They have brought Mad Max to ships

In World War II, several Allied ships began to cover parts of your covers with mattresses, wooden logs, sandbags and improvised metal structures to try to survive the kamikaze attacks and the bombs that fell from impossible angles. Those modifications seemed absurd to many naval officers of the time, but they hid an uncomfortable reality: when a cheap and difficult to stop threat suddenly appears, even the most sophisticated war machines end up looking more like vehicles. improvised survival than symbols of military power.

The war that turned the front into a “Mad Max” landscape. It we were counting during 2025. The war in Ukraine began to generate images that seemed taken from George Miller’s post-apocalyptic universe. Covered tanks with metal cagesvans protected with anti-drone nets and civilian vehicles transformed into improvised war platforms they became common on both sides.

Those structures, baptized many times like “cope cages”were born as desperate solutions to FPV drones that attacked from above and turned any armored vehicle into a vulnerable target. The important thing was no longer to advance quickly or shoot further, but survive a few more seconds under a sky saturated with cheap and omnipresent drones. Little by little, this improvised aesthetic stopped seeming temporary and began to reflect a transformation much deeper than modern combat.

Russia already escorts vehicles with “electronic guards.” One of the most revealing changes appeared at the end of January of this year with the Russian Zemledeliye systemsvehicles capable of laying mines kilometers away. Russia began to accompany them with GAZ-66 trucks loaded with electronic warfare equipment, antennas and even anti-drone networks to try to protect them during their operations.

The important detail was not only the visual improvisation, but what it revealed tactically: Ukrainian drones have turned even the Russian rear into a dangerous zone. Convoys, engineering systems and logistics now need specialized escorts solely to defend against low-cost air attacks. And yet, defenses continue to have enormous limitations against fiber optic drones immune to traditional electronic warfare.

Roads in hunting areas. While Russia improvises defenses, Ukraine is perfecting an attrition strategy based on increasingly autonomous drones. Ukrainian units no longer attack only positions close to the front, but deep logistics routes connecting Russian ports, warehouses and supply lines.

The use of drones with artificial intelligence capabilities It allows trucks to be located and pursued with very little human intervention, increasing constant pressure on Russian mobility. The goal is not just to destroy vehicles, but to slowly erode Russia’s ability to sustain mechanized operations and supply the front lines. The consequence is quite clear: every major road begins to function like a hostile territory where any vehicle can be located from the air at any time.

Mad Max, but in the water. The most disturbing evolution has appeared when this improvised logic has jumped from the land front to the naval field. They counted the TWZ analysts than a Russian patrol car Project 21980 Grachonok was spotted sailing in the Black Sea covered by enormous metal anti-drone screens installed on its superstructure. Seeing a military vessel equipped with a kind of improvised cage made clear the extent to which the drone threat is also disrupting naval warfare.

The ship attempts to protect itself from aerial drones and munitions dropped from the sky, but the defenses themselves partially limit the operation of its weapons and leave vulnerable gaps. The image perfectly sums up the new reality: even relatively modern military ships are beginning to look improvised armored vehicles designed to survive in an environment saturated with cheap threats.

Naval drones are changing maritime warfare. The problem for Russia is that Ukraine no longer uses only maritime suicide drones. Their unmanned vessels begin to act as mobile platforms capable of launching FPV drones and bomber drones against naval targets and positions in Crimea.

This evolution has forced the Russian Black Sea Fleet to reduce operations near the peninsula and transfer part of its assets towards Novorossiysk. However, withdrawal does not eliminate the threat. Ukrainian drones combine range, low cost and tactical flexibility in a way that is breaking traditional naval logic. In other words, maritime warfare is beginning to look less like a battle between large ships and more to a constant chase between small and extremely difficult to neutralize autonomous platforms.

A much more chaotic phase. The most important thing about this evolution is that Ukraine is showing a broader transformation of contemporary combat. For decades, powers envisioned wars dominated by sophisticated platforms and extremely expensive technology. The conflict is proving something much more uncomfortable: Cheap, improvised, large-scale produced systems can completely upset the military balance.

First it happened on land, where multimillion-dollar armored vehicles ended up covered with improvised structures to survive armed commercial drones. Now the same phenomenon is beginning to spread to the sea. The image of protected ships with metal cages reflects precisely that, a modern war that looks less and less like a display of clean technological superiority and more like a chaotic ecosystem of permanent survival.

Image | Russia-24, X

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