The tank is the apex predator of ground warfare,
and both Russia and Ukraine have had significant losses.
It can cost millions of dollars to build replacements.
So what do these losses mean for the war and
which country is ahead?
We're going to break down the balance of power.
I'm Sam Feldman. I'm a defense editor with Business Insider.
And I'm AUS Navy. Veteran
tanks aren't decisive, but they're an important part of the
positional warfare
and they're critical weapon to Ukraine to try to break
the Russian momentum.
These are premier fighting vehicles that we're seeing in action
on the battlefields of Ukraine.
We're learning a lot about the tank forces and warfare
against pretty pervasive threats to tanks.
Russia is using its tanks primarily to support foot soldiers
who are advancing to counter Ukrainian drives and to protect
vehicle movements.
Russia is one of the largest tank forces in the
world,
and Russia has been on attack.
The other advantage Russia has is a political willingness to
sacrifice hundreds of vehicles and 10s of thousands of troops
to try to attain battlefield victories.
Russia's lost a lot of tanks by the count of
open source researchers at Oryx,
they've lost
1800 destroyed,
530 captured, and then 270 abandoned.
Russia has thousands more tanks upon which it can draw,
and it can make operational older or reserved tanks as
the war continues.
So Russia's using pretty much everything it's got.
The bulk of that is the T 80s and the
T70 twos.
Those are Cold War era Soviet made tanks that Russia
has in really large numbers.
There is some usage of the more modern T 90s
and Russia's also, to augment its numbers and replace its
heavy losses,
has dipped into its deep storage and is taking out
T50 fives and T50 fours.
Those are tanks that were built in the
days after World War 2,
the T50 fives and T50 fours.
Those are essentially obsolete on a modern battlefield.
Russia has not deployed its T 14 Armada tank,
which is a tank that Russian media has hyped up
quite a bit.
It has not been involved in any meaningful combat operations
in Ukraine.
The T90M is the most advanced tank that Russia has
deployed to the battlefields of Ukraine.
It has thermal sites, a computerized fire control system and
jammers.
It also like many other tanks or Russian tanks and
Western tanks,
it has explosive reactive armor.
It costs about the ruble equivalent of $4.5 million.
Ukraine has received donated tanks from western partners.
So those tanks are the UK made Challenger 2,
the German made Leopard tank and the American M1 Abrams.
Those are all very modern tanks.
One issue with them is essentially that Ukraine doesn't have
enough.
Ukraine has only been donated about
31M1 Abrams. The M1 Abrams is a premier tank designed
to destroy Soviet and Russian made tanks and my guess
would be the Ukrainians wish they had more.
They could certainly use them.
The M1 Abrams that is a main battle tank of
the United States.
It has computerized fire control software,
it has depleted uranium rounds that are designed to shatter
enemy armor,
and it was built specifically for tank on tank battles.
The M1 Abrams has a high top speed.
It has a gas turbine engine that creates a lot
of power.
It is a top tank.
And yet it is also facing the same threats that
have bogged down Russian and other Western made tanks.
The challenges with the M1 Abrams is that it requires
a lot of maintenance.
Tanks are a fearsome weapon that carries A psychological effect
on the defender.
Ukraine has shown that the Russian tank forces are hardly
the unstoppable force that many had feared before the war's
outbreak.
Russian tanks are less survivable than Western made tanks.
Western made tanks are better designed to protect the crew
and when they sustain a direct hit it's more frequent
that a western tank will be able to be towed
and then repaired. You would not find me in any
Russian tank.
The risks of all Soviet design vehicles to the crew
are really high.
The Soviet made tanks often become total losses and crew
killers when they're hit.
A good example it's indicative of this is
the jack-in-the-box effect. The T72 has a design flaw where
the crew essentially sits on top of ammunition storage for
the tank's shells,
and that means that a blast into this space is
going to potentially cook off the stored ammunition inside the
tank.
The top turret will basically blow off from this massive
explosion of all the tanks ammunition that will kill the
crew,
and that'll make the tank a total loss.
The Soviet doctrine of fighting informs both the
institutional approaches of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Russian
Armed forces.
Soviet doctrine really emphasizes using mass firepower to make enemy
positions untenable,
and then to send forward armor and infantry to seize
those positions from the remnants of defenders that held them.
That's very different than maneuver warfare.
Maneuver warfare is the simultaneous use of firepower from the
ground and from the air.
Wall infantry and armor are are on the move
when you think about the sides.
Ukraine is not willing to give up territory.
It is trying to regain territory.
It views the territory on upon which it's fighting on,
upon which Russia holds as its rightful territory,
seized by force and marred by Russian invaders.
And so the Ukrainians are not willing to cede territory
for any type of maneuver warfare.
And to Russians, a territory matters as well.
Every inch of advance is important to the Russians.
So the Russians are very intent on taking territory,
whatever the damage to that territory and whatever the losses
to their own forces.
And the Russians are able to sustain greater losses and
have a willingness to sacrifice people for those advances.
Ukraine is not willing to do human wave attacks.
The Russian human wave attacks have overwhelmed prepared Ukrainian defenses.
They've come at a cost of 10s of thousands of
people and hundreds if not thousands of fighting vehicles.
And so these are brute force tactics that Ukraine and
really the West are not willing to employ.
Taking out tanks is a very important part of Ukraine.
Holding its defenses. Tanks can bring mobile firepower against prepared
defensive points,
and so destroying a tank before it's able to really
threaten foot soldiers and some of their prepared defenses in
trench lines or in buildings is essential to holding those
lines.
