As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues for its seventh week, it appears President Vladimir Putin’s military forces may have casualties. Images of damaged Russian tanks have been posted and shared on social media since the beginning of the war. As of March 24, the Kremlin had lost hundreds of tanks since the start of the war in February, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said. Russian vehicles have suffered heavy casualties thanks to Ukrainian troops armed with anti-tank missiles, including the British next-generation light anti-tank weapon or NLAW and the US Javelin anti-tank missile. Members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces are examining new armaments, including NLAW anti-tank systems, in Kyiv on March 9. (Genya Savilov / AFP via Getty Images) This has led some experts to say that the war has changed and that tanks and armored personnel carriers are now obsolete. “They are very expensive and easily destroyed by multiple light anti-tank weapons or drones,” Anders Aslund, an expert on Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, wrote on Twitter. According to Oryx, Russia has lost a total of 450 tanks: 221 were destroyed, six were damaged, 41 were abandoned and 182 were taken prisoner. And Russia could lose even more with the introduction of the Switchblades, the US fighter jets designed to attack personnel and light vehicles. On Tuesday, defense officials said they were training Ukrainian soldiers in the United States on how to use weapons to attack enemy tanks and armored vehicles. The 100 drones, carried in a backpack, were part of a $ 800 million military aid package to Ukraine. So with Russia losing hundreds of tanks, does that mean that these armored vehicles are now obsolete in modern warfare? According to Scott Boston, senior defense analyst at the global policy think tank RAND Corporation, it is definitely “not yet.” The story goes on “The first and most obvious piece of evidence I have for this is that Ukrainians are currently asking for more armored vehicles,” Boston told Yahoo News. “And they would love to get support from the US and the West with more armored vehicles and more tanks.” A Ukrainian soldier stands in the turret of a damaged Russian army tank on April 3. (Sergei Supinsky / AFP via Getty Images) Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked NATO to either donate or sell 500 tanks to his country. “You have at least 20,000 tanks,” he told alliance leaders. “Ukraine has asked for one percent, 1% of all your tanks to be given or sold to us.” Some countries of the organization use the same tanks and armored vehicles of the Soviet era that are already used by the Ukrainian soldiers themselves. However, it is not clear what kind of tanks Zelensky was asking for. One reason a large number of Russian tanks were destroyed, Boston said, is that Russia is attacking – which means the Ukrainians are on the defensive, so they are targeting more enemy ammunition. Boston has said that this is likely to change and that more of Ukraine’s tanks will be destroyed when it goes on the offensive. Another reason for the tank cemetery is that the Ukrainians are cleverly targeting the Russian chamber, and so the ability to bring fuel to the front line has proved difficult. According to Boston, a specific Russian tank division lost many vehicles due to abandonment and not immediate hostile action. With that in mind, Boston told Yahoo News that it did not know that “we are still in the last generation of man-made tanks.” He explained that this was due to the fact that the infantry would be used on the battlefield for many more years, and thus would also need protected transport for infantry soldiers. “It’s an insurance policy for your infantry,” he said. “And the infantry protects the tank. That’s why they call it a “combined weapons” group. “Without it, the tank is just as useless as anything else.” A Ukrainian soldier inspects a burned Russian tank on April 2 in Dmitrivka, Kiev region. (Alexey Furman / Getty Images) A former British military officer, now a defense military analyst, said people should be careful to “avoid drawing the wrong conclusions” about tanks. “Russia’s destructive tactics have been a formidable advertisement for tanks,” Nicholas Dramont wrote on Twitter. “No artillery support. No infantry support. “No air support,” he said, referring to images showing damaged Russian tanks. “Combined weapons tactics do not work that way in an age of multi-sectoral operations.” But how come there was no support available for these tanks? According to Boston, “Russia entered this struggle, apparently thinking that it had bribed several Ukrainian officials. And very few Ukrainians really wanted to fight them, and [the Russians] they believed that they would not encounter serious resistance. “They seem to have built their business plan around this incredibly wrong case.” And so time will tell how the tanks will appear during this war, but one thing is certain, according to experts: They will exist for much longer.
