What was once a running joke has turned into terrifying reality for Russian soldiers-
Russia has officially sent 75 year old T-54s and T-55s to Ukraine. What in the world is
going on with the Russian military, where did all its modern tanks go,
and why can't one of the largest countries in the world simply build new ones?
The T-55 was a monster of a tank when it made its debut three quarters of a
century ago. Entering service immediately after the end of the second world war,
the T-55 would go on to become one of the most produced tanks in history,
with an estimated 100,000 built. The tank has played a role in ever major, and most minor,
conflicts of the Cold War, and its introduction scared the NATO allies so bad that Britain
hurried to develop a brand new tank gun and the US rushed the M60 tank into production.
In its day, the T-54/T-55 was a formidable monster,
with 205 mm of frontal turret armor and 120mm slanted hull armor. The tank was so tough,
that in trials it proved it could survive a nuclear explosion up to 15 kilotons in yield
at a range of just over 300 meters- though its crew needed a range of 700 meters to be protected
from the pressure wave. Its 100 mm gun could penetrate about 300mm of rolled steel armor,
making it a significant threat to anything in NATO inventories. Its crew enjoyed the benefit
of some of the first thermal sights, giving the tank the ability to operate at night.
But that was in the 1950s. Today, the T-55 is a sign of desperation
for an embattled Russia. So what in the world happened to its tanks?
Russia's initial offensive into Ukraine was a compendium of tactical blunders and poor doctrine.
Tanks are the fiercest weapon on any battlefield- jets and bombers can deliver more destruction,
but they can't take and hold ground like a tank can. Their main cannons can level
most small buildings- in fact, some tanks have specialized rounds to do just that. Their modern,
advanced composite armor utilizes a variety of materials working together to defeat even the
most powerful projectiles. And anything a tank can blast apart, it can simply run over and
crush under its massive treads- with most modern main battle tanks weighing in at around 60 tons.
But all of that means very little if tanks aren't properly supported, as Russia has
failed to learn in three major conflicts now. Because as impressive as tanks are, they have
some glaring vulnerabilities which Russia's enemies have exploited to astonishing effect.
During the first Chechen war, Russia mobilized its massive arsenal of tanks
and armored vehicles with a plan to literally crush the Chechen resistance
underfoot. Up against a force a fraction their size, with no tanks of their own,
the war was a foregone conclusion- until suddenly it wasn't. Because while the
Chechen rebels didn't have tanks, they did have RPGs, anti-tank missiles, and even IEDs and tank
mines- as well as an incredibly good doctrine that exploited Russia's biggest vulnerability.
Russia warfighting doctrine states that tanks lead the way, with infantry fighting vehicles
providing close support. However, the infantry inside the infantry fighting vehicles can't do
their job if they're not dismounted- and it's awfully hard to provide much support
when you're looking at the world and scanning for threats through a very narrow armored slit.
During the invasion of Chechnya, the Russians had a problem- mainly that the Chechen rebels refused
to play ball and come out of the cities for a nice clean fight that Russia would absolutely
dominate. Instead, the rebels hid inside the cities and put up a stiff urban resistance,
utilizing dense urban terrain and verticality to their great advantage. Assaulting into the
city meant a rebel could be in any window, ready to fire down at a moment's notice.
The Russians thus decided that the best way to protect their infantry was to keep
it inside their armored vehicles. The Chechens were counting on this.
Rebel forces used the verticality of the urban terrain to get up above the tanks, providing them
with two distinct advantages. The first was that from above the tank, they could use weapons that
would normally have little to no effect against the thick front armor, or even the slightly less
thick side and rear armor of the tanks. Because tanks can't be well protected from every angle,
or else no engine on earth could move them, they have to make sacrifices- this is why the
front armor is the strongest, in most fights this is where the fire is going to be coming
from. Side and rear armor is robust, but thinner to save weight. But the roof of the tank has very
thin armor, often just a dozen or two dozen millimeters thick. The Abrams for instance
has about an inch of roof armor, mainly to protect the crew from artillery shell fragments.
This thin roof armor was especially vulnerable to regular rocket propelled grenades, which the
Chechens had in abundance. Ironically, a lot of their RPGs came from Russian soldiers who
sold equipment to villagers in exchange for food, alcohol, or cigarettes- those same villagers sold
the RPGs right back to the rebels, or sometimes were outright working with them. With so many
of these simple and cheap weapons laying around, and the Chechens using the verticality of urban
terrain to get above the tanks, Russian armor soon became a critically endangered species.
