How Ukraine Became A Graveyard For Russian Tanks

Russia's tactics are outmoded and, even then, poorly executed. 

On top of which, new lighter, more mobile technologies have rendered the once fearsome tank a less lethal weapon - and an increasingly successful target. JL 

Robert Wall and Daniel Michaels report in the Wall Street Journal:

Russia began the war in Ukraine with the world’s largest tank force, but the losses it has suffered reveal its weaknesses on the modern battlefield. Moscow’s forces have lost 230 heavily armored tracked vehicles since they invaded Ukraine. Many were destroyed. Others abandoned, captured or damaged. Ukraine relies on compact and nimbler weapons, including armed drones and infantry-carried antitank missiles. The high-tech gear has let small numbers of Ukrainian soldiers exact a surprisingly large toll on Russian tanks. (And) improving tactics only goes so far against new technologies, history shows.

Russia began the war in Ukraine with the world’s largest tank force, but the losses it has suffered reveal its weaknesses on the modern battlefield.

Moscow’s forces have lost more than 230 of the heavily armored tracked vehicles since they invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, according to Oryx Blog, an open-source site that tracks military-equipment losses. Many were destroyed. Others were abandoned, captured or damaged, Oryx says.

Ukraine’s government says it has exacted an even higher toll, claiming to have destroyed more than 400 Russian tanks and many more less-armored military vehicles.

Before the war, Russia had roughly 3,000 heavy tanks, prized for combining a lethal cannon with heavy protection and the ability to traverse rough terrain. Ukraine began the war with about 850 tanks. Neither side has said how many tanks it has lost.

The bludgeoning of battlefield armor in recent weeks likely represents the highest number of tanks destroyed in such a short period since World War II, analysts say. In that conflict, the most effective way to destroy a tank was with another tank.

Today, Ukraine relies on more compact and nimbler weapons, including Turkish-made armed drones and U.S.-made Javelins and other infantry-carried antitank missiles. The high-tech gear has let small numbers of Ukrainian soldiers exact a surprisingly large toll on Russian tanks, armored vehicles and supply columns.

The White House this week said it would provide another $800 million in arms to Ukraine, including many of the tank-busting weapons that have proven so destructive against Russian armor. The package includes 2,000 Javelins and 7,000 other antitank weapons. The U.S. also said it will provide 100 lethal Switchblade drones.

In response, Russia may be adapting its battlefield tactics and trying to better coordinate forces—a weakness they have displayed that exposed them to attacks.

“They’re ineffective at combined armed operations,” said retired Gen. H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser in the Trump administration.

But improving tactics only goes so far against new technologies, history shows. The competition between tanks and systems to disable them has raged for decades.

Tanks first entered battlefields in World War I and played a central role in World War II. Russia’s tank operations in that conflict, which helped defeat Germany, are among the most storied in the era of industrial warfare.

The largest-ever tank battle took place just north of Ukraine in 1943, near the Russian city of Kursk, and involved roughly 6,000 German and Soviet tanks, thousands of aircraft and an estimated two million troops.

German blitzkrieg tactics demonstrated the force of combined attacks coordinating armored vehicles with infantry and air support. Most tank-led assaults since then have used similar tactics, including in the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors and both U.S.-led Gulf Wars.

“To maximize the utility of the tank, you’ve got to use it in a combined armed force with infantry and infantry armored vehicles” and other elements, said Ben Barry, a former commander of a British armored infantry battalion now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in London.

After the massive battles between tanks of World War II, the Soviet Union churned out vast numbers of them during the Cold War. The U.S., unwilling to compete directly with Soviet arms production, instead developed other ways to take out armored military vehicles.

The A-10 ground-attack jet, introduced in the mid-1970s and known as the Warthog for its unusual look, was designed to fly low and shred enemy targets. It uses bombs, missiles and powerful machine guns able to fire exceptionally dense ammunition that leverages momentum to pierce armor.

The AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, introduced into service a decade later, was designed to perform similar tasks but with greater maneuverability.

Now, drones and shoulder-fired systems seek to do the same but with even smaller, more portable and autonomous systems.

“Those two weapons in particular, allow the Ukrainians to really get stuck in there, forcing the Russians to stop and re-evaluate,” said Nicholas Drummond, a defense industry consultant.

Those advances mean tank warfare—especially Russia’s approach to it—needs to adapt to prevent losses. But tanks are likely to keep playing a big role in ground warfare, military experts say.

Russia’s tank losses in Ukraine are “not a deficiency in the tank relative to infantry,” said Gen. McMaster. “It’s the inability to use artillery infantry and armored forces altogether.”

Gen. McMaster said that without heavy armor, forces are extremely vulnerable to enemy artillery, something Ukraine experienced when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and annexed the territory. Russian forces then “were able to kill everything that wasn’t heavily armored,” he said.

Forces advancing against infantry are protected inside and behind tanks, which use their guns to clear out an enemy. The U.S. and its allies effectively used tanks or lighter armored vehicles in battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Russian tanks that are being destroyed by Ukrainian forces appear to lack innovations that Western militaries are deploying, like blowout panels that release the pressure of an internal explosion and so reduce danger to a tank and its crew, said Veli-Pekka Kivimaki, a lecturer in geospatial intelligence at Johns Hopkins University.

Other technologies are under development to help tanks survive on the modern battlefield. Israel’s Trophy system, which aims to identify, intercept and destroy incoming projectiles, is one. Warships have carried active defensive systems for years. Shrinking them for tanks and designing them to operate at closer range presented technical challenges that militaries are overcoming.

It is a lesson not lost on Moscow. Russia has said its newest tank, the T-14 Armata, which hasn’t yet entered operational service, features an active protection system.