It's hard to tell. First one likely detonated on impact to the drone cage/camouflage and shaped charge possibly breached the roof from the turret and/or engine bay depending on where it actually hit. But I don't think the "tank" part of that took too much damage. That might have been running with somewhat minor repairs and maybe an engine swap.

The second hit was between the turret and the frame next to main barrel which absoutely rendered that thing as scrap. I'd say that a single drone is pretty cheap price to verify that this particular unit isn't coming after you ever again. Specially since Russia has very limited capabilities to produce new ones.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Hm maybe. Idk if you’ve ever been close to a massive fire like that but I feel like anyone inside the tank is unlikely to be ok for doing anything once the top of the tank looks like that. I thought US military doctrine was to keep shooting until the tank you’re shooting at either catches fire, or changes shape, and I think this qualifies.

But IDK; you might be right and I don’t really know. And it would be a real shame to decide not to blow the tank up completely with one $100 drone, and then they’re able to recover it and put it back into action later (even if all the crew was killed by the fire) or something.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I've seen my share of fire around metal and the amount of steel on those things the fire shown on the picture doesn't do much. Of course all the plastic on hoses/wiring, seat covers and things like that, the crew obviously included, wouldn't be fine. You obviously couldn't just hop in and drive the thing off from that point and if your task was just to disable the tank and trust that you have the area under control so that it couldn't be recovered for repairs any time soon, sure, the first drone would have been well enough.

I don't really know either, but based on the videos from the lines it seems like Ukraine gladly spend few cheap drones to make absolutely sure that the things they stop won't move again. Additionally, some models, even if their crew is dead and the engine is dead, can still autonomously respond to incoming fire (assuming of course that there's still juice in the batteries and the weapons systems work), so that alone for me is enough to spend another drone to confirm that the thing is dead and stays that way.