Tanks are a weapon of maneuver warfare,
and the Ukraine war is essentially positional.
When tanks have tried to pass through areas,
they're hitting these pervasive threats of the prepared defenses,
of enemy attack airplanes, of mines,
drones, artillery, and anti tank guided missiles.
All of that is bogging them down,
preventing them from what they're best at,
massing fire through a combination of speed and the ability
to cross nearly any type of terrain.
But if they can't cross that terrain without losing their
tracks or coming under sustained attack,
then their power on the battlefield has been effectively checked.
To really understand the artillery threat,
we have to understand the battlefield the tank is facing.
This is a very dangerous battlefield for any tank.
Let's consider the Russian prepared defenses that a Ukrainian tank
would potentially face.
First there's a minefield, a very heavily laid minefield with
hidden bombs that may run kilometers in depth.
Then there are anti tank obstacles like upturned pyramids that
try to limit tanks movement.
There are vehicle dishes which are almost like a Moat
through which a tank or an armored vehicle can't cross
without some type of bridging equipment or without filling in
part of this Moat. And then there are the defensive
lines where ground troops are both spotting movement of approaching
forces and they'll have machine gun positions.
They'll have anti tank gun and missile positions.
All of this then is covered by artillery and covered
by potentially enemy attack helicopters.
Anti tank missiles are also an incredibly important threat that
has become much more widespread in Ukraine.
An anti tank guided missile is a much more advanced
system than say an RPG or rocket propelled grenade that
could threaten a tank but is guided by the fire
who often is afraid for their life.
An anti tank guided missile is a fire and forget
system.
A soldier who is trained on one doesn't take a
lot of training to fire one of these.
The soldier who's carrying one has to leave cover for,
you know maybe two or three seconds for the missile
to acquire a
enemy armor and then can fire it and can go
back to hiding and the missiles guidance system will take
care of the risk.
The anti tank missiles are designed to penetrate tank armor
and there's been a proliferation of on the battlefield.
So they're more difficult to stop.
They are more difficult to jam because there's a variety
of different types on the battlefield,
and they are also in such volume that the tank's
ability to use its explosive reactive armor becomes more limited
with repeated strikes.
Ukraine has a variety of anti tank guided missiles which
have all seen combat use.
So couple systems in laws
Javelin
and the Ukrainian made Stugnapis.
Both sides are adapting their armored vehicles for the pretty
pervasive threat of drones
and so one way this is manifesting itself are these
cope cages.
It's like a welded netting that goes around the tank.
This is designed to make it more tricky to land
an exploding drone right on the tank's shell and blast
inwards.
These cages, if you will,
kind of look like mosquito Nets that try to keep
the explosion a little bit further from the tank's hull.
The other side of that is that drone pilots are
becoming more skilled at getting around these and attacking vulnerable
points.
Tanks are really expensive, hard to make weapons.
M1 Abrams cost in the neighborhood of
$5,000,000. A Russian T-90 costs also around the same amount
in the Ruble equivalent.
So these are expensive systems to lose.
There's both the economic cost,
there's the the three to four crew killed,
and then there's the psychological effect of your enemy seeing
a chink in your armor.
Ukraine is very dependent on Western donations for its tank
force.
It can repair its Russian made tanks to some degree,
and it's relying on support from the US,
UK and Germany to replace its damaged tanks in Ukraine.
Other countries also have donated their weapons,
but Ukraine doesn't have extensive tank production needed by this
war,
and so Ukraine is very dependent on its Western partners
for the supports to repair tanks and for tanks.
the US has given
31M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
If you factor in the ammunition and part support for
the M1 Abrams,
it's likely north of $200 million
in support that the US has provided in the M1
Abrams tanks.
U.S. officials estimate that the war has
already cost Russia at least $200 billion
in military spending, and in its latest budget,
Russia has signaled it's going to spend roughly 6%
of its GDP on its military.
That's likely at the lower bound of how much real
spending Russia is being forced to do on its military.
As the war in Ukraine continues,
we are almost certainly going to see continued heavy tank
losses on the part of Russia.
The months long battle to capture the strategic city of
Avdivka is indicative of the staggering losses that Russia is
sustaining.
The capture came at a cost to Russian armor,
350 tanks,
750 armored vehicles, and 46,000 troops killed or injured.
Russia is making every indication that it's going to continue
to try to seize territory from Ukraine,
and that's exposing its tanks and its armored vehicles to
all these pervasive threats on the battlefield.
Russia can continue to afford to lose vehicles
at this heavy clip. Russia is producing more tanks and
it has extensive tank reserves that it can pull out
to augment its tank losses.
The experts at the International Institute of Strategic Studies believe
that Russia can continue to lose tanks and armored vehicles
at this rate for two to three years.
The balance of power on the battlefields of Ukraine must
go to the Russian tanks.
Russia simply has more tanks and is using brute force
tactics that are causing them to lose their tanks in
droves.
But only Russia has this massive firepower it can mass.
And compared to Ukraine's tanks,
even with more advanced tanks,
the advanced tanks face the same threats that the lesser
advanced tanks like the
T72 that both sides use face.
And so this war does not play to the strengths
of the tank,
but tanks are useful to Russia to try to take
territory using maximum force and firepower as Russia is doing.
Tanks and artillery and drones are critical to Ukraine to
try to break the momentum of Russia's ground forces and
the tanks that enable their forward movement.