But it wasn't just thin roof armor, the second weakness exploited by the Chechens was the lack
of elevation on Russian tank's main guns. An M1 Abrams has an elevation of +20 to -10 degrees
on its gun, allowing it significant vertical reach. A T-72 meanwhile has an elevation of
only +14 to -6 degrees. A T-80 is slightly better, with a range of +18 to -4 degrees.
Such a poor range on Russian tanks meant that they were physically unable to respond to enemy
action in the windows and roofs above their heads, frustrating Russian tankers as they watched their
friends get destroyed from above. BMPs with supporting infantry would fare much better,
with a gun elevation of 74 degrees for the BMP 2. This vehicle was designed to take out,
or at least scare off, enemy attack helicopters with its main gun,
giving it much greater vertical reach. The problem though was that a gunner would have
to try to identify threats and neutralize them by peering through a small armored
slit- a incredibly difficult task while fighting in a close quarters, chaotic, urban environment.
The Chechens also exploited a tank's thin floor armor by utilizing IEDs and anti-tank
mines. Often, they would hide in holes in the ground or sewers that tanks would roll over,
only to pop up and attach mines that resembled limpet anti-ship mines, or simply toss out an
IED and duck for cover. The thin floor armor would provide little if any protection to the crew, so
not only would these IEDs knock the vehicle out of commission, but would also likely kill its crew.
To counter all of these threats, most modern militaries utilize infantry. In a modern,
combined arms military, the infantry is often playing the role of babysitter for friendly armor,
but western powers dismount their infantry to do so. While this makes them more vulnerable,
it also allows them to better use their senses to detect and neutralize threats, while the Russians
force them to remain inside their protected armor vehicles looking out a thin slit.
When it came time to invade Ukraine, the world assumed that Russia had paid
attention to its two humiliating lessons from both Chechen wars. The world would be wrong.
As Russian armor poured into Ukraine, a peculiar sight began to appear across
the country side. Groups of Russian tanks all operating on their own,
with no other armored vehicles or dismounted infantry to be seen anywhere. The Ukrainians
saw much the same thing, and immediately leapt to exploit their enemy's grave mistake. Mighty
Russian armor was being absolutely decimated in a series of ambushes utilizing soldiers armed
with Stugna and western anti-tank weapons. In many cases, Russian armor famously panicked,
prompting even more losses. The entire time, Russian infantry was nowhere to be seen.
Russian doctrine hadn't changed since Chechnya, and its troops were equally poorly trained. In
multiple instances where infantry was present, it failed to do its job of screening the flanks
for armor forces, and instead chaos caused by ambushes led to a visible breakdown of command
and discipline. Every vehicle was out for itself, and infantry being ambushed by machine gun teams
rushed to find cover next to or behind armored vehicles. More than a few grisly instances
of Russians being crushed to death by their own vehicles have come to light since then.
Russian troops were obviously not trained to properly screen the flanks, but they also lacked
training to respond to ambushes. Responding to an ambush is one of the most basic lessons taught by
any western infantry school, with soldiers rallied in order to push through the ambush
and get out of the kill zone asap. This throws the enemy's plans into confusion
and denies them the advantage of carefully planned overlapping fields of fire as well
as other nasty surprises they may be waiting to unleash on forces stuck inside the kill zone.
One year after its invasion of Ukraine, Russia had lost an estimated 1600 of the
2500 tanks it had rolled into Ukraine with. It's recovered and repaired,
or built brand new, an estimated 850 of those lost tanks. But that was back in February,
and by May Russia had lost the biggest tank battle of the war, with 120 armored vehicle losses,
which compounded with the rest of the casualties all along the eastern front. Only Russia knows how
many tanks it's truly lost of the estimated 2500 it began with, but its losses are bad enough to
prompt it to move literal antiques out of storage and even museums and send them to the front lines.
Every month, Russia fields increasingly less capable tanks- a problem for Ukraine as well,
but one offset by the growing movement to send ever larger numbers of western tanks to Ukraine.
Russia's real problem though is that it can't hope to replenish its losses,
while Ukraine can count on its western allies for support.
