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Forced to defend againstthousands of Iranian drone and missile attacksbefore andafter the ceasefirein thenow-paused U.S.-Israel war on Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) appears to havetaken a play from Russiaand its war with Ukraine in an attempt to secure some of its energy facilities with massive metal ‘cope cages.’
An image posted on X by Israel’sI24 Newsoutlet shows what it claims is caging around oil tanks near Dubai International Airport. In the far-right section of the photo, what appears to be a more complete metal enclosure of some of the fuel tanks can be seen, while in the foreground, construction looks to be taking place on caging for additional tanks.
בדובאי החלו למגן באמצעות רשתות ברזל אתרים אסטרטגיים שקשורים לתעשיית הנפט, סמוך לנמל התעופהpic.twitter.com/mL4n28dBSH
This seems to be the first sighting of these structures in the UAE and across the Gulf Arab nations. It is unclear when construction on the structures began or how many of these barriers the UAE is building or plans to build. We have reached out to the UAE Embassy in Washington for more details.
As we have reported in the past, the idea behind these kinds of metal structures is to mitigate the damage caused by incoming munitions by creating a barrier between the point of weapon impact and the target. The caging depicted is not designed to protect against Iranian ballistic missiles, and even cruise missiles could be a challenge. These kinds of structures are made to help defend against one-way attack munitions, such as the Shahed-136, many of which Iran has launched against the UAE. They can also protect from near-field small suicide drone attacks, although these have not been a major issue in the UAE during this conflict.
As noted earlier, while these structures may be new to the UAE, it is not the first time metal caging and even mesh nets have been used to protect critical energy infrastructure. Russia has employed these measures on its oil storage facilities in attempts to protect them from repeated Ukrainian drone attacks for a number of years now.
You can see some of those defensive measures in the following images and videos.
A fuel tank covered with nets for protection against drones at one of Russia's oil infrastructure facilities.pic.twitter.com/5Qm6vpaDJE
Fuel tanks on the territory of the "Nurlino" linear production and dispatch station covered with anti-drone nets as visible on Google Earth satellite imagery from September 17, 2025.https://t.co/FIAQY1zkL1pic.twitter.com/f0d5q5koxF
Source: Drudge Report
