By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
Open source war damage research has for months now documented that Russian tanks have been decimated in its ongoing war with Ukraine, a massive strategic and tactical warfare development which has generated quite an impact among war planners and futurists throughout the world.
In the opening months of the war, Ukrainian soldiers rapidly captured intense global attention and arguably shocked the world with an ability to using dispersed groups of dismounted fighters to stage ambushes, hit and run attacks and defensive fire on invading Russian tanks. The Ukrainian used well-known advanced warfare tactics to destroy Russian tanks with anti-tank weapons at locations where tanks were the most vulnerable, such as bridges, intersections and other narrowly configured passageways where they can be more easily targeted by Javelin and NLAW tank-killing missiles. These can attack from dismounted, protected positions often using terrain, elevation or buildings to obscure attack locations and optimize lethal impact. These tactics were explained by Warrior’s senior military land-war analyst and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Retired Lt. Col. Scott Rutter. As a veteran of modern Combined Arms Maneuver warfare, Rutter explained that the Iraqi Republican Guard attempted these tactics during the 3rd Infantry Divisions successful attack on the Bagdhad airport at the beginning of the OIF invasion.
Thousands of Russian tanks have been destroyed since the start of the war, and open source sites such as Oryx have detailed thousands of destroyed tanks and suggested that perhaps at least one-half or more of Russia’s tanks have been destroyed by Ukrainian fighters. Numbers published by Oryx several months ago cite 2,742 Russian tanks as having been damaged or destroyed, with as many as 1,789 being totally destroyed. GlobalFirepower.com says Russia has more than 12,000 tanks, yet when it comes to the actual numbers of deployable, combat ready tanks, that number is likely to be exponentially lower given the age and service-life of Russia’s Cold War-era tank fleet. Therefore, it may indeed be quite realistic that, as Oryx has at times posited, as much as one-half of Russia’s available tank fleet has been destroyed.
More recently, a public US Army intelligence report, titled “The Operational Environment 2024-2034 Large-Scale Combat Operations.” (US Army Training and Doctrine Command, G2) indicated that all of Russia’s 3,000-strong “active duty” tank force is likely destroyed.
War & Russian Countermeasures
Now, quite likely in response to these circumstances, Russia has taken specific steps to better protect its fleet of T-80VM tanks by adding enhanced reactive armor and an extra turret protection module, a news essay from TASS explains.
“The T-80BVM is an upgraded version of the T-80BV tank. The upgraded armored vehicle features an improved 125mm cannon and an enhanced 1,250 hp gas turbine engine. A multi-channel gunner sight, a mechanic-driver’s vision device and an armament stabilizer are also mounted on the upgraded tank. The combat vehicle is reinforced with slat armor and a modular active protection system,” TASS writes.
These enhancements raise several key questions, such as the scope of the protections. For instance, does the added crew protections and turret enhancements protect Russian tanks from top-down attacks? This is a key question as the Ukrainians have had great success hitting Russian tanks on top from elevated positions, striking areas where the tanks have much less protection. Therefore, a critical question would pertain to the extent to which tanks still vulnerable to top-down attacks from buildings or elevated terrain. Yet another critical question would relate to the scope of its active protection systems, meaning the extent to which its fire-control, sensors, computing and interceptors were capable of tracking and destroying incoming anti-tank missiles. Also, the active protection would be particularly critical if it were hemispheric, meaning it could protect from top-down attacks.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization and 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 Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
