Russian Vs. Western-Made Tanks In The Ukraine War | Balance Of Power | Insider

The tank is the top predator of land warfare. And both Russia and Ukraine have suffered significant losses. Building replacements can cost millions of dollars. So what do these losses mean for the war? And which country is ahead? We are going to break the

balance

of

power

. I'm Sam Fellman. I'm a defense editor at Business Insider and a US Navy veteran. Tanks aren't decisive, but they are an important part of positional warfare and are a critical weapon for Ukraine to try to break the Russian momentum. These are top-notch combat vehicles that we are seeing in action on the battlefields of Ukraine.

We are learning a lot about tank forces and the war against fairly widespread threats to

tanks

. Russia is using its

tanks

primarily to support advancing foot soldiers, to counter Ukrainian attacks, and to protect vehicle movements. Russia is one of the largest tank forces in the world and Russia has been attacking. The other advantage Russia has is the political will to sacrifice hundreds of vehicles and tens of thousands of troops to try to achieve battlefield victories. Russia has lost a lot of tanks by the count of open source researchers at Oryx: they have lost 1,800 destroyed, 530 captured, and then 270 abandoned.

Russia has thousands more tanks it can draw on and can bring older or reserve tanks into operation as the war continues. So Russia is using practically everything it has. Most of them are the T-80 and T-72. These are Soviet-

made

tanks from the Cold War era that Russia has in really large quantities. There is some use of the more modern T-90s, and Russia too, to increase their numbers and replace their heavy losses, has gone into deep storage and is bringing out T-55s and T-54s. These are tanks that were built in the days after World War II.

The T-55 and T-54 are essentially obsolete on a modern battlefield. Russia has not deployed its T-14 Armata tank, which is a tank that the Russian media has publicized quite a bit. It has not participated in any significant combat operations in Ukraine. The T-90M is the most advanced tank that Russia has deployed on Ukrainian battlefields. And it has thermal sites, a computerized fire control system and jammers. Also, like many other tanks, Russian and Western, it has explosive reactive armor. It costs approximately the ruble equivalent of $4.5 million. Ukraine received tanks donated by Western partners. So those tanks are the British-

made

Challenger 2, the German-made Leopard tank, and the American M1 Abrams.

Those are all very modern tanks. One problem with them is essentially that Ukraine doesn't have enough. Only about 31 M1 Abrams have been donated to Ukraine. The M1 Abrams is a top-tier tank designed to destroy Soviet and Russian-made tanks. And I guess Ukrainians wish they had more. They could certainly use them. The M1 Abrams, which is the United States' main battle tank. It has computerized fire control software. It has depleted uranium shells designed to destroy enemy armor and was built specifically for tank-on-tank battles. The M1 Abrams has a high top speed. It has a gas turbine engine that generates a lot of

power

.

It is a top-notch tank, and yet it also faces the same threats that have stalled Russian tanks and other Western-made tanks. The challenge with the M1 Abrams is that it requires a lot of maintenance. Tanks are a fearsome weapon that has a psychological effect on the defender. Ukraine has shown that Russian tank forces are not the unstoppable force that many feared before the outbreak of war. Russian tanks are less survivable than Western-made tanks. Western-made tanks are better designed to protect the crew, and when they suffer a direct hit, a Western tank can more often than not be towed away and then repaired.

You wouldn't find me in any Russian tank. The risks that all Soviet-designed vehicles pose to the crew are really high. Soviet-made tanks often become total losses and the death of their crews when hit. A good indicative example of this is the jack-in-the-box effect. The T-72 has a design flaw where the crew essentially sits on top of the ammunition storage for the tank shells. And that means that an explosion in this space will potentially cook the ammunition stored inside the tank. The top turret will basically blow up with this massive explosion of all the tank's ammo. That will kill the crew and make the tank a total loss.

Soviet fighting doctrine informs both the institutional approaches of the Ukrainian armed forces and the Russian armed forces. Soviet doctrine really emphasizes using massive firepower to make enemy positions untenable and then sending in armored troops and infantry to seize those positions from the remnants of the defenders who were defending them. That is very different from maneuver warfare. Maneuver warfare is the simultaneous use of ground and air firepower while infantry and armor are on the move. When you think about the parties, Ukraine is not willing to give up territory. He's trying to regain territory. He considers the territory in which he fights and that Russia possesses as his rightful territory, taken by force and disfigured by the Russian invaders.

And that is why the Ukrainians are not willing to give up territory for any type of maneuver war. And for Russians, territory also matters. Every centimeter of progress is important for the Russians. So the Russians are very determined to take territory, whatever the damage done to that territory and whatever the losses to their own forces. And the Russians are able to withstand greater losses and are willing to sacrifice people for those advances. Ukraine is not willing to carry out attacks with human waves. Russian human wave attacks have overwhelmed prepared Ukrainian defenses. They have cost tens of thousands of people and hundreds, if not thousands, of combat vehicles.

