Western-made armor is failing in Ukraine because it wasn’t designed to sustain a conflict of this intensity, a military analyst told The Wall Street Journal.
Taras Chmut, a military analyst who’s the head of the Come Back Alive Foundation, which has raised money to purchase and provide arms and equipment to Ukraine, said that “a lot of Western armor doesn’t work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity.”
“If you throw it into a mass offensive, it just doesn’t perform,” he said.
Chmut went on to say Ukraine’s Western allies should instead turn their attention to delivering simpler and cheaper systems, but in larger quantities, something Ukraine has repeatedly requested, the newspaper reported.
They are talking specifically about tanks in the article. The armor on the tanks provided to Ukraine is allegedly not thought enough for mines, etc.
There isn’t enough armour in the world to stop a few proper anti-tank mines or anti-tank missiles or anti-tank drones.
Yeah, that’s what I wasn’t following. MBTs are going to need repairs, no matter how heavily armored, when you run them over a minefield, hit them with anti tank missles or drones. APVs aren’t designed to survive that, just to keep the occupants alive from something that would have turned them into a thick red mist.
Uh have they tried using anti mine systems to clear a path? I’m pretty sure western military doesn’t just go charging forward crossing their fingers…
For known minefields yes. For a regular road that might have one or two mines, no. Mine clearing is extremely slow. Even if you do it, someone might come in the night and plant more mines. The best you can do is keep an eye out for signs that mines have been planted.
The Russians made the defensive mine fields more than double the width of any mine clearing explosive device. This means they can’t quickly clear a section and move through without being sitting ducks.
It is a strange article. It argues that western armor isn’t designed for sustained conflict but offers up the solution of more cheaply made vehicles. I would assume that would greatly increase the number of human casualties. Can Ukraine sustain an increase of human loses? Training troops takes time also. The simple vehicles could make it easier to get troops training but I don’t know if trading troops is a good strategy when fighting a country with a higher population.
The thing is, an increase in armour casualties reduces infantry casualties by more than 1:1. There’s a reason the Tiger and Panther in WW2 are largely seen as strategic blunders today: a few complex and technologically superior tanks aren’t very useful, particularly if they require complex supply lines to support.
Yes true if they lack appropriate air support and logistics support. Which is the case for Ukraine.
Modern western strategy is very different from that of WW2. The key is integration of air support, artillery, armor, infantry, etc. If Ukraine had superior fighter jets, to gain air superiority and anti tank and anti personnel platforms like A10 and Apache, all platforms working in sync and all backed by logistics support to keep everything operating, it would be a different story I guess.
Related, I wonder if they’re suggesting the old Russian tanks would somehow perform better than the western ones? Because as far as I know, western tanks have the best armor systems, the highest accuracy, and the ability to fire while moving. Maybe they need to adapt their tactics to make better use of their platforms?
I suspect the doctrine for western tanks requires air dominance.
The context here is very specific : Ukraine is attacking a heavily fortified position.
In the beginning of the offensive, the losses were heavy because each time they would break a position with armor, Russians would unleash a barrage of artillery and air bombardments.
Then they changed their tactics, using the tanks as long range heavy direct fire support. And occasionally as spearhead or to counter a Russian offensive.
The biggest problem imo is the lack of air superiority : it makes them vulnerable to air bombardment when on a the front line, and it prevent them from doing deep strikes against artillery.
As they can’t prevent artillery or air bombardment, a heavy assault would inevitably suffer extreme losses, but with enough supplies, might be able to break through the line. But the few hundreds of western tanks are not enough for that. Or maybe Ukraine is “simply” afraid of losing too many of them in the offensive.
That’s the problem with few, expensive, good weapons: you need to be careful in using them because you can’t easily replace them. More numerous, inexpensive weapons would allow to take more risks, which might be necessary to win the war.
I don’t know about the US, but France and Germany do had this problem in mind IMO with their light tanks, the amx-30 and the leopard 1.
