Yes, otherwise the losses would not have remained high for so long. They wouldn’t be lost if they weren’t being actively used. My understanding - as a total amateur here - is that the usage of them has had to adapt to the presence of drones and drone-sighted artillery, but that doesn’t make them less useful. They’re still the most armoured thing on the battlefield and that armour is difficult to defeat with the small explosives that a cheap drone can carry
Tanks have always had to adapt, just like every other piece of military gear ever.
Anyone saying “tanks aren’t useful” should ask themselves why Russia is spending to much time and money and effort rebuilding even the most rusted out shitbucket, why Ukraine is spending so much money and political goodwill to get tanks and restore the blowup Russian shitbuckets they capture.
It’s because tanks are very much an important weapon. There are no other tools you can use to bring a big damned gun forward in a very survivable way very rapidly. It can respond instantly, and stick around constantly, which are abilities no other weapon system has.
Tanks have weaknesses, but so does every system. That’s why combined arm warfare builds doctrines to eliminate the weaknesses of individual systems by meshing multiple things together. But that’s very hard, and Russia is really quite bad at it. It also requires all those different systems, which they don’t have.
That’s why combined arm warfare builds doctrines to eliminate the weaknesses of individual systems by meshing multiple things together. But that’s very hard, and Russia is really quite bad at it.
It also requires seeing soldiers as experts in a highly skilled, highly trained profession where leaders do everything they can to keep them alive so they can continue to participate in organized, efficient strategic maneuvers that produce strategic gains for minimum tragic loss.
Culturally it seems like Russia values the drone more than the human in the calculus of war, and not only is that delusional it also makes them hopeless at a Doctrine level about becoming proficient at combined arms warfare again any time soon. Not until Russia has thoroughly had its worhsip of flying bombs as the answer to everything beaten out of them will Russia behave like an organized, modern military again.
Tanks are going nowhere though, not even for a country so desperately lost in the sauce when it comes to tank design. I think Russia was banking on just abandoning tanks for the most part as a newly produced weapon of war continually being pumped out of factories… but I don’t think they were able to culturally/politically pull that off (all the russians saw that awesome t34 movie and now they see tanks as patriotic!) so now they are stuck cranking out obsolete tanks and having to pretend they aren’t.
I am sorry but the T-90 is an attempt to put lipstick on a pig, sure the technologically advanced lipstick is cool… but does the pig have a proper reverse gear yet?
All russia can really do is try to convince us they meant to fumble tanks this hard, or that it is indicative of how other countries might experience success with the use of tanks and honestly that bullshit narrative has worked beautifully on overconfident western journalists who don’t know shit about war.
Russia has always designed it’s entire military force with one doctrine in mind:
Start driving at the border and don’t stop till you get to Dunkirk before the Americans do.
It doesn’t involve such niche tactics as “reversing from an enemy”, at most there is “hold in place and shoot 5000 pieces of artillery, then start driving again”. It doesn’t involve the wild concept that at some point, the enemy might locally outnumber or outclass you. It doesn’t involve such problems as “maybe we won’t have enough troops”, or “what if we run out of tanks or guns”, because they could either win the war in three weeks, or everyone would start dropping nukes.
They’ve literally been working on the same things since the 60s. It might have worked back then, when they had a bazillion modern-enouh tanks, but today, when all they can do it drip-feed them into the grinder, it’s a shit doctrine. That’s not the fault of the tank though.
Even with an outdated sight, too little armor and no real reverse gear it’s still a tank. Those are still incredibly useful if used properly, and Ukraine shows it time and time again. But if you still think that you’re at the head of the grand soviet army towards Rotterdam, the problem is the crew, not the tank.
Hey I mean Poland apparently build a pretty good tank out of the T-72, it definitely has aspects to it that make it globally relevant but at the end of the day… especially when drones come into the picture, no not having a proper reverse gear I think actually does completely undermine the point in having a main battle tank in the first place. I would rather have all of that logistics in other supplies than a russian tank, they are worse than useless without a fast reverse gear since they cannot fulfill the battlefield role of a main battle tank at a basic tactical level in my opinion.
You can use a russian tank as a combat engineering tool to destroy enemy machine gun nests that have already been surrounded, but you cannot use them as main battle tanks. It is the equivalent of trying to use an airplane with only one wing as a bomber. It needs two wings to fly…
Or… it is like having a Queen on a chess board that can only move towards the enemy side of the board, it almost entirely eliminates the point of having your Queen in the first place, and it certainly makes your Queen into a disposable one time use asset. Yes technically your Queen still is very offensively powerful but it is more accurately described as a guided munition than an actual piece in the same way russian tanks aren’t really main battle tanks.
Comparatively an Abrams is like a proper Queen chess piece, it ideally exists the entire game moving back and forth across your forward assaults, exploiting and creating opportunities and punishing the hubris of the enemy.