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 maintaining its defenses. Tanks can provide mobile firepower against prepared defensive points. So destroying a tank before it can really threaten the infantrymen in some of their prepared defenses, in trenches or buildings, is essential to holding those lines. Tanks are a weapon of maneuver warfare and the Ukrainian war is essentially positional. When tanks have attempted to pass through areas, they are attacking these widespread threats from prepared defenses, enemy attack aircraft, mines, drones, artillery and anti-tank guided missiles.

All of this is bogging them down, preventing them from doing what they do best: concentrating fire through a combination of speed and the ability to cross almost any type of terrain. But if they cannot cross that terrain without losing their way or coming under sustained attack, then their power on the battlefield will have been effectively checked. To truly understand the artillery threat, we must understand the battlefield the tank faces. This is a very dangerous battlefield for any tank. Consider the defenses prepared by Russia that a Ukrainian tank would potentially face. First of all, there is a minefield, a very densely mined minefield with hidden bombs that can extend miles deep.

Then there are anti-tank obstacles, such as inverted pyramids that attempt to limit a tank's movement. There are vehicle ditches, which are almost like a moat that a tank or armored vehicle cannot pass through, without some type of bridge or without filling in part of this moat. And then there are the defensive lines, where ground troops detect the movement of approaching forces and will have machine gun positions. They will have anti-tank guided missile positions. All of this is then covered by artillery and 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, which could threaten a tank but is guided by a gunner who often fears for his life. An anti-tank guided missile is a fire-and-forget system. A soldier who is training with one doesn't need much training to fire one of these. The soldier carrying one has to leave cover for, you know, maybe two or three seconds for the missile to take on enemy armor and then he can fire it and go back into hiding. And the missile's guidance system will take care of the rest.

Anti-tank missiles are designed to penetrate the armor of tanks and there has been a proliferation of them on the battlefield. So they're harder to stop, they're harder to block, 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 attacks. Ukraine has a variety of anti-tank guided missiles, all of which have been used in combat. So a couple of systems, NLAW, Javelin and the Ukrainian-made Stugna-P. Both sides are adapting their armored vehicles to the fairly widespread drone threat.

And one way this manifests itself is these "defense cages." It is like a welded net that surrounds the tank. This is designed to make it more difficult to land an explosive drone right on the shell of the tank and explode inward. These cages, so to speak, look like mosquito nets that try to keep the explosion a little further from the tank hull. The flip side is that drone pilots are becoming more adept at getting around drones and attacking vulnerable spots. Tanks are really expensive weapons and difficult to make. An M1 Abrams costs around $5 million. A Russian T-90 also costs about the same in rubles.

So these are expensive systems to lose. There is an economic cost: three or four crew members die. And then there is the psychological effect of your enemy seeing a chink in your armor. Ukraine relies heavily on Western donations for its tank force. It can repair its Russian-made tanks to some extent and relies on support from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany to replace its damaged tanks in Ukraine. Other countries have also donated their weapons, but Ukraine does not have the tank production necessary for this war. And that is why Ukraine is very dependent on its Western partners for support in repairing tanks and new tanks.

The United States has delivered 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. Taking into account ammunition and partial support for the M1 Abrams, it is likely to exceed the $200 million in support the United States has provided for 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 that it will spend approximately 6% of its GDP on its military. That's probably the lower limit of how much real spending Russia is forced to make on its military as the war in Ukraine continues. We will almost certainly see continued tank losses by Russia.

The months-long battle to capture the strategic city of Avdiivka is indicative of the staggering losses Russia is suffering. The capture had a cost for the Russian armor: 350 tanks, 750 armored vehicles and 46,000 soldiers killed or wounded. Russia is giving every indication that it will continue to try to seize territory from Ukraine, and that is exposing its tanks and armored vehicles to all of these widespread battlefield threats. Russia can continue to afford to lose vehicles at this high rate. Russia is producing more tanks and has ample tank reserves that it can use to increase its losses. Experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies believe that Russia can continue losing tanks and armored vehicles at this rate for two to three years.

The

balance

of power on Ukraine's battlefields must rest with Russian tanks. Russia simply has more tanks and is using brute force tactics that are causing them to lose their tanks en masse. But only Russia has this enormous firepower that it can accumulate, and compared to Ukraine's tanks, even with more advanced tanks, advanced tanks face the same threats as less advanced tanks like the T-72 that both sides use. And so this war doesn't take advantage of the tank's strengths, but tanks are useful for Russia to try to take territory using maximum force and firepower, like Russia is doing.

Tanks, artillery and drones are essential for Ukraine to try to break the momentum of Russian ground forces and thetanks that allow their advance.