Slat armor

[2] The German Wehrmacht was the first employer of cage armor during World War II, using Drahtgeflecht-Schürzen (English: "wire mesh aprons") to fortify its tanks against shell fire.

[3] In March 1943, Adolf Hitler ordered all new Sturmgeschütz, Panzer III, IV, and Panthers be outfitted with Schürzen of either the wire mesh or steel plate type.

Similarly, the Soviet Red Army tanks, when faced with the Panzerfaust, were outfitted with "bedspring" armor made from expanded metal mesh grating panels.

[13] In December 2021, the Ukrainian Army released video of a military exercise in which an armored fighting vehicle (apparently a BTR fitted with a T-64-like turret) carrying such equipment was destroyed by a Javelin missile.

[15] In 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine where they saw combat usage, they were pejoratively termed "cope cages"[16] by English-language online communities, western military analysts, and British defence secretary, Ben Wallace,[17] expressing skepticism over their real-world effectiveness, based on the assumption by these analysts that the armor was most likely designed in an attempt to mitigate the threat of top-down anti-tank missiles such as the FGM-148 Javelin, and other top-attack munitions.

[20] The lack of uniformity between the makeshift cage variants made from different meshes and iron fences suggest that they are largely improvised by the tank crews, and are not standard issue.

[26][27] On 21 March 2024, recent footage of the submarine Tula showed that it has been fitted with cage armor to prevent drone strikes, the first oceangoing asset to carry such a modification.