There is a story of an Iraqi Abrams playing a crucial lynchpin role in defending a ridiculous number of assaults on a town by overwhelming numbers of fighters, and the Iraqi crew just got good enough that they tactically demolished them one after another. You can’t develop that kind of extreme tactical proficiency over your enemy in an inherently disposable asset such as a russian tank, especially since the crew is considered disposable as well which is psychotic.
RENK of France has made a superior powerpack with proper reverse gears, this makes a T-72 into a real tank or at least begins the process.
The aforementioned powerpack provides the maximum road speed of 60-70 km/h and a backing up at a speed of 4-33 km/h. The clutch and transmission brake control valve linkage has been replaced by a steering wheel, while the control system has retained both pedals. These nodes and components drastically increase the cross-country capability of T-72 and T-90 tanks. The required to replace the engine compartment is significantly reduced. It takes about 45 minutes to install the [Powerpack 350S] unit. At present, the replacement of the existing T-72 engines compartments requires about 3 days," the source said.
He added that the Powerpack 350S had already been integrated with the Polish-originated PT-91M Twardy MBTs and PT-91M-based armoured recovery vehicles (ARV) of the Malaysian Armed Forces.
According to the official specifications, the Powerpack 350S system is intended for T-72, T-90, M-84, and PT-91 MBTs, as well as for the vehicles that have a combat weight of 40-55 t. It features a powershift transmission with eight speeds forward and four speeds reverse, an electronically controlled gearbox that can be used in either manual or fully automatic control mode, a generator drive, an air compressor drive, and a fan drive with fully digital speed control. The transmission of Powerpack 350S has a dry weight of 1,800 kg, while the DI16 engine has a dry weight of 1,340 kg.
I fully agree. But the idea of reversing was always that you don’t. You don’t shoot at a target, reverse away and shoot at another other. You and your 49 buddies shoot at 20 targets, and then ~35 of you move forward. Repeat till Germany and France surrender.
It’s an entirely non-mbt philosophy to fielding tanks, and it’s demonstrably worse and has been shown to be worse repeatedly (pretty much constantly) over the decades. And they haven’t it changed it in the slightest. They’re literally doing the same with tanks as with people. Send em in, and if they make it they make it.
RENK of France has made a superior powerpack with proper reverse gears, this makes a T-72 into a real tank or at least begins the process.
Russians have always been dogshit at making engines. Imagine being so terrible at it that a French company makes an engine and transmission that’s both better AND easier to maintain.
I mean, the French sure have their issues, but I wouldn’t say they can’t make a proper armored vehicle. They know how to do that as well as pretty much anybody in the world, they also understand artillery better than almost anybody in the world, Exhibit A. being the Caesar SPG.
Apparently not. Russia’s oligarchs diverted too much money from it’s military over the past few decades and they ran through pretty much everything they had that still worked.
Are tanks still a major fighting force?
I thought it was mostly artillery and drones at this point.
Yes, otherwise the losses would not have remained high for so long. They wouldn’t be lost if they weren’t being actively used. My understanding - as a total amateur here - is that the usage of them has had to adapt to the presence of drones and drone-sighted artillery, but that doesn’t make them less useful. They’re still the most armoured thing on the battlefield and that armour is difficult to defeat with the small explosives that a cheap drone can carry
Tanks have always had to adapt, just like every other piece of military gear ever.
Anyone saying “tanks aren’t useful” should ask themselves why Russia is spending to much time and money and effort rebuilding even the most rusted out shitbucket, why Ukraine is spending so much money and political goodwill to get tanks and restore the blowup Russian shitbuckets they capture.
It’s because tanks are very much an important weapon. There are no other tools you can use to bring a big damned gun forward in a very survivable way very rapidly. It can respond instantly, and stick around constantly, which are abilities no other weapon system has.
Tanks have weaknesses, but so does every system. That’s why combined arm warfare builds doctrines to eliminate the weaknesses of individual systems by meshing multiple things together. But that’s very hard, and Russia is really quite bad at it. It also requires all those different systems, which they don’t have.
It also requires seeing soldiers as experts in a highly skilled, highly trained profession where leaders do everything they can to keep them alive so they can continue to participate in organized, efficient strategic maneuvers that produce strategic gains for minimum tragic loss.
Culturally it seems like Russia values the drone more than the human in the calculus of war, and not only is that delusional it also makes them hopeless at a Doctrine level about becoming proficient at combined arms warfare again any time soon. Not until Russia has thoroughly had its worhsip of flying bombs as the answer to everything beaten out of them will Russia behave like an organized, modern military again.
