Russia's new tank shield made its combat debut in Ukraine, and Ukrainian drone swarms punched through it anyway.
The Arena-M active protection system is built to shoot down incoming drones before they strike, and it saw its first confirmed combat use on July 22, when Russian forces launched a company-size armored assault in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast. A company-size attack typically fields a dozen or more tanks and support vehicles, but the reporting does not specify exactly how many vehicles took part or how many carried Arena-M. Ukrainian defenders repelled the assault and released footage of kamikaze drones destroying at least seven T-72B3A tanks, some of them Arena-M equipped, according to Euromaidan Press. Soldiers quoted by journalists Dmytro Putiata and Rob Lee said the system did shoot down some drones before those tanks were overwhelmed.
The real number to watch is 15 to 20: that is how many drones Ukrainian troops said it took to finish off each tank. Arena-M appears to work as designed against single drones, it just cannot handle saturation attacks, which is exactly how cheap drones are meant to be used.
A defense system that forces the enemy to spend twenty drones per kill is still buying time, not winning the fight.