Why is Russia losing so many tanks? Hundreds of Moscow Army tanks have been disabled since the conflict began Ukraine. According to experts interviewed in an extensive BBC study, the main reasons are twofold: the weapons used by the Ukrainians and the tactics employed by the Russian army.
First let’s see what the numbers are. According to the Bulletin of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russian losses would be about 19,500 men, 725 tanks, 1,923 armored vehicles, 347 artillery systems, 111 multiple rocket launchers, 55 antiaircraft systems. The Russians also reportedly lost 154 planes, 137 helicopters, 1,387 cars, 7 naval units, 76 fuel tanks and 112 drones. As for tanks, according to the BBC, Russia lost about 500 tanks and more than 2 thousand other armored vehicles in Ukraine. The Rand Corporation and the International Institute for Strategic Studies have calculated that Russian forces could count on about 2,700 tanks when the conflict started.
Why is Russia losing so many tanks in Ukraine?
Thus, the Ukrainians managed to inflict heavy losses on the armored forces of Moscow. According to the BBC, the cause lies primarily in the light and shoulder antitank weapons widely used by the Kiev army: spear and nextgeneration missiles Nlaw. The United States provided Ukraine with 2,000 Javelin antitank missiles in the early days of the war and has sent at least 2,000 more since then. Britain instead sent around 3,600 Nlaw missiles. Their peculiarity lies in the fact that they can be fired at a very long distance from the target and do not hit the tank headon, but reach it from above, only to then explode on the turret, that is, in the least stable place armored vehicle. In particular, the spears are able to overcome the defenses of the Russian tanks, which have armor capable of absorbing the impact of the explosions: the rocket is in fact equipped with two warheads, one to eliminate armor and the other to hit the frame below. “Javelin and Nlaw are very powerful,” he told the BBC Nick Reynolds, Research Analyst on Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute: “Without them, the situation in Ukraine would be very different now.” The US has also delivered 100 Switchblade antitank drones, known as “kamikaze drones, to Ukraine, which can also reach targets many kilometers away. However, the high number of Russian tanks destroyed would not only be explained by the weapons deployed by the Ukrainians, but also by the nature of the tactics used by the Russian army in using combat units, consisting of many armored vehicles and relatively few reared ground infantry .
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“Russia has relatively few troops to fall back on,” he told the BBC Phillips O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at St Andrews University, “but these combat units still allow us to create a very powerful formation. They are designed to attack quickly with considerable firepower. However, they have very little protection in relation to infantry personnel tasked with escorting the armored column and responding should it be attacked. Furthermore, O’Brien adds: “Russia did not gain air supremacy at the beginning of the conflict and therefore cannot patrol the skies and detect the movements of the Ukrainian army in advance. This means that Ukrainian troops are able to gain good firing positions for ambushes and do a lot of damage». Not to mention the logistical problems of the Russian army. “We’ve seen images of Russian tanks being towed by Ukrainian farmers’ tractors, O’Brien concludes, “other tanks were abandoned because they ran out of fuel. Still others got stuck in the mud because the high command marched in at the wrong time of year. These were real logistical failures ».
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