Russian Tanks Have Crude Mine-Defenses. They Don’t Work Against The Latest American Mines.

The Russian army’s winter offensive is failing almost everywhere that isn’t Bakhmut. Ukrainian anti-tank mines—some buried, others scattered by special artillery shells—are a big reason why.

But it’s not enough for the Ukrainians to mine the roads and fields where they expect the Russians to advance. For mines to work, Russian mine-countermeasures have to not work.

Fortunately for the Ukrainians, the standard mineclearing system for Russian tanks is, for those tanks’ crews, woefully inadequate.

For the Ukrainians, that same system—the KMT-7 mine-roller—is a huge boon. It might give some Russian tankers just enough confidence to roll right into a possible minefield without also protecting them from the mines.

There’s a lot of evidence of Russian tanks with the KMT-7 rollers attached to their hulls coming to bad ends after triggering mines underneath their vulnerable bottoms. It’s not hard to surmise what’s happening.

Russian mine-rollers—the KMT-7 and older KMT-5—are, in essence, dual sets of heavy steel wheels with shovel-like plows right behind each wheel set.

The rollers attach to the front of a tank. The idea is for a roller’s wheels to apply enough pressure to trigger mines before the tank itself rolls over them. The plows would dig up any mines the rollers miss.

The problem is that the KMT mine-rollers only work on pressure-triggered mines such as the Soviet-vintage TM-62. But modern Western mines have multiple trigger options, including magnetic proximity.

A minefield with magnetically-triggered American-made Remote Anti-Armor Mines—scattered by 155-millimeter artillery shells—pretty much is immune to a KMT mine-roller. A Russian tank could roll up and dig up the RAAMs with its KMT-5 or KMT-7 and still trigger the mines.

Worse for the Russians, the Ukrainians tend to mix mine types. Bury some TM-62s then scatter RAAMs on top. These mixed minefields have halted Russian assaults near Vuhledar, in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region 60 miles south of Bakhmut.

A video that a Russian T-72 tank crew shot late last year, apparently in Donbas, illustrates the Russians’ dilemma. In the video, the T-72 triggers a pressure mine with its KMT-7, safely blowing up the mine ahead of the tank. But a few seconds later, a second mine—maybe a magnetic one—strikes the tank.

It’s possible some Russian crews are losing confidence in their mine-rollers, or “trawls.” “In the summer in Popasna, there were abandoned trawls on almost every street,” wrote one moderator at the popular pro-Russian internet forum Lost Armour.

There aren’t a lot of better mine-countermeasures to replace the KMTs. Explosive line-charges, such as those fired by the UR-77 engineering vehicle, can clear lanes through possible minefields.

But the UR-77’s rope-like charges, which the vehicle flings hundreds of yards ahead of it, are inaccurate. “They are blown away by the wind up to 30 degrees,” the Lost Armour moderator explained.

The latest Russian mine-clearing vehicle, the BRM-3M, adds a magnetic device to its mine-rollers. This system might work against mixed minefields.

But there aren’t a lot of BRM-3Ms in Russian service—and even fewer in Ukraine. So most of the time when Russian troops brave a minefield, they do so with no countermeasures, or with countermeasures that only half-work.