the V-shaped metal is called "angle Iron" in the US, it's a very common metal stock used for fabrication, welding and construction

I wonder if the cope cages were installed to try and improve morale. After all sherman crews installed concrete armor (despite it not being too effective and stressing the automotive components)

There was a captured Russian tanker who was part of a prisoner swap and just got back to Russia. He said said on social media that his unit removed the cages because it made escape difficult in case of fire and it also made the machine gun difficult to use. (He also said the ERA worked very well and they survived 9/10 hits but that the crew got concussions or something like that.)

“Long weird v-shaped metal” is the moment my inner welder died. Also they only tacked the angle on, didn’t even weld it. It would probably snap under that kinda pressure and cause more damage.

"Cope cages" were first implemented on Russian tanks in Syria, where drone dropped munitions first saw extensive use. The cages are not (were not originally) meant to protect against modern anti-tank systems like the Javelin, although I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians in Ukraine are installing them in the hopes they will. In Syria they were used to detonate drone dropped munitions, small mortars, and molotovs above the turret, to prevent damage to the sights and sensors mounted on top. If a commander cant see out of his sights and the sensors don't feed information to the computers a tanks fighting capacity is greatly reduced. Originally the cages were mounted slightly lower and with thinner gaps. It appears this Russian defense contractor saw the effectiveness of these cages in Syria and tried to modify them with some success to defeat anti-tank weapons. The "Cope Cage" is not an invention of the Ukrainian war, and its original purpose was not to defeat modern anti-tank weapons, despite the Russians hoping to use them as such now.

In 2021 I discussed them with tank crews during the expo. They said it was an order from the top, so it seems like field modification rather than manufactured one. Update: ow, southern district, that's exactly where the expo was

Yeah, well there's a difference between those two. One gets in direct contact with the projectile before it detonates. But ATGM's in top attack mode detonate at a certain distance from the target, not when they come in contact. And in that case, if you have thin rods and wide spacing you're basically not countering the ATGM at all

I've heard a theory (educated guess by some of the military analysts here in Poland) that these cages were designed as a protection against loitering munitions, notably the Warmate - a Polish design used by Ukraine for some time even before the invasion. Its HEAT warhead can penetrate around 200 mm RHA and is single stage, so a "cope cage" like this would probably stop it.

As a former TOW platoon leader, I can tell you that when I saw the cages, I thought they made the tanks more vulnerable rather than less. They would show before the gun and sights crests a rise and the defenders would have a chance to get on target earlier. If the tank is stationary, it's easier to find and the cage can be targeted with a top attack round.

Looking at the study, the optimal width was 80mm against an RPG-7 rocket. Those rockets have a diameter of 93mm, which would give about 6mm of deflection per side (assuming a "direct" hit between two slats). If the slats are as narrow as possible, they will bend from the impact and dissipate kinetic energy to slow the HEAT projectile down, hopefully enough to catch it without detonating it. Using stiffer slats would, beyond increasing the chance of hitting the slat, cause a more violent deceleration that could detonate the warhead and cause a penetration. Now, if 80mm is a good length for a 93mm warhead, what would be a suitable slat distance for a Javelin which is 127mm? Well, using simple proportions, it would be 109mm. Problem of course is that these tanks aren't facing only Javelins and RPG-7s, but: Stugna-Ps 130mm NLAWs 115mm PzF-3s 110mm MATADORs 90mm AT-4s 84mm M72s 66mm Just to name a few of the anti-tank weapons they've been provided. A pretty wide gap of calibers to protect against, since an 80mm gap is quite unlikely to catch a 66mm rocket. And that M72 can still penetrate 200mm+ of RHA up to 450mm, depending on the model.

