Russia is now building its TOS-1A thermobaric rocket launchers with factory armor wrapped around the rocket tubes. The tracked TOS-1A and its flame-producing 220-mm rockets are a powerful and terrifying weapon. But the launcher is also extremely vulnerable to Ukraine's drones and artillery. The add-on armor may be the only way the launchers can survive.

The TOS-1A is a T-72 with the turret swapped out for 24 thermobaric rockets, and the newest ones arrive inside a welded steel shell that lifts open when the tubes elevate. Russia is armoring the launcher the way it armors the tanks it's built from. What happens when the armor fails is not the same.

The TOS-1A adds a 24-round launcher onto the hull of a T-72 tank. The system's MO.1.01.04M rocket travels as far as 6,000 m with a payload of fuel that, once ignited, burns as hot as 3,000 degrees Celsius. The fuel can spread across the ground and into buildings and bunkers, allowing even a single TOS-1A to scorch a wide area.

It's not for no reason that the TOS-1A is one of Russia's preferred siege weapons. TOS-1As rolled into action early in Russia's wider war on Ukraine. In one of their first actions, in May 2022, TOS-1As staged on hilltops overlooking the city of Lyman, in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, rained fire down on the front-line city. A few days later, Russian troops temporarily occupied Lyman.

The best day the TOS-1A ever had came at Bakhmut. In early April 2023, Russian crews fired across the Bakhmutka River at entrenched Ukrainian positions and opened a 300-m gap in the line, US Army analysts later reconstructed. Wagner mercenaries poured through and covered 1.25 km in a single day. At Pavlivka, thermobaric fire breached the Ukrainian line and the settlement eventually fell—though it took five months and cost Russia two wrecked naval infantry brigades.

With its origins firmly in the 1970s, the TOS-1A was designed for a different era, however. An era where rocket launchers could, with a little support, safely approach to within a few kilometers of the enemy. Artillery is an ever-present danger, of course. But artillery can be suppressed—usually by other artillery.

The era of relative safety for the TOS-1A ended as tiny explosive drones began filling the sky over Ukraine in 2023. Even the tiniest of these tiny drones has the range to hit a TOS-1A before the TOS-1A can get into position to fire its rockets. Worse, the TOS-1A's thermobaric rockets are extremely volatile—and tend to explode in massive fireballs when struck.

"Nasty weapons—and also great targets" for anti-tank missiles and other munitions, is how Czech analyst Jakub Janovsky described the TOS-1A in the war's opening days, before the drones even arrived.

The launcher has a weather problem, too. Its rockets carry an oxidizer premix, which means crews can't fire them in the rain or from high ground.

Deep losses

The Russians started losing TOS-1As almost immediately. Retreating from Kyiv Oblast on 1 April 2022, they left behind at least three launchers—two of them knocked out by Ukrainian Stugna-P missiles, one captured intact. Then the losses began piling up.

Today, 54 months into the wider war, the Ukrainians have destroyed, damaged or captured no fewer than 36 TOS-1As. 27 of them burned. Ukrainian crews turned at least one captured launcher on its former operators, firing it near Kreminna during the 2023 counteroffensive.

The losses are a problem for the Russians. US Army analysts estimated Russia's prewar TOS-1A fleet at 48 launchers, only a portion of which ever went to Ukraine. Documented losses now stand at 36, and Oryx counts only what it can see in a photograph. How much of that gap Russian factories have refilled isn't public.

What the losses did not do was change the war. For all its ferocity, the TOS-1A has had little to no effect on the conflict's outcome, US Army analysts concluded—and they name the short reach as the reason. A weapon that has to park within 6,000 m of the enemy is a weapon the enemy can find.

Armor, not range

The Russians got to work improving the TOS-1A and building more copies. The Omsk transport machinery plant, Omsktransmash, has turned out fresh batches for the defense ministry in September 2022, November 2022, November 2024 and again in November 2025, its parent concern Uralvagonzavod announcing each handover. It's unclear just how many replacement launchers the Russians acquired, but it's safe to assume they number in the dozens.

They also changed how they use the thing. Russian units now move single launchers up to the line under covering artillery fire rather than travelling in groups, reducing the likelihood of detection, the same US Army analysts reported. And the latest copies are up-armored against drones, with a shell of additional armor protecting the 24 launch tubes and their highly flammable rockets.

That isn't a brand-new idea. An earlier drone-protection variant was showcased in April 2024, and a different, serially produced kit went onto the batch shipped in November 2025. What circulated this month is fresh footage of the up-armored TOS-1As working out at a training range in Russia's Saratov Oblast.

