Instead of refurbished tanks leaving the facility, analysts increasingly observed support vehicles built using old T-80 hulls, including armored recovery vehicles and heavy weapons platforms. This may indicate that many remaining hulls are too degraded to restore as operational tanks.
The trend, according to the researcher, could signal that Russia’s remaining T-80 reserves are no longer viable for combat
The T-80 is a piece of shit tank. The reverse speed sucks which makes it a deathtrap and also the ammo and propellant is stored close to the crew making it a deathtrap when it cooks off from a hit.
Still, this was one of the better tanks russia had given their bar is so low. It is pretty amazing how terrible russia is at making tanks and how much they refuse to accept their tank design lineage is a dead end.
edit as a reminder -> No tanks are not obsolete because of drones.
Before diving into the analysis of this matter, it is important to note that armoured forces and heavy armoured vehicles have proven indispensable in all recent armed conflicts since 2020, despite the changing and increasingly hostile conditions on the battlefield. Armoured forces continue to play a critical role in modern ground warfare, while many militaries across the globe plan to expand and further develop this branch of service. The tank is not dead, and armoured forces are not going to go extinct in the near future.
Undoubtedly, armoured forces and armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) have to adapt to the new combat environment – technically, tactically, and doctrinally. However, this has been a normal part of their evolution since the beginning of the 20th century.
https://euro-sd.com/2026/01/articles/armed-forces/48794/countering-the-drone-threat-to-heavy-armour/
Tanks are useful in Ukraine, russia just sucks at making Main Battle Tanks.
“Western” tank design shits on this trash for several reasons but the most important is that russian tank design has never really cared about actually keeping tank crews alive, so their tank crews all die whenever they go to war, thus for russia in general being a tanker is inherently a temporary, lowskill job like most other things in the russian military.
“Western” tanks on the otherhand are designed to keep their crew alive so all the investment into those humans to train them best how to use a tank isn’t obliterated when the tank is hit by a shot and all the ammo and propellant cooks off, annihilating the crew and sending the turret into the sky. It is one thing to fight a tank, it is entirely another to fight a tank with a veteran tank crew who have survived intense combat.
The emphasis on a competent degree of reverse speed is also a good example of this, I cannot understand how russians have convinced themselves not having a quick reverse speed on a tank isn’t necessary for a main battle tank to perform basic tactical functions as a tank. It is obvious even in the abstract if you have played a semi-realistic tank video game that the idea of having a slow reverse speed is suicidal in tank combat.
If I had to choose between a tank with russian reverse speed and no tank I would pick no tank every time, if you watch the way Abrams tanks fire in range training you can see the basic “advance just into view, fire a handful of shots, reverse” loop is a core functionality of the tank that makes it far more survivable as a tool than just having heavier armor than the target could ever ensure.
For russia to have spent decades building tanks and just ignoring these things is pathetic honestly and none of the excuses people give for these glaring issues with russian tanks hold water in my opinion. Great the reverse gear is an agricultural gear for getting out of mud, cool I am sure Ukrainian AT crews appreciate that functionality supremely when a russian tank has overcommitted even a nanometer too far and they are now sitting ducks because to quickly flee they must turn around and leave weak armor exposed or just raw dog it and reverse at a snail’s crawl.
edit I don’t mean anything precise when I say western tank, I consider a south korean k2 a “western tank”, I only mean the description very loosely
Which is wild given that this is pretty much the ENTIRE purpose of a tank.
Exactly