ukraine military tanks

Ukraine Military Tanks - Can one boy from South Carolina make a difference in Ukraine? It was decided to find Brian Wright.

It took one of the newest units of the Ukrainian army just two weeks to receive American-made M-2 combat vehicles.

Ukraine Military Tanks

The Russian military has deployed a fleet of around 1,200 tanks for a possible invasion of Ukraine. Tanks include the latest T-90 and updated T-72.

How Russia And Ukraine's Militaries Compare

Across the border, the Ukrainian military has mobilized armor for a possible defensive campaign. Ukraine has the same tank models as Russia, but Kievna

In Soviet doctrine, followed by both the Russian and Ukrainian armies, tanks rarely fight tanks. But if and when Russia invades Ukraine outright and escalates the seven-year conflict in eastern Ukraine, tanks on both sides will play a key offensive and defensive role, helping to shape the battlefield so that the decisive forces—the artillery—can do so. It's a terrible job.

The T-64 is a strange Cold War vehicle. Designed by Ukraine's Kharkov Tank Plant, the 40-ton vehicle represented a major improvement over the existing T-55 and T-62 tanks when it entered service in the mid-1960s.

The T-64 introduced several improvements, including a new diesel engine. It also replaces the human loader with an automatic mechanism for stuffing shells into the frame, reducing the total crew to just three men and saving weight.

Uk Considering Supplying Ukraine With Challenger 2 Tanks To Fight Russian Forces

The T-64 was the first Soviet tank to feature the now standard 125mm smoothbore cannon, which in the upgraded T-64B could fire guided missiles through its tubes.

The Soviets never exported the T-64, preferring to sell the cheaper, simpler T-55, T-62, and T-72. During the later decades of the Cold War, thousands of T-64s were equipped with the Soviet Army, mainly fighting apocalyptic tank battles against the American M-1, German Leopard and British Challenger.

The T-64 was more than adequate for the task. "This particular tank provided certain capabilities that were more advanced than NATO tanks that would not appear for another 15 or 16 years," U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James Warford wrote in a 1992 essay.

The T-80, an improved T-64 with composite armor and a gas turbine instead of a diesel engine, appeared in the mid-1970s. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine inherited hundreds of T-64...

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Russia, for its part, has thousands of T-64s and T-80s, but their numbers have steadily declined over the years. Today, the Russian military has retired most T-64 variants in favor of the T-72 models, which are easier to build and maintain. The latest T-72 variant, the T-90, borrows some of the T-80's best features, including composite armor, but retains the T-72's basic vehicle system.

In short, as an accident of history, Ukraine ended up with a more complex and advanced type of tank, while Russia - a larger and richer country - settled on a less practical but more practical tank.

Kiev initially struggled to maintain and upgrade the T-64s. The government began modernizing the 1983-vintage T-64BM in 1999. The resulting T-64BM Bulat had better reactive armor, a new gun, and a local night seat.

Bullet production was slow. When Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014 and subsequently backed separatists against the government in Ukraine's Donbass region, the Ukrainian army went into battle with mostly aging T-64BVs from 1985. Less than a hundred rounds were available.

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The fight was tough on the Ukrainian armored corps. The army revealed last year that 440 of its tanks were destroyed or damaged in the Donbas between April 2014 and June 2016. Artillery, including rockets and mortars, were responsible for most of the damage.

Perhaps anticipating open war with Russia, in 2017 Kiev got serious about upgrading its tanks. The Kharkov plant began producing the T-64BV Mod in 2017 with improved night vision, satellite navigation systems, new radios and better reactive armor. In 2019, another factory, in Lviv, also started producing new T-64 variants.

Today, the Ukrainian armored corps has 410 old T-64BVs, 210 T-64BV Mod 2017, 100 T-64BM missiles and about 130 T-72s. Another thousand tanks are in storage.

The upgraded T-64 is theoretically superior to most Russian tanks. But comparing one tank to another is pointless when the two will never meet in battle.

The Tank Is Not Obsolete, And Other Observations About The Future Of Combat

Tanks are versatile combined arms operational vehicles. Troops maneuver or dig in alongside the infantry, all to best position their supporting artillery. Organization, training, leadership and discipline on the battlefield are more important than the details of one piece of equipment or another.