Merkava with cope cages

Cope cages tanks are the modern equivalent of bed springs fitted to soviet tanks in WW2. Did 🤬 all for protection and mostly likely meant to be a morale booster. If you are a tank going into a city, you are more likely to feel safer and not abandon so easy with the cage/bed springs installed. The lack of the cages since February shows they dropped that idea as it didn't help at all and probably hindered the crew and tanks performance.

i personally believe that they installed these cages from the lessons learned in Syria\Iraq\ISIS. Where they used low cost drones to drop bombs directly on top of tanks where their armor is at the weakest and it would not take very much to destroy the tank this way.

That " long weird metal bent in a v shape " is just a 90° angle steel one of the most common types of steel bars. Also how are they supposed to be lower if the crew hatches are supposed to work while protecting from rpgs fire from buildings.

The cage armor is designed to protect against anti-tank weapons like the RPG7. This is very different than the improvised canopy cage above

Brate, svaka ti čast gde izvlačiš sve ove informacije, grafikone, samo jako👊🏻👊🏻

Recently there was a post circulating on Telegram with an interview of a Russian tank crew member. He said the cages were removed as they are a nuisance. The machine gun on turret doesn't turn, it's harder to leave the tank, etc.

The better light and flat versions look like might work decent as a cargo rack, which in general a crew can always use more storage

One of your most interesting and informative videos, a genuine contribution to understanding. Thanks!

It’s called a cope cage to help the ghosts of the tankers to cope with their deaths

My assumption has always been that these cope cages were for drone dropped rounds, It would definitely never work vs Javelin charges. It makes the profile of the tank so much bigger, either way it seems like a insufficient cope to the new challenges tanks face

The cages don't *need* to work... they just need to get the tank's operators to *believe* that they're safer as a result of it.

A very interesting and thoughtful presentation. Thank You

Well covered. Thanks - worth the subscription!

According to what I saw from Russian tank pages, they were mostly removed because they get in the way of crew evacuation

Good job! Interesting topic.

Really informative Post more please.

I was trained and used the Javelin missile system while I was in the Marines. That cage armor is useless against modern antiarmor weapon systems.

I honestly just think this is a sequel to Sherman crews putting dumb shit on their tanks in ww2

"20% of the time, works every time"

Russia Cope Cages is mocked by WEST. but Ukraine tank are now installed by Cope Cage 😂😂😂😂😂

hey man I've been following your content for sometime you make really dope videos, besides what I really like is the amount of effort that is put into research. Keep up the good work

Great video. Thanks for all the information backing up what you show. So much speculation a d knee-jerk takes going on these days...

Steel angle, here in NZ, just as we use the term ‘aluminium angle’, prefixed/suffixed by the length of each side and the thickness of the metal. The product used in the ‘cope cages’ appears to the basic 50mm mild steel angle that is especially popular where the fabricated frame is intended to be put in one place and left there.

Perhaps next they will try "ablative tanks". Attach another main battle tank on top of the tank they need protected. Seems about the most effective way they can hope to survive a javelin.

My biggest concern as you can see in the pictures is that these things obstruct the machine gun. It can be annoying for those manual controlled ones as you probably need to raise the gun to turn it if the armor's 'legs' are in the way, I guess if it is the RCWS model it can be a nightmare to operate if you have to constantly turn it. Also good luck trying to aim for the guy with a Panzerfaust 3 on the roof of an apartment block, or a drone dropping molotovs on your head.

Exactly my dear Russians. Now it doesn't really matter that you have designed your tanks so tiny and uncomfortable if you put a skyskraper on your tanks.

So you can make those at home with materials from a store and they don't even work because they are making them wrong.

Super informative video

Hi Red Effect, great content. Can you do a video about the effectiveness of ERA (Kontakt 1+5 and Relikt) against modern ATGMs like NLAW and Javelin? Kontakt-1 seems ineffective due to the precursor warhead. Is Kontakt-5 and Relikt more resitant? Thanks

The NLAWs detonate about 1 metre (3 ft) above the turret using concussion to do the job. Cope cage might stop an RPG but will not stop the shock wave from an NLAW or Javelin.

I suspected they were for old rpg-42 grenades dropped from drones, I'm sure there's a stock of them somewhere I guess they weren't getting used though

I call for you to start adding the cool intro with the gasmask and the music again!

This is Nicholas’ Cage

The roof cage is actually installed so Ukrainian farmers have alternative points to attach tow cables to abandoned tanks

The angled part on the front does seem to be for javelin missile coming at a 45° angle rather than an AT grenade droped at 90° but there are many different designs for the cages

The best channel with unbiased analytics

Excellent job.

cage armor actually somewhat useful at stopping older rpg-7 warheads which with a shot to the turret from above or behind could score a mobility or mission kill. javelins and nlaws while numerous not the most likely threat these tanks are likely running into

the javelin is specifically designed to defeat this type of armor with it's tandem charge.

3:30 V-shaped metal... Yes, we have that thing in East Europe. We call it L-profile and it's very useful for pretty much everything. This is why they used it

AWESOME Did not have a clue. Never seen or heard of that protection before

The long metal is not "weird" is is well known throughout the whole world as angle section or angle iron in the US and UK. I noticed in one of one of your other videos that you had to make changes to appeal younger audiences, maybe that is the case here, also.

Those "cope cages" are clearly made from "angle bar" or "angle iron", which (angle iron) is a cheaper way of making long, rigid beams with little material by hot-rolling a steel billet into a ninety-degree shape along its length. Perhaps the effect of properly designed slat armour could have ben replicated if the bars were welded onto their frames with one flange flat and the other sticking up like a fin, so that it's effectively bars spaced as per the factory design to an incoming RPG warhead.

Hi redeffect Quick question on the T80u. I am wondering what is the massive filter looking thing on the back of its turret? I find this unusual since most modern Russian mbt's have their foraging snorkels there or a stowage box.

Very good article, well presearched. Thank you.

Spookson actually covered this topic a month or two ago. The Cope cage is more more than likely to help protect the tank from small diameter bombs like the ones dropped by the TB-2 and possibly various RPG shots from high elevations. The war in Azerbaijan saw the use of the TB-2 and showed the effectiveness of its weapons against Soviet era armor. Supposedly they also could’ve stopped earlier versions of the javelin but not the current model so it’s unlikely they were intended to protect against them.

Thanks! Very good video Реально, так в теме даже наши блогеры не разбираются, особенно такой аналитики у нас маловато

they are good for other reasons like keeping the sun off or out of the eyes, they seem to be useful for carrying supplies and could be useful against some small arms fire or brush added for some top down camaflauge prolly not what was hoped for tho by the crews

I had the thought they may have been useful if building debris falling onto tanks was a concern, and considering how many buildings are barely standing it could be a risk to tanks.

I have heard that some tank commander have removed them because of the down side to them

crew member said: Динамическая защита. Я всегда к ней скептически относился. И вот два попадания - я своими глазами видел: срабатывает, реально помогает. Обвесы (металлические решетки для защиты от противотанковых ракет) мы сначала все наварили на танки, а потом их все сняли. Во-первых, неудобно: пулемет не двигается, антенна когда замыкает об решетку - сгорает радиостанция, связь пропадает. И если будет какое-то возгорание, там просто нереально будет вылезти из танка. Потому что когда встаешь в полный рост - упираешься. Поэтому их все сняли и выкинули.

The cumulative jet has a focus point for which it is designed. If you move the moment of detonation away from the surface of the armor, the penetration depth drops critically. In this case, there is no destruction. However, the inconvenience is far greater than the benefits.

I'm surprised we didn't see one with camo net all over it. It remarkably difficult to hit something you can't see if you had concealment all over the top of your tank that might make it easier and a little safer to look around with the hatch open.

"russia all ways realises the hard way" -my dad

Top attack munitions rendered the russian armored doctrine useless. They need to change their tactics or start developing a cheap and reliable hard-kill aps and massproduce it.

"long weird metal in the V shape" lol, it's angle iron, the most ubiquitous metal stock you can find.