IMO the heavy tanks are good for an expeditionary force that will be limited in supplies, so it needs to make the most out of each vehicle it gets on the place. But for a large scale war of entrenched position, mass might be more important than raw quality.
More simply, even if you only lose 1 tank for 5 of the enemy, you still need more than a fifth of what they have.
I don’t know about the US, but France and Germany do had this problem in mind IMO with their light tanks, the amx-30 and the leopard 1.
The Leo1 isn’t lighter it’s simply the previous model of Leo and not significantly smaller, very much an MBT. You might be thinking of the Wiesel and generally tankettes.
It is very much an MBT, but it is lighter than most other tanks of this era (40t and rather light armor). The amx-30 is the same. US MBT are heavier and more armored in comparison, and with time all tanks got heavier and more armored still.
Not only that, but tanks are still much more survivable than infantry and each tank can replace multiple infantry.
Have you been watching General Dynamics promotional videos?
The early stages of the Ukraine war showed that even massive superiority in combined arms is useless because of how asymmetric warfare has become. Your million dollar tank is just as vulnerable to a $500 drone as a twenty thousand dollar Jeep. Your hundred million dollar jet is still going to get shot out of the air in a CAS role by a $10000 missile. The only wars that the West have been able to fight have been against insurgents riding in the back of old Toyota Hiluxes carrying Soviet-era AK-47s.
Modern Western tank doctrine values crew survivability, even at the cost of maintainability and production capacity. It’s the same design principle that the Nazis used to justify the Tiger, Panther, and Konigstiger (mind you, Nazi doctrine also relied heavily on tightly integrated combined arms).
Interesting. I know that Ukraine was given a bunch of handheld anti tank weapons to great effect. And I guess the Bradleys are supposed to be adept as tank killers?
I’m not sure what Russia has in the way of similar besides drones.
Why do they even need the M1 tanks?
I’m not sure what Russia has in the way of similar besides drones.
Russia has actually gotten quite good at drones.
But the Jeep vs. tank comparison is bunk, especially the direct dollar value comparison: Your million dollar tank shoots way further, hits way harder, and its crew will survive when hit. Instead of having to train a new one and write letters to their families you now have a veteran crew that probably learned an important lesson.
We’re seeing the opposite approach on the Russian side – have cheap tanks that blow up easily and take out the crew with them. They have lots of tanks, and also lots of people (at least in principle), but they don’t have nearly enough training capacity to teach new crews.
Even if Ukraine wanted to it could not afford that approach. Neither in terms of manpower, nor in political terms: As we all know war is the continuation of politics and not employing Soviet meat grinder doctrines is very much part of the whole not wanting to be Russia thing. If Ukrainians wanted to be subject to Dedovshchina they wouldn’t be fighting in the first place.
Why do they even need the M1 tanks?
Numbers. Abrams are a pain in the arse for logistics but there’s a ton of them around collecting dust in the US, Leos and everything else are in way shorter supply.
You could marginally increase the survivability of one tank (say, by 20%)… Or you could build another tank and increase the survivability of someone that would otherwise be infantry by an order of magnitude.
Tanks take bags of flesh off the battleground and that’s extremely advantageous.
The US operates under the assumption that they will be fighting a war on the other side of the world, so designing a more robust tank is important both in terms of PR (because dead bodies coming home is bad), in terms of logistics (because shipping twice the number of tanks around the world isn’t that great), and in terms of who they’re fighting (mostly insurgents without advanced anti-tank munitions, so survivability is far higher when hit).
It was designed to make money for shareholders. Like every other piece of planned obsolescence trash that gets shit out now days.
This isn’t WW2, there’s plenty of anti tank weaponry available. It’s a lot cheaper than tanks and it’s going to do what it’s designed to do. Look how well tanks worked out for the Russians. Tanks are just not nearly as effective in modern warfare.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Western-made armor is failing in Ukraine because it wasn’t designed to sustain a conflict of this intensity, a military analyst told The Wall Street Journal.
Taras Chmut, a military analyst who’s the head of the Come Back Alive Foundation, which has raised money to purchase and provide arms and equipment to Ukraine, said that “a lot of Western armor doesn’t work here because it had been created not for an all-out war but for conflicts of low or medium intensity.”
Despite Chmut’s comments, some advanced Western systems Ukraine has received were conceived with the highest-intensity combat in mind — NATO going head-to-head with Soviet forces.
The US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Abrams main battle tanks were built specifically to counter Soviet ground forces.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly criticized Western allies for delays in the deliveries of weapons, saying earlier this month that slower arms shipments were hurting Ukraine’s chances of success in its ongoing counteroffensive.
Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the German think tank European Resilience Initiative Center, previously told Insider that Ukraine was stepping up its domestic production in part because of concern that Western deliveries would not keep up with its military needs.
The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Basically it was designed for wiping out civilians in the off chance a few of them actually shoot back.
This is a nice way of saying "Where in the name of cyka are those F-16s?”
What about the 500 helmets we send from germany? I was told this is exactly what the Ukraine needed.
I’m not sure if you are joking, but in this case armor does not mean body armor, but tanks.
Sounds like a euphemism for confessing that Western made armor is poor-quality and vastly overestimates itself. Quelle surprise.
Sounds like NATO needs their own monkey models
Cost cutting from the west based off warfare experience in places that are dirt poor? Say it ain’t so!
Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article.
The complaint about armor (tanks) being destroyed seems odd. Last report I saw had them losing five of the 70 Leopards and a single Challenger so far.
I wonder if the complaint is directed at the amount of maintenance/depot work that needs to be done to keep them running. That would kind of make sense. Countries that donated them have significantly more of them than donated, so cycling them through depot repair would barely be a cause for concern.
I noticed that the number of Western vehicles getting destroyed in Ukraine is being overemphasised in the pro-Russian narrative. Strange that they omit Ukraine still making more territorial gains.
Russians and their fan-bois need to chest beat over whatever they can find at this point.
That’s 10% losses, which are pretty significant given that Ukraine hasn’t been using tanks in their local pushes anymore
7% of just the one type… Not of all tanks. That being said, I get where you’re coming from. 14 Challengers, 31 Abrams… Guess it’s going to boil down to if the countries can/will replace the losses.
Western doctrine is what happens when you ask nazis, people who ideologically are incapable of learning from history, “Hey, why did you lose to the Soviets? How should we beat them?”
Please note that ukraine and russia were both part of the USSR during this period so claiming this is “Russian propaganda” is denigrating the lives of millions of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who died at the hands of the nazis or pushing nazis out of eastern europe. (Also even if you could say it was favorable to Russia, which it is not, it is also factually true)
Remind us which is the one who could not subdue a country, one-fifth the size, in ten days as planned in the early days of the “special military operation”? Which one regained 200 km of ground last year? And which one is struggling to contain an offensive and could not make any more advances in the past 18 months?
Note that my comment isn’t pro Russia, it is just ragging on NATO thinking listening to nazis about war was a smart idea. As I explicitly stated. Since the illegal dissolution of the Soviet Union Russia’s military has been running on a skeleton crew and not adapted to that at all.
Which one regained 200 km of ground last year?
You do understand that 200 square kilometers is really small right? Like, look at their gains on a map. Not my dog not my fight but kinda a weaksauce argument.
And which one is struggling to contain an offensive and could not make any more advances in the past 18 months?
??? Only 200 kilometers. And it is October.
200km is the size of the area liberated in the Kharkiv oblast from last year (I forgot about the Kherson area liberated from last year too, which is roughly of the same size).
Anyhow, the amount that the area reconquered by Ukraine in the past year is still a lot than what Russia has gained since the start of the invasion.
