Israeli tanks mobilized outside Gaza have been adapted with overhead cages to protect against attack drones, a safety modification widely used in Ukraine that appears to be proliferating in a new conflict, analysis by The Washington Post shows.

Imagery from the coastal city of Ashkelon shows several tanks outfitted with metal canopies over their hatches. The hardened protective screens, sometimes called “cope cages,” act as a barrier from aerial strikes, causing explosives to detonate before they can seriously damage the vehicles or harm their crew members.

The protective measure, some analysts say, appears to have been implemented by Israel’s military after Hamas, during its surprise attack Oct. 7, used armed commercial drones to target soldiers and armored vehicles. Israeli leaders have signaled they are preparing to launch a ground offensive aimed at destroying the militant group, a campaign that experts in urban warfare have warned could cause immense suffering and, according to one former U.S. official, quickly become “a bloodbath for everybody.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spawned a modern war laboratory, with militaries around the world studying how equipment and doctrine are being tested in a large-scale conflict far removed from the counterinsurgency wars that the United States and its allies waged in Afghanistan and Iraq over much of the past quarter-century.

The Ukraine conflict has underscored, for instance, the perils of inadequate artillery production and the folly of using large, fixed command posts that can be readily targeted. One of the most significant developments from that battlefield, though, stems from the widespread use of weaponized drones, which in turn has led to defensive adaptations in the form of nets, cages and canopies.

Although he conflict in Ukraine is not the first time such protective equipment has been used, and experts said it is unclear whether Israel had deployed them previously, the use of the canopies in Ukraine has legitimized the practice as a quick solution.

“My assumption is that the Hamas attacks gave Israel the impetus to install the cages more widely,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It was probably something they had been thinking about before since everyone is watching the war in Ukraine closely.”

The use of shields can save armored vehicles from heavy damage if properly installed, but their effectiveness depends on the type of craft used in an attack, said Samuel Bendett, a drone expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, a policy institute based in Arlington, Va.

They protect better, he said, against quadcopters that drop small munitions, such as the drones Hamas used in attacks against Israeli forces. They are less useful against cheaply made racing drones that are more maneuverable. Such weapons have been used recently to target Russia’s Wagner mercenaries in Sudan. A talented pilot, Bendett said, “can get around the gaps in the cages and armor.”

It is unclear whether Hamas has acquired such technology, known as first-person-view - or FPV — drones.

The protective screens would be of limited use against weapons like rocket-propelled grenades, if fired down on Israeli vehicles from high buildings within Gaza.

Sonny Butterworth, a senior analyst at the defense intelligence firm Janes, said shields act as a buffer intended to prematurely detonate an explosive, disable warheads used on some rocket-propelled grenades or, in the case of drone-dropped grenades, cause the weapon to simply roll off the vehicle before it strikes weaker armor or fall into an open hatch.

Cage-type protections have been used for decades. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces installed “slat armor” around certain vehicles to force rocket-propelled grenades to explode before striking the main plating. Israel has used the same type of armor on its vehicles.

Russian forces have used protective screens on vehicles before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, likely after watching the impact that attack drones had in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, said Rob Lee, a Russia military expert and a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

In the early months of the war in Ukraine, Russian troops turned to the cages to combat the devastating effects of U.S.-provided Javelin missiles, which are most effective when they fly vertically and hit tanks from the top, where armor is the thinnest.

Russians and Ukrainians alike deployed the shields in greater numbers as both sides escalated their use of drones to attack foot soldiers and vehicles on and behind the war’s front lines. FPV drones, in particular, have shown a deadly precision, becoming a primary weapon used by both armies to destroy the other’s tanks.

Ukrainian troops have adapted by wrapping nets and chain-linked fencing around critical weapons like artillery.

“An interesting question is whether these structures will become standard for armored vehicles in conflict,” said Cancian, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The United States has not equipped its tanks with cages, but this may be a lesson armies need to learn the hard way.”