What's the background music playing? Sounds like it's from XCOM, but I can't find the part.

Great analysis! I've seen a lot of jokes about the cages but I have been interested in what the intended use of the cages were and how effective they actually were. I'm happy that you did the research so I don't have to😁

I don’t know how you guys didn’t mention about drones 😂 they saw from nagorno karabakh when the Armenian t-72’s got smacked by Azeri drones . It really isn’t hard to realize

Some of those cope cages are not expecting to make direct contact with the incoming ordnance in order to disrupt it. They have to deflect the incoming supersonic molten copper stream. So it seems their theory is that the closer angled bars will directly deflect this stream... does not seem to work well in this scenario though. Of course as you mention they may work well on small drone dropped grenades and similar rounds that do not auto detonate above the tank.

Hey Red would you be able to do a video covering the T-62 tanks that are supposedly being sent to the frontlines ? As always we enjoy the awsome uploads :)

It might not work , but assuming its made of steel and covered with sand bags and kept at some distance like about 1-2 meter above so it might absorb a few kilo Joule of energy of the impact.. Somthing is better than nothing.

They should of been named "Hope" Cages; install them and HOPE they work!! In most cases they don't.

7:30 what is the tank ejecting? first time i see that hatch opening and closing like that on a tank, is that for spend shells hull cases?

The cope from this channel has been immense since February.

And when Israel does it they call them “cage armor”

Expanded steel mesh worked for RPG7 protection for the hippie kombis the Rhodesians made into MRAP vehicles.

Any improvised armor that isn't an APS isn't going to stop NLAWs or Javelins from damaging or killing a tank. Warheads used on those munitions aren't susceptible to slat armor.

cope cages seem use the same theory as ribbed armour and catch nets used to deflect small bore cannonball shots during the age of sail, they are meant to be most effective against smaller munitions' and used at long to medium range, it wont stop a mission kill but might help reduce sharpnel, or small muniton penetrations, i think this is the theory, not entirely certain

Authors of those improvised cages only heard of Javelin missile, but failed to read all the details. As usual, of course. They heard it strikes upper armour. And they assumed it does that strictly vertical. But it does not. Javelin in upper flight profile strikes at around 40 to 45 degrees and misses those over-the-top cages completely. Those cages are also useless against nlaw missiles as they detonate about 1-1,5 meters above the tank forming a very narrow hypervelocity coper stream downwards that pierces tower. Some improvised field upgrades also featured false targets for heat seekers - some kind of a 2-meter long horizontally installed pipe extended to the right or to the left of the vehicle with a cup of burning oil at the end of it. That practice was abandones shortly after beginning as it proved to be unpractical and cumbersome to maintain.

You’ve got to convince people to get into those death traps somehow.

The 90 degree metal is called angle iron. You will find it quite common in metal fabrication workshops

It's like the little umbrella the Coyote opens up before the bolder falls on him.

Here on youtube there is a test conducted by the Ukrainians on such a rooftop cage equipped tank using a Javelin. The cage had no effect.

I would argue that the reported study tells about the best strategy to destroy the HEAT charge without setting it off (their trigger doesn't get triggered). While the cope cages would almost certainly trigger HEAT charges, they would also act like spaced armor (decreasing the effectiveness of the HEAT jet). They would work even against modern missiles, like the Javelin or the NLAW (which might get destroyed entirely by impacting the cage). All in all, i don't think the cope cage is stupid.

Don’t intend to help the enemy, but the secret it, to have an inch thick steel plate raised above the tank at the same height as the cages. Higher the better. Of course, thicker the better…like 2 inch steel… yah, they’d be pretty safe

I always thought these were to conceal people peeking out from the hatch from snipers in buildings. None of those cages are going to do anything to stop a top attack weapon like javelin

ERA on cage?