You claim to not be pro-Russia and yet keep invoking about Nazis this and that, a talking point repeated by Kremlin propaganda. It is very telling where your sympathy tuly lies. No matter, Ukraine is still surprisingly militarily competent than the Russians. The results of Ukrainian territorial gains and Russian military losses speak for themselves (and let’s not forget that Crimea is now vulnerable to Ukrainian missiles, which just wrecked the Russian Black Sea naval command).
You claim to not be pro-Russia and yet keep invoking about Nazis this and that, a talking point repeated by Kremlin propaganda.
Is bringing up actual history that explains nato doctrinal failures (not even ukrainian, theyre just working with what they’ve been given, which is equipment meant for a shitty doctrine) that actually happened evil Russian propaganda now?
You must be really upset at those mainstream US news outlets reporting on the Waffen SS criminal being applauded by the Canadian Parliament and Zelensky. So it didn’t happen, it is just Russian propaganda.
No matter, Ukraine is still surprisingly militarily competent than the Russians. The results of Ukrainian territorial gains and Russian military losses speak for themselves (and let’s not forget that Crimea is now vulnerable to Ukrainian missiles, which just wrecked the Russian Black Sea naval command)
Yes, this:
Is worth depleting your strategic reserves over. This reeks of Hitler in his bunker energy, except youre in an armchair halfway across the world.
NATO doctrine is not based on Nazi doctrine as you’re pushing. And the Canadian Parliament buffonishly applauding a Ukrainian Nazi has nothing to do with Ukrainian war. And lastly, the amount of territory that Ukraine has liberated in Zaporizhia is still a lot more than what the Russians have taken in the past 10 months. Show me how much land Russia has taken since they lost Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts?
I see that you have brought up Ukraine losing strategic reserves, a common Russian propaganda talking point. If Ukraine is losing plenty more trooops, they would not be conducting more offensives along the front line. If Russia has more reserves, why are they struggling for 10 months and had to rely on Wagner recruiting prisoners and losing 20,000 in capturing Bakhmut? Why did Russia deploy the Russian paratroopers from Bakhmut to Zaporizhia, even though the area around Bakhmut is slowly being retaken by Ukraine? Why could Russia not send more troops in Nagarno-Karabakh to prevent Azerbaijan and Armenian conflict if Russia still have more troops to spare to keep the peace? And why could Russia not do the same last year when Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan had border conflict when they sent troops to between bickering neighbours?
If the Russian doctrine is better, why have they still not defeated Ukraine? Seeing as how your English has gotten bad since your first comment and how grossly inaccurate your assertions are, you’re not really fooling anyone in this forum with ridiculous spins from whatever script you’re reading. The only people who would believe your spin are the domestic Russians subjected to censorship. But even then, they could get more accurate information from the likes of Telegram and WhatsApp to bypass censorship. As one of the Russian TV pundits say it, Russian losses in Ukraine is too big to ignore to be massaged by government PR. But i will give this to Kremlin, they have won the hearts and minds of the Russian public to convince them to turn a blind eye to the war in Ukraine. Other countries would have already protested and try to overthrow their government for the bad performance.
Western doctrine is also largely based on the US’ needs. Artillery just isn’t practical for the US, who needs to be prepared to fight all over the world oceans away from home. Artillery is much more stationary compared to air power due to the size of the guns and the difficulty moving them, while the US can easily fly planes anywhere we need them. As such, Western doctrine became heavily reliant on having air supremacy and massive amounts of air support and our equipment was designed for that battlefield. Ukraine just doesn’t have nearly the same arial capabilities as NATO, relying much more on artillery which NATO weapons and doctrine weren’t designed around, and they’re having to figure out how to make them work without air power
Yes, because US military doctrine is meant for colonialism, not fighting a war. Theyre a piper tiger and now the world knows it.
I’ll say it.
This is Russian propaganda.
So brave. Well, I’m off to the power plant, those ukrainian red army soldiers and civilians spinning in their graves aren’t going to hooked up to generators by themselves.