The add-on armor is apparently factory-standard at this point, and it's a purpose-built enclosure rather than the improvised slat and mesh Russian regiments tend to weld onto their tanks before sending them across the drone-patrolled gray zone. The function is the same: put something between the drone and the thing that matters.

The best up-armored "turtle tanks" have been known to absorb dozens or even scores of drone impacts. A TOS-1A crew should hope the launcher's new armor is equally tough. After all, the consequence of a turtle tank losing its shell and taking a direct drone hit is often immobilization: the tank throws a wheel or a track or loses power and simply can't move anymore.

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Russia has thousands of tanks it can’t risk. One drone shield decides whether they roll

Armor is the cheap answer, and it isn't the real one. The real one is a launcher that doesn't have to park 6,000 m from a Ukrainian drone operator.

Uralvagonzavod says a modernized TOS-1A on a T-80 chassis is nearing the end of trials, with better accuracy, more automation and a longer reach. How much longer, the company hasn't said. Analyst Alexey Tarasov expects a new launch module able to take longer-range rockets, perhaps carrying the system to roughly the 15 to 20 km of the wheeled TOS-2. Until then, the crews get a steel box.

It had better hold. The earlier, cruder answer didn't: a TOS-1A wearing a field-built metal cage burned anyway when a Ukrainian FPV drone found it. And if a TOS-1A's armor fails, the next drone hit could trigger 24 rockets each weighing 217 kg and packed with concentrated fuel that's primed to explode.

Ukraine wrecked more Russian vehicles in July than in any month of the war. Ukraine's Defense Forces destroyed and disabled 13,998 units of automotive equipment, the most for the entire war, Ukraine's Defense Ministry reported on 12 August.

The record fits a month of intensifying attrition against Russian logistics and air defense. In July, the Defense Forces continued methodical work to weaken Russia's air-defense capabilities and logistics, and the vehicle figure, the war's highest, reflects a campaign hitting the trucks that move Russian ammunition, fuel, and troops to the front.

The vehicle losses target Russian logistics

The record vehicle toll strikes at how Russia sustains its offensive. Trucks and transport vehicles are the arteries that carry ammunition, fuel, and supplies to Russian forces, and destroying nearly 14,000 in a month, largely with drones, degrades the logistics that keep the assaults moving.

The figure marks a scale of vehicle destruction not seen before. That the highest monthly total of the war came in July matches the wider picture of that month, which was also Russia's deadliest for personnel in 2026, as Ukraine's drones reached deeper and hit more.

Air defense and armor were hit hard too

Ukraine also struck at the systems that protect Russian forces. Ukrainian troops hit 68 units of Russian air defense systems in July, chipping away at the shield that guards Russian positions and rear areas.

Armor losses were also heavy. Ukraine destroyed and disabled 162 tanks, including 28 in a single day on 22 July, along with 204 armored combat vehicles and 2,016 artillery systems.

The count is Ukraine's own

The figures are Ukraine's tally and cannot be independently verified. The Defense Ministry reports Russian losses without detailing Ukraine's own.

Meanwhile, July was Ukraine’s deadliest month for civilians since 2022 due to Russia's ballistic missile attacks and lack of Patriot interceptors from allies.

Russia is returning outdated T-62 tanks to service due to mounting equipment losses in its full-scale war against Ukraine and a shortage of modern military equipment, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) said on June 28.

"The key factors limiting the ability to produce modern armored vehicles in Russia are a lack of industrial capacity and a shortage of imported high-tech components," the agency said.

According to HUR, the restoration of T-62 tanks is primarily carried out at a facility in the village of Atamanovka in Russia's far-eastern Zabaykalsky Krai.

Russia transferred 21 T-62 tanks from its eastern military district to the European part of the country, the intel claimed.

HUR said that Russia’s stockpile of Soviet-era tanks from the 1970s is being depleted, while most T-62s are even in worse condition after decades of open-air storage without maintenance.

Some of these tanks can also be used at the front as stationary firing points to reinforce defensive positions.

"Due to a severe shortage of modern main battle tanks such as the T-90M and T-72B3M, the deployment of T-62s is seen as a temporary but necessary measure," the statement read.

Since the start of its full-scale war in February 2022, Russia has lost 10,970 tanks, Ukraine's General Staff said in its latest update on June 28.

The Kyiv Independent could not verify these numbers.

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The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk