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.
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.
There isn’t enough armour in the world to stop a few proper anti-tank mines or anti-tank missiles or anti-tank drones.
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…
Western armor isn’t meant to be driven across the country into battle on the front lines. It’s meant to operate in areas of air dominance where most defensive fortifications have been bombed well in advance. It’s also designed to be able to attack and move with speed and accuracy, not charging forward.
So… Basically, it’s not designed for use in a peer engagement?
no, it’s because the core doctrine and design (at least of the leopard 1/2) is to use them in defensive battles against larger numbers of tanks - that was the entire NATO strategy in western Europe during the cold war, when all of that hardware was designed
not for rolling into unknown territory and getting hit by entrenched infantry AT, as Turkey discovered a few years ago
They are designed for peer engagement under a different strategy than ww2 era doctrines where tanks provided cover for infantry.
An Abrams is designed to use it’s superior range, accuracy and speed to take out medium hard targets. Similar to the Mongols horse archer strategy.
What peers?
parts of that design difference is the size: western tanks are all larger silhouette, which they had to pay to have better accuracy at extreme ranges
afaik, they’re made for defense in depth and retreating at their effective range while thinning out attacking tanks
The large silhouette is more of an armour/survivability thing rather than a FCS/accuracy thing
The west probably should have anticipated having armour that works in these conditions. *Especially *considering they’ve been trying to get this war going for over a decade at least.
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In this entropic universe, it is a law of physics that it is always easier to blow something up than to prevent it from being blown up.
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.
Pretty much all US equipment requires extremely complex and advanced supply lines.
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!
Are they saying that their tactics are the same as in WW2 and that’s the West’s fault?
“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.”
Interesting, I wonder which vehicles are they talking about. There are different types of vehicles. Heavier armors, of course, could sustain high intensity conflicts.
Anyhow, glad to see Russian sock puppets on this thread, with not an ounce or iota of knowledge of warfare, simping for Putin again. As people already pointed out, many of these Western vehicles are designed with combined arms working in tandem with air support, artillery and infantry in mind. But Ukraine has no air support because they lack these expensive and more sophisticated airplanes. Despite the limitations of Ukraine, Russia should still realise that Ukraine is the one making more advances than them in the past 18 months since the conflict started. One could argue that, if we are talking about which has the lesser effective and flimsier war machines, it looks like Russia has more of them.
This is a nice way of saying "Where in the name of cyka are those F-16s?”
Sounds like a euphemism for confessing that Western made armor is poor-quality and vastly overestimates itself. Quelle surprise.
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?
Sounds like NATO needs their own monkey models
Wunderwaffen #42069 fails… Russia win, NATO stay mad.
Well that sucks. We made shit armour for Ukraine. We have to step up our armor making quality
Incorrect doctrine usage ≠ poor quality
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.
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.
