User:Vehelixe/Frankenstein tanks

The term "Frankenstein tanks" (sometimes "Frankentank") refers to a type of armored assault vehicle that uses various spare parts from different military sources, or hand-made parts, to create new vehicles for the battlefield. The term probably appeared in the context of the war in Ukraine, although the modernization of armored vehicles in response to contemporary warfare issues is nothing new.

Birth of the name
Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022 brought Russian armored fighting vehicles onto the battlefield. The significant loss of some of these tanks during the "special military operation" has led to the deployment of increasingly outdated vehicles, some of which date back to the Soviet era, just after World War II.

In response, was seen the emergence of makeshift hybrid vehicles, modernized or simply modified by adding spare parts to existing models. Some of these vehicles have been observed via Open Source InTelligence (OSINT) on social networks, but they have sometimes been officially presented, for example at the ARMY-2023 exhibition forum held in August 2023 in Kubinka, Russia.

How it works
These modifications can be minor (such as the addition of anti-FPV cages or armor plates), to meet contemporary military realities, or heavier, with the replacement of weapons by others, in a context of diminishing available ammunition reserves. A first article in the Ukrainian newspaper "Kyiv Post" dated March 8th, 2023 uses the expression "Frankenstein tanks" to designate these makeshift vehicles used by Russian forces, in reference to Frankenstein's Monster, a fictional creature created by assimilating limbs from various corpses.

The Russian hybrid vehicles observed could sometimes carry weaponry from unarmored vehicles, such as RBU-6000 "Smerch-2" anti-submarine rockets or S-8 or S-5 missile launchers originally intended for combat helicopters.

The American magazine Forbes reports on the creation and use of "Frankenstein" tanks from May 2023 by the Ukrainian army too, based on various parts of captured Russian tanks.