By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven
The Pentagon has armed the Ukrainian forces with Javelin Anti-Tank missiles to stand up against potentially a heavily mechanized armored attack by the Russians.
Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles
Globalfirepower.com does its annual assessments of militaries around the globe says Russia has as many as 12,000 tanks. So discussion has been that they might raise the cost of a Russian invasion. But what could a javelin anti tank missile actually do to an invading group of tanks?
The answer is they have been effective in combat against tanks Javelin anti tank missiles can kill tanks.
An interesting report from the National Interest several years ago cites that they were effective against tanks in Iraq. Now one of the interesting things about this is it has a range of several miles roughly speaking, Russian tanks could be the T-90s that are upgraded or even T-72 Cold War era tanks. Make no mistake, they have likely been very, very much upgraded.
T-14 Armata Tank
The key question is the T-14 Armata Tank that’s gotten a lot of hype in the Russian press. It’s a next generation high tech tank public reports say they have about 20 of them. So mass matters to quote Sun Tzu and he discussed the idea of a mechanized linear formation also one that’s more dispersed or disaggregated.
So the challenge would be to pinpoint and actually take out those Russian tanks. Now here’s one of the key challenges.
Just looking at a map and the geography of Ukraine, the mountains are in the West. Eastern Ukraine is mostly planes and plateaus, makes it very easy for tanks to move from one area to another. So that raises a number of challenges.
The Javelin is often used by distance soldiers in hiding behind trees or under rocks where they’re uneven or mountainous terrain, the Javelin might be better positioned to do well or at least take out some Russian tanks…
More analysis to follow, watch the full video report, above:
Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
