Arena-M

Arena-M is a modernised Russian active protection system developed by the KB Mashinostroyeniya (Kolomna Engineering Design Bureau), a direct descendant of the original Arena APS the bureau designed in the mid-1990s. Like its predecessor, the system is built to defend main battle tanks and heavy armour from anti-tank munitions by detecting an incoming threat with a Doppler radar and firing a defensive countermunition that detonates near the warhead before it reaches the hull. The original Arena was tested on a T-80UM-1 at Omsk in 1997; the “M” variant is the version Russian industry has pushed into service during the war in Ukraine, where loitering munitions and small FPV drones have made passive and reactive armour alone unreliable.

Technically, Arena-M pairs a turret-mounted millimetre-wave Doppler radar with a ring of launchers for small fragmentation countermunitions. The radar classifies tracked objects and cues a round into the predicted intercept volume. On the standard configuration the launcher carries twelve rounds, which, according to Russian milbloggers, is now the system’s weakest point against drone saturation: by their accounts, Ukrainian operators have deliberately exhausted a tank’s countermunition load with the first wave of FPVs and then struck it with the next, with as many as twenty drones reportedly expended on a single vehicle. Russian channels, among them Rybar-adjacent accounts, claim work is under way to raise the magazine to 24, 36, or ultimately 48 countermunitions by the first quarter of 2027, and to widen the radar’s elevation sector beyond seventy degrees so that near-vertical FPV dives can be acquired. These figures and schedules are unconfirmed by independent sources.

The system is being fielded on Russia’s upgraded T-90M “Proryv” and T-72B3M tanks. Russian Ground Forces Commander Andrey Mordvichev stated in October 2026 that Arena-M is being installed on the T-90M to counter kamikaze drones, and footage circulated after exercises at the Chebarkul range in Chelyabinsk Region shows the system engaging FPV and fixed-wing targets during Center-2026. Independent battlefield-effectiveness data remains thin: engagements shown in Russian footage are promotional, and Ukrainian channels argue the hardware still trails the pace of drone adaptation, pointing to the magazine depth and the price point — the baseline Arena had been reported at roughly US$300,000 per unit — as structural constraints on wider fielding.

Separately, the Chebarkul exercise showed Arena-M fitted to a remote-controlled T-72B3 variant with a shortened barrel, part of what Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov described as early steps toward unmanned Russian tank units. Russian commentators tie the concept to the planned “Rassvet” battlefield communications system, framing uncrewed armour paired with active protection as complementary responses to a drone-saturated front line.