No one, except maybe a few individuals in the Russian government, truly knows how many tanks
Russia can produce each year. According to Russian sources, one of its largest armor
plants can produce 20 tanks a month, but other sources say that it also refurbishes 8 tanks a
month. This makes it unclear if the plant produces 20 total tanks, or 12 new tanks and 8 refurbished
ones from its deep storage. Similar reports from other plants place their total at around 17 tanks
a month. With two new tank plants being hurried through construction, an estimated 90 tanks could
be hitting the battlefield a month- but nobody knows how many of those will be new T-80s or
T-90s, or simply refurbished T-62s and the like. Even at the most optimistic figure of 90 tanks
hitting the battlefield, this simply doesn't compare with the 150 tanks Russia loses a month.
What we do know is that the tanks coming off the assembly line are in no way modern. Both
refurbished and new tanks are lacking modern electronics and specialized kit like thermal
visions. With all of those supplies coming from overseas and now cut off by sanctions,
modern tanks like the T-90 are even harder to build, with Russia lacking specialized parts
and tools needed for complex engineering. Less advanced T-72s are more achievable for Russia,
though the country faces a similar problem it did during World War 2, when tanks rolled
right off the production line and straight into combat with no sights and no radios.
Especially damaging to Russia's industry is sanctions targeting optical systems,
ball bearings, and machine tools. Without western supplies of thermal and night visions,
Russia is being forced to either produce tanks without these vital components,
or push old tanks into a modern battlefield without them. Instead, Russia is putting basic
gunner's sights on its tanks, reducing the range of their cannons by an estimated 2 kilometers- and
that matters a great deal as German Leopards begin to show up on Ukrainian battlefields,
joined at the end of the summer by American Abrams. Even against modern Russian tanks,
western armor had a decided range and precision advantage- but now Russia's only real hope is
to use its armor in close quarters combat where its tanks can be more accurate. The
embargo on advanced semiconductors to Russia has also impeded its ability to develop new modern
fire control computers, forcing it to cobble together what it can from civilian appliances
or smuggle low quantities at great expense through China and other friendly nations.
You probably don't think much about ball bearings- we didn't before we wrote this
script. But ball bearings are critical for the production of modern vehicles. These shockingly
simple devices are ingenuous and function off the basic premise that things roll better than
they slide. Yet it's no easy feat creating high quality ball bearings which often have to endure
high levels of heat and stress. The production of modern ball bearings is such a technological
feat that nations are ranked by their capacity to create them. And unfortunately for Russia,
it doesn't rank high on that list, with 55% of its ball bearings before the war all coming from
Europe, Canada and the US. Now the nation is forced to rely on small domestic production
and cheaper, lower quality variants it can import from places like China or Malaysia.
Russia is losing on two fronts. Not only is it unable to produce large numbers of
new tanks, or even refurbish old ones to anything resembling a modern standard,
it's being forced to pay exponentially greater prices for supplies needed to
create the small number of modern tanks it manages to crank out. The combination of low
production and skyrocketing cost is a death blow for a cash-strapped Russian government,
who blew through its projected annual defense financing in the first few months of 2023.
And new sources of revenue aren't forthcoming. European price caps
on Russian oil, inherent inefficiencies in Russia's extraction and processing,
and now even greater costs in shipping to places like Asia, have all conspired to make Russia's
oil revenues reach about break-even levels. This is a disaster for the Russian government budget,
because Russia's oil and natural gas industry accounts for about 20% of its GDP, and about
45% of its budget just one month before invasion.
Making matters worse, Russia has now began to tax its own oil industry based on Brent crude prices,
rather than its own oil prices- meaning energy companies in Russia have to pay taxes on revenue
they did not generate. As if problems weren't bad enough, even in the best case scenario that
Russian energy is at break-even revenue, this is still a national disaster. At break-even levels,
energy companies can't afford to invest in new infrastructure or exploratory missions
to expand operations. That means no new oil fields coming online,
no replacement of bad infrastructure, and no addressing inefficiencies in Russian
production that it used to rely on western technology to overcome or at least mitigate.
Russian energy is in the same death spiral that its tank forces are, but Ukraine is in an equally-
if not more immediately precarious position. Because while it'll take years for Russian energy,
and thus budget, to go bust, Ukraine is wholly reliant on its western partners. If the west's
financial or military support wavers, even poorly equipped Russian forces could secure
victory. So while Russia's tank fleets may be in a laughable state right now as Cold War antiques
are dragged out of museums, at least it still has tanks to put on the battlefield. Ukraine is
stuck with what it has, a constantly diminishing quantity that only western support can replenish.
A T-55 is a big joke on a modern battlefield,
until suddenly your side has no more tanks and no more anti-tank missiles to stop it with.
Now go watch Why Ukraine proves NATO is a failure, or click this other video instead!