-M notably preventing tanks from integrating anti drone ‘cages,’ it has been speculated that new T-90M’s could integrate advanced drone jamming systems to help compensate for this.

Military Watch Magazine / ABC Flash-Point News 2024.