Ukraine Bradley That Beat Russian T-90 Tank Shows Crew Skill Is Crucial

The Ukrainian M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle crew that destroyed a state of the art Russian T-90 tanks had returned from training in Germany two weeks earlier. They ran out of armor piercing ammo. But rather than turn and run, they applied their training and skill, targeting the tank's optics. 

Unable to see, the tank spun around, hit a tree and the crew bailed. A Ukrainian drone then finished it off. Skills matter. JL 

David Axe reports in Forbes:

All things were not equal in Stepove that day. A T-90’s 125-millimeter smoothbore main gun makes the tank more than a match for an M-2 with its smaller gun and much thinner armor. Unable to penetrate the 51-ton T-90, (the Ukrainian Bradley gunner) targeted the tank’s fragile optics. “I started blinding him so he couldn’t leave.” Hammering the T-90 with one-pound autocannon rounds triggered the tank’s reactive armor and destroyed the optics. Its turret spinning, the tank rolled out of control—and into a tree. The three crew bailed out. The driver got captured. Later, a Ukrainian FPV drone finished the T-90. Its wreck still was on the battlefield days later. Skill matters as much as equipment.

When a pair of Ukrainian M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles recently tag-teamed a Russian T-90 tank in Stepove, outside Avdiivka in northeastern Ukraine—ultimately disabling the more heavily-armed and -armored tank—the skirmish nearly ended in disaster for the Ukrainian crews.

One of the 30-ton Bradleys—assigned to the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade—got off a few rounds with its 25-millimeter auto-cannon before breaking off and speeding away, leaving a second Bradley to press the attack at a range of just a few tens of yards.

The three-person crew of the second M-2—nearly 200 of which the United States donated to Ukraine last year—opened fire with 25-millimeter armor-piercing rounds. And that’s when near-disaster struck.

What follows is the testimony of the M-2’s crew, reported by Ukrainian T.V. program TCH and translated by @wartranslated. “We fired with all we could,” Serhiy, the gunner, told TCH. “At first with anti-armor. And then we started having issues.”

It’s not clear what those issues were. Perhaps the crew ran out of armor-piercing rounds. In any event, it had to switch to other, less-powerful ammunition—likely high-explosive rounds.

The hits Serhiy scored with armor-piercing ammo had not yet penetrated the T-90’s add-on reactive armor, to say nothing of piercing its hundreds of millimeters of composite base armor.

It’s that armor, plus a T-90’s 125-millimeter smoothbore main gun, that makes the tank more than a match for an M-2 with its smaller gun and much thinner armor, all things being equal.

All things were not equal in Stepove that day. Despite having completed his training in Germany just a few weeks prior to the fight with the T-90, Serhiy adapted fast. “I remembered everything,” he said, comparing operating an M-2 to playing video games.

Unable to penetrate the 51-ton T-90, Serhiy targeted the tank’s fragile optics. “I started blinding him so he couldn’t leave.”

Dramatic drone videos of the skirmish depict what happened next. Hammering the T-90 with one-pound autocannon rounds, Serhiy triggered some of the tank’s explosive reactive armor and destroyed the optics.

Its turret spinning, the tank rolled out of control—and into a tree. The three crew bailed out. One, the driver, reportedly got captured. Later, a Ukrainian first-person-view drone finished off the T-90. Its wreck still was on the battlefield days later.

Serhiy’s clever tactics belie how difficult it is for an IFVIFV +1.5%—even one as balanced as the M-2 is—to take out a tank in a close fight. But his tactics also underscore that, in any hard fight, skill matters as much as equipment does