In that regard, it is an open question how well Kiev's T-64s can perform in large-scale operations when their crews are under heavy stress - and by extension, how they can engage in an all-out war with the much larger Russians. army by their side. . , arguably less complex than far more tanks. When the West finally starts bringing the big guns to Ukraine, some Ukrainians fear it may be too little, too late.

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Ukrainian tanks prepare to attack Russian forces in Ukraine's Luhansk region on February 26. By Anatoly Stepanov/AFP Getty Images

Ukraine War: Uk Considering Possibility Of Supplying Challenger 2 Tanks To Kyiv To Battle Russia

The United States and its NATO allies have increased the supply of tanks, helicopters and heavy weapons to Ukraine as the country's forces prepare for a large-scale battle against Russian troops in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

The delivery of the new weapons represents a major shift from Western support for Ukraine in the early days of the war, when U.S. and European officials, unsure how long Ukraine would be able to withstand a major Russian invasion, were wary of handing over heavy weapons to turn it into Russian hands. The deliveries also reflect a shift from defense systems such as anti-tank missiles to offensive weapons that Ukraine needs at a critical juncture in the war.

The Czech Republic opened the floodgates by sending tanks into Ukraine earlier this month, becoming the first NATO country to do so since Russia launched its invasion on February 24.

Other NATO countries have followed suit with shipments of their own high-quality military equipment across NATO borders to Ukraine. Slovakia sent an advanced S-300 air defense system to Ukraine, and the United States announced Wednesday that it would provide Ukraine with an additional $800 million worth of military equipment. This shipment included 11 MI-17 helicopters, 200 M113 armored personnel carriers, 100 Humvees, 300 "kamikaze" drones, heavy helicopters, thousands of bombs and other munitions.

France Is Sending Tank Killing Amx 10rc Armored Vehicles To Ukraine

In the early stages of the war, many Western officials believed that Kiev could quickly fall to Russian forces within days, prompting them to send heavy weapons to a government they could not survive.

That all changed after Russia's major offensive in northern Ukraine, thanks to fierce Ukrainian resistance backed by Western supplies of anti-tank weapons and other small arms, as well as clumsy tactical mistakes by ill-equipped Russian forces.

It is not easy to transport heavy weapons to Ukraine. In addition to heavy vehicles and weapons, such a move to Ukraine would require a potentially long backlog of logistics, including training, parts and hardware to keep the vehicles operational in a war zone. (Russia has threatened to attack US and NATO weapons en route to Ukraine.)

"A tank is not just a rental car," said Ben Hodges, the former commander of US Army Europe. "When you talk about transporting any kind of mechanized or armored vehicle, you also have to think about spare parts, maintenance packages, training, fuel, ammunition ... so they can keep things going."

Spain Plans Ukrainian Military Tank Training In Latvia / Article

Still, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday that several allies were still considering delivering tanks to Ukraine, mostly Soviet models that troops have already trained in Kiev. "It's a device that the Ukrainians are probably already familiar with, so the time to practice on it will be relatively quick," Hodges said.

Logistical problems have led some Western governments to withhold large supplies of heavy vehicles to Ukraine, even as Ukraine's top officials have asked for more support for its militias and paramilitary forces.

Others, notably some politicians in Germany, fear that upgrading Ukraine's military with heavy weapons could make the West a target for further Russian aggression. That discussion has allegedly caused a split in the governing coalition in Germany.

Germany's largest arms maker, Rheinmetall, said earlier this week it was ready to supply 50 used Leopard 1 battle tanks to Ukraine, but the German government has not yet given the green light to the arms transfer. Some German officials rejected the idea, believing it would take too long to train the Ukrainians, who are familiar with post-Soviet weapons systems common in Eastern Europe, on Western fighters. Armin Pepperger, the chief executive of Rheinmetall, contested this argument and said that they would be trained in a few days.

Scholz Faces Pressure From German Allies To Supply Tanks To Ukraine

To Ukrainians, the new pace of Western arms transfers is a welcome change, but still not enough. Current and former Ukrainian officials said

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