[Imp]

Some Observations
I think quite a lot of the Russian tanks are not fully equipped as in none functional ERA & pre Arena active defence systems are not very good.
Does it need to be looking in the direction the shot is coming from to work?
Reasoning for this.
During Chechenia some tanks were definitely deployed without ERA & I do not remember active protection systems being very effective then.

From photographic evidence two things tend to happen when tanks are hit.
Either catastrophic ammo explosion & flying turrets, seems to happen to virtually all tanks involved in that engagement.
I would postulate despite looking like they have ERA they are not functional.
The other result is the tank being penetrated or despite the fact its a flank shot surviving the first 1 or 2 attacks. These do not initially blow up though they might do so later but the crew often have time to get out.
These have ERA it can stop shots & if penetrated it absorbs a lot of the energy hence no ammo cook off. As they may explode later I would also say fire suppression capability is poor.
Game terms survivability should be less in tanks with no or limited ERA.

To me if you think about it both outfitting the vehicles & training suffer due to the size of the army. Your not talking about outfitting a couple hundred or even a few thousand tanks like Western countries.
The cost would be prohibitive as would training them all to a decent standard. Training rounds for example how many would you need to train everyone to a decent level, then of course there is maintenance costs.

Game terms you would need another OOB troop & tank quality could vary greatly in my view. Also I think Russia expected the Ukraine to just give up when faced with an army of that size, I would bet a lot of the tanks involved in the military exercise are lacking their ERA.


On APS I have only seen 1 tank equipped with a modern active protection system & that looked like it was destroyed by artillery.
Also ATGM use seems rare possibly due to the nature of most engagements. My guess RPG type weapons are preferred because you can pop out take the shot & run.

For me the jury is out I do not know if Arena on is effective or not.
Game terms we have 2 systems I think one should remain as is to represent things like Trophy & possibly Arena & the other should be really dumbed down.

These are just observations make of them what you will not researched anything.

As a side note the Ukraine air force seems to be surviving by using the roads & nape of the earth. Laughed when I saw the fighter that returned with a road sign attached, they are flying low.