Arena (countermeasure)

Arena (countermeasure)

Arena is the successor to Drozd, a Soviet active protection system from the late 1970s. It uses a Doppler radar to detect incoming warheads. Upon detection, a defensive rocket is fired that detonates near the inbound threat, destroying it before it hits the vehicle.

About Arena (countermeasure) in brief

Summary Arena (countermeasure)Arena is the successor to Drozd, a Soviet active protection system from the late 1970s. It uses a Doppler radar to detect incoming warheads. Upon detection, a defensive rocket is fired that detonates near the inbound threat, destroying it before it hits the vehicle. The system has been tested on the T-80UM-1, demonstrated at Omsk in 1997, and was considered for use on the South Korean K2 Black Panther main battle tank. Shtora-1 is designed to jam incoming anti-tank missiles using a one-kilowatt infrared radiator. In 1995, it was fitted on a Ukrainian T-84. During the First Chechen War, the Russian Army lost between 200 and 250 armoured vehicles to Chechen rebels. Some of the most dangerous threats to Russian tanks were rocket-propelled grenades fired from buildings in Grozny.

As a result of these vulnerabilities, the majority of tanks deployed to Chechnya were not issued with reactive armour. The majority of armoured vehicles such as the BMP-2 and T-72, and lighter tanks such as T-60s were instead issued with explosive reactive armour, which did not have the explosive charge to start the reaction to the threat. The large number of casualties during the war prompted Russia to consider the development of new active protection systems. The Arena system was developed at the Kolomenskoye machine-building design bureau in the early and mid-1990s. An export variant, Arena-E, was also developed. It was first mounted on a T- 80U in 1989, and later showcased on aT-72B in 1995.