Flash Report 19JAN24 11:55 PST - Overcome, Adapt, and Improvise

And the Azov Brigade operating south of Kreminna delivers.

Yesterday, I wrote how Ukraine had added rudimentary sight to first-person view one-way drones and was specifically targeting a weak spot at the rear of T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks with devastating effects. Early this morning, one of the analysts geolocated the video in the Serebriankiy Woods. Based on the sight, the tactics, and the weather, the video is current.

The drone operator is camping in the trees on a know Russian ground line of communication. If you've ever played first-person shooter video games, spawn camping sometimes pays off. If you've been a long-time subscriber and you're thinking, "Wait, didn't I see a similar video in this area last summer? Yes - this isn't the first Ukrainian FPV drone camping in this very spot and it may be one of the reasons why the tank is operating fully buttoned up.

The drone flies in and perfectly illustrates where the weak point is. The video ends, and there isn't a second ISR drone observing the engagement. We don't know if this was a successful strike, and due to the cloudy weather, we can't use NASA FIRMS to see if the area geolocated had a thermal anomaly. It appears the drone missed the gap and struck the top of the hull.

Why there?

On a cutaway of the T-72 and T-80, the autoloader's carousel is just under the hull at that point. The turret isn't held in place by gravity per se but by a series of pins. By the nature of this design, this is a weak spot not just in the T-72 and T-80 but in many tanks. The design is a key reason why T-72 and T-80 turrets can achieve low earth orbit when the ammunition cooks off. The flaw, beyond the fact that the ammunition bunker is not a separate compartment and the crew literally sits on top of up to 40ish 125 mm tank rounds, is called the turret ring weakened zone.

The Star Wars analogy from yesterday is better than I thought, with the gap between the turret and the hull on a T-72 just 60 millimeters wide - 2.36 inches! Have an American dollar bill? Pull it out. The area you need to hit is slightly smaller than that dollar bill in your hand! Now imagine targeting a tank traveling at 30 kph on an unimproved surface while flying a drone at 45 kph using a game controller while wearing a VR headset and hitting that 60 mm gap dead center at the rear of the tank. Use the Force, Luke!

If you hit this gap, hot gasses from the exploding mortar round seep through the weak spot and cook the ammunition in the autoloader. If one shell goes, the entire carousel goes. Scratch one T-72 or T-80 tank with one turret, commander, and gunner, trying to achieve low earth orbit and the driver dying - horribly. Even if it isn't enough to cook the ammunition, those hot gases are going to cause the gunner and commander to have a very bad day.

Can Ukraine improve on its design and tactics?

I'm not an EOD or munitions design expert, but the smaller the fuse is, and the more tapered the warhead is, it seems logical the success rate would become higher. The logical evolution is to advance past using an 82 mm mortar as a drone-delivered IED and create a dedicated HE warhead with a tungsten penetrator specifically designed for this type of attack. 

Can this weak spot be addressed?

I am not a mechanical engineer, but given how narrow this gap is, any ridge that could be added to the top rear of the hull that doesn't affect turret travel would complicate striking the weak zone.