Tank armored vehicles are the main force of modern land warfare, and their protection ability directly affects the survival of the battlefield. However, in actual combat, tank armored vehicles often face a variety of threats, such as anti-tank missiles, rockets, mines, etc., which forces front-line troops to carry out various improvements and reinforcements of tank armored vehicles to improve their survivability.
The Syrian army equips tanks with cement armor These means of improvement and reinforcement sometimes appear very "earthy", such as hanging sandbags, spare tracks, cement blocks, artillery shells, etc. on the tank body, and even the armies of some countries will install fence-like armor on the top of the tank to block the enemy's "top-attacking" anti-tank missiles. These seemingly rudimentary "additional armor", although the effect is limited, can also increase the protection performance of tank armored vehicles to a certain extent.
The Russian army has added fence armor to the top of the tank However, recently, there is a ** that has attracted people's attention, which shows an American-made M2 infantry fighting vehicle of the Ukrainian army, and the sides of the body of this combat vehicle are actually covered with logs, which looks like it is using wood as additional armor. This begs the question, is the Ukrainian army so poor that it uses wood as armor?
This M2 is hung with wood It is reported that this ** was announced by the Ukrainian side, showing an M2 infantry fighting vehicle being transported, which has been painted with dark green digital camouflage of the Ukrainian Army armored forces. As can be seen from the **, there are at least six logs about one meter long hanging on the side of the hull of this tank, and these logs are not placed randomly, but are fixed on the body according to a certain distance and angle.
Self-rescue wood at the rear of the tank One might think that these logs are used as self-rescue logs, that is, when the tank armored vehicle gets stuck in mud or ditches, the self-rescue wood can be removed and fixed to the tracks, using the friction between the wood and the ground to help the vehicle get out of trouble. In fact, self-rescue wood is a common equipment of Soviet tank armored vehicles, which is generally hung above the tail or side of the body, and only one is enough for a car to carry.
The use of self-rescue wood by tanks However, the logs of this M2 infantry fighting vehicle are obviously not used as self-rescue wood, because they are too numerous and too low-level, and Western tank armored vehicles rarely use self-rescue wood as this equipment. More likely, the logs were used as a kind of "wooden additional armor" to increase the ballistic performance of the hull against enemy armor-piercing or chemical-kinetic armor-piercing shells.
Tanks stuck in mud pits need to get out of trouble with self-rescue wood If this is the case, then the approach of the Ukrainian army looks very ridiculous, even somewhat pathetic. As an organic material, wood has a very poor bulletproof effect, whether it is against armor-piercing bullets or chemical kinetic armor-piercing bullets, wood is easy to be penetrated or ignited, which cannot play an effective protective role at all, but will bring greater danger to the crew members.
The Ukrainian army has pasted ** reactive armor for the "Leopard-2" tank This makes people wonder if the Ukrainian army has used up its own armor resources and can only use wood to make up the numbers? We know that in previous battles, the Ukrainian army once pasted a large number of "Contact-1"** reactive armor for its German-made "Leopard-2" and British "Challenger-2" main battle tanks, which is an armor technology in the Soviet era that can reduce the lethality of armor-piercing shells when attacked. This armor, although outdated, is also much stronger than wood.
It seems that the ** reactive armor in the hands of the Ukrainian army has run out However, now the Ukrainian army does not even have this ** reactive armor and can only replace it with wood, which shows that the Ukrainian military industry has fallen into a difficult situation and is unable to provide sufficient armor supplies for the front-line troops. The Ukrainian army can only be "what is the use", and even does not hesitate to use wood as armor, this "wood protection" can only bring a little psychological comfort to the crew members, which is actually useless and may even increase the risk. If the Ukrainian army continues to fight like this, I don't know what kind of "soil" equipment and "soil" transformation ...... will appear