Tanks are going nowhere though, not even for a country so desperately lost in the sauce when it comes to tank design. I think Russia was banking on just abandoning tanks for the most part as a newly produced weapon of war continually being pumped out of factories… but I don’t think they were able to culturally/politically pull that off (all the russians saw that awesome t34 movie and now they see tanks as patriotic!) so now they are stuck cranking out obsolete tanks and having to pretend they aren’t.
I am sorry but the T-90 is an attempt to put lipstick on a pig, sure the technologically advanced lipstick is cool… but does the pig have a proper reverse gear yet?
All russia can really do is try to convince us they meant to fumble tanks this hard, or that it is indicative of how other countries might experience success with the use of tanks and honestly that bullshit narrative has worked beautifully on overconfident western journalists who don’t know shit about war.
Russia has always designed it’s entire military force with one doctrine in mind:
Start driving at the border and don’t stop till you get to Dunkirk before the Americans do.
It doesn’t involve such niche tactics as “reversing from an enemy”, at most there is “hold in place and shoot 5000 pieces of artillery, then start driving again”. It doesn’t involve the wild concept that at some point, the enemy might locally outnumber or outclass you. It doesn’t involve such problems as “maybe we won’t have enough troops”, or “what if we run out of tanks or guns”, because they could either win the war in three weeks, or everyone would start dropping nukes.
They’ve literally been working on the same things since the 60s. It might have worked back then, when they had a bazillion modern-enouh tanks, but today, when all they can do it drip-feed them into the grinder, it’s a shit doctrine. That’s not the fault of the tank though.
Even with an outdated sight, too little armor and no real reverse gear it’s still a tank. Those are still incredibly useful if used properly, and Ukraine shows it time and time again. But if you still think that you’re at the head of the grand soviet army towards Rotterdam, the problem is the crew, not the tank.
Hey I mean Poland apparently build a pretty good tank out of the T-72, it definitely has aspects to it that make it globally relevant but at the end of the day… especially when drones come into the picture, no not having a proper reverse gear I think actually does completely undermine the point in having a main battle tank in the first place. I would rather have all of that logistics in other supplies than a russian tank, they are worse than useless without a fast reverse gear since they cannot fulfill the battlefield role of a main battle tank at a basic tactical level in my opinion.
You can use a russian tank as a combat engineering tool to destroy enemy machine gun nests that have already been surrounded, but you cannot use them as main battle tanks. It is the equivalent of trying to use an airplane with only one wing as a bomber. It needs two wings to fly…
Or… it is like having a Queen on a chess board that can only move towards the enemy side of the board, it almost entirely eliminates the point of having your Queen in the first place, and it certainly makes your Queen into a disposable one time use asset. Yes technically your Queen still is very offensively powerful but it is more accurately described as a guided munition than an actual piece in the same way russian tanks aren’t really main battle tanks.
Comparatively an Abrams is like a proper Queen chess piece, it ideally exists the entire game moving back and forth across your forward assaults, exploiting and creating opportunities and punishing the hubris of the enemy.
There is a story of an Iraqi Abrams playing a crucial lynchpin role in defending a ridiculous number of assaults on a town by overwhelming numbers of fighters, and the Iraqi crew just got good enough that they tactically demolished them one after another. You can’t develop that kind of extreme tactical proficiency over your enemy in an inherently disposable asset such as a russian tank, especially since the crew is considered disposable as well which is psychotic.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2016/04/13/the-beast-of-hit-abrams-tank-plays-role-iraqi-fight-against-isis.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/TankPorn/comments/1hnlx9m/iraqi_9th_armored_division_abrams_tank_still/
RENK of France has made a superior powerpack with proper reverse gears, this makes a T-72 into a real tank or at least begins the process.
https://www.armyrecognition.com/archives/archives-land-defense/land-defense-2016/renk-france-to-promote-new-transmission-for-t-72-t-90-mbts-71711161
I fully agree. But the idea of reversing was always that you don’t. You don’t shoot at a target, reverse away and shoot at another other. You and your 49 buddies shoot at 20 targets, and then ~35 of you move forward. Repeat till Germany and France surrender.
It’s an entirely non-mbt philosophy to fielding tanks, and it’s demonstrably worse and has been shown to be worse repeatedly (pretty much constantly) over the decades. And they haven’t it changed it in the slightest. They’re literally doing the same with tanks as with people. Send em in, and if they make it they make it.
Russians have always been dogshit at making engines. Imagine being so terrible at it that a French company makes an engine and transmission that’s both better AND easier to maintain.
I mean, the French sure have their issues, but I wouldn’t say they can’t make a proper armored vehicle. They know how to do that as well as pretty much anybody in the world, they also understand artillery better than almost anybody in the world, Exhibit A. being the Caesar SPG.
Apparently not. Russia’s oligarchs diverted too much money from it’s military over the past few decades and they ran through pretty much everything they had that still worked.
Oh well. Too bad.
If you can make a proper tank, absolutely, Russia cannot.