Sam Cranny-Evans and Dr Sidharth Kaushal
The war in Ukraine does not reveal anything fundamentally new about the tank. It confirms old lessons and reflects the challenges of armoured warfare.
Some of the very first images to emerge from the war in Ukraine, apart from the devastation caused by Russia’s long-range missile strikes, were of burning Russian armoured vehicles. As the conflict has progressed, these images have come to include some of the more advanced tanks in Russia’s arsenal: the T-80BVM and T-72B3M. Images of these tanks left as nothing more than burnt hulls, their turrets separated from the rest of the vehicle and thrown violently into a nearby ditch, may appear shocking. They give the impression that Ukraine has found the antidote to tank warfare. However, if we consider the design of Russian main battle tanks – and this also applies to the Ukrainian, Polish, Chinese, Indian and many other tank fleets – these images are both less shocking, and less useful in analysing Russian armour.
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