My dad was in the 14th armored 47th tank battalion in ww11 he ran into panzerfousts driving into Germany a German youth shot my father's driver with one killing him instantly but didn't hurt the tank after that they tied logs and sand bags on the tank my dad's tank had bars welded all over it the logs worked good at stopping the panzerfoust but didn't work at stopping the panzershrek.

V shaped metal is called angle iron.

1:50 is example as to WHY it seems weird to do it on top attack munitions... This clip is from a tests of a TOW variant that flies above the target, and even from 2 meters away it easily explodes the turret off that old T series tank. This is also true to NLAWs that by design fly about 1m above the target. Javelins do explode on impact, but their shaped charge is far behind guidance that in such fat rocket would detect hit anyway before it get's to deform the shaped charge that with 750mm RHA penetration it doesn't really care for spacing. The study quoted explains why RPG-7 and other simple HEAT rounds would get affected (Carl G; PzF 3; AT4), but placement, and rumours suggest that it was meant to stop the more advanced rockets, which is not gonna.

So at best, this might improve the chances of survival by a factor of two. It looks like the cages are there just to make the crew feel safer. Let's be honest, tanks were never designed to deal with shaped charges, or anything that attacks them from above.

It's more to do with crew confidence than anything else. They feel like they have at least done something to improve their chances of survival. During the Cold War when I did my military service. If WWIII had happened, the life expectancy of a tank on the Soviet front line was quoted as 4 hours. Anti Tank weaponry has improved considerably since then while Russian tanks development has stood still. T72, T80 and T90 are substandard. I'd like to see how T14 compares in the current conflict. It seems to me that Russian tank forces are suffering mostly from a lack of efficient infantry support and adequate air cover. Infantry support is vital, it requires intense training and much practice. Tank Commanders and infantry commanders must learn to think as one. After a while it becomes instinctive.

Javelin is a tandem warhead missile. Which means no cage of any construction will stop it from destroying the tank when used with the top-down trajectory. First stage explodes hitting the cage and destroying the cage and any reactive armor if there is any, and the missile second stage continues through the thin armor on the top of the turret destroying the tank. Usually by igniting and detonating the ammo that is in the auto-loader carousel on the floor of the turret in the T-72. Javelin has two modes of use. Top-down ballistic trajectory used on attacks from larger distances where the missile has time to climb to approx. 150m altitude and guide down on top of the target. Javelin also has a direct attack mode where the target is close to the operator and then the missile has flat trajectory and hits the target from front or side. The tandem setup was developed to defeat reactive armor with the first stage and breach the tank armor with the second stage. The operator must select the mode manually and have the right mode selected otherwise the missile will not lock on the target. In Ukraine most of the hit and run attacks are made from close distances less than 1 click using the direct mode. That's why you haven't seen many top-down destroyed tanks with the home made cages.

(Use Google Translate if you do not know russian) From an interview with Russian tank commander, basically he admits that cages were a very bad idea and everyone removed them from their tanks. К вопросу наваривания металлических "козырьков" на башни танков. «Обвесы (металлические решетки для защиты от противотанковых ракет) мы сначала все наварили на танки, а потом их все сняли. Во-первых, неудобно: пулемет не двигается, антенна когда замыкает об решетку - сгорает радиостанция, связь пропадает. И если будет какое-то возгорание, там просто нереально будет вылезти из танка. Потому что когда встаешь в полный рост - упираешься. Поэтому их все сняли и выкинули». Из интервью танкиста капитана Алексея Ухачёва газете Московский Комсомолец.

they are going to grill on them.

I like how these cope cages completely negate the low-silhouette advantage intended by having the original tank design use an autoloader. With the cope cages the tanks now are more visible than their western counterparts...

The"long wierd metal" is common mild steel angle iron it appears. The frame that holds up your bed is a slightly harder version

My concern would be that the big drive in tank design has been to keep the profile as low as possible, and now you're adding several feet of height to the tank. Obviously, people won't endanger you by shooting the cage over, say, a wall, but your ability to conceal behind cover is basically gone with these.