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 Fellman. I'm a defense editor
with Business Insider, and I'm a US
Navy veteran. Tanks aren't decisive, but
they're an important part of the positional warfare,
and they're a 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 tens of
thousands of troops to try to attain
battlefield victories. Russia has lost a lot
of tanks by the count of open-source
researchers at Oryx, they've lost 1,800
destroyed, 530 captured, and then 270 abandoned. Russia has thousands more
tanks upon which it can draw, and it can make operational
older or reserve 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 T-72s. 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 is also, to
augment its numbers and replace its
heavy losses, has dipped into
its deep storage and is taking out
T-55s and T-54s. Those are tanks that
were built in the days after World War II.
The T-55s and T-54s, those are essentially obsolete
on a modern battlefield. Russia has not deployed
its T-14 Armata 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 T-90M is the most
advanced tank that Russia has deployed to the
battlefields of Ukraine. And it has thermal sites, a computerized fire control
system, and jammers. It also, like
many other tanks, 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 31 M1 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 the 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-
designed 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 that's
indicative of this is the jack-in-the-box effect. The T-72 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 tank's 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, while infantry and
armor 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
upon which it's fighting and 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, 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
tens of thousands of people, and hundreds if not thousands
of fighting 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 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 in 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 a tank's movement. There are vehicle ditches, 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
guided 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 a firer who often is afraid for their life. An anti-tank guided missile
is a fire-and-forget system. A soldier who is
training on one, it 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 an enemy armor and then can fire it and
can go back to hiding. And the missile's
guidance system will take care of the rest. The anti-tank missiles are
designed to penetrate tank armor, and there's been a proliferation
of them on the battlefield. So they're more
difficult to stop, they're more
difficult to jam, because there's a variety
of different types on the battlefield. And they're 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 a couple systems,
NLAWs, Javelin, and the Ukrainian-
made Stugna-Ps. 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. A M1 Abrams costs in the
neighborhood of $5 million. A Russian T-90 costs also
around the same amount in the ruble equivalent. So these are expensive
systems to lose. There's both an
economic cost, there's 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 new tanks. The US has given 31 M1
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. US 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 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 monthslong
battle to capture the strategic city of Avdiivka 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 T-72 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.
