Problems caused by tanks and armoured vehicles supplied to Ukraine by the US and European countries

Since the beginning of the Russian offensive to occupy its territory, Ukraine has been equipping its army with many armoured vehicles and tanks supplied by the United States and some European countries. Thus, Ukraine probably has one of the most diverse inventories of tanks and armoured vehicles ever.  

Of course, this situation did not arise out of the blue. Before the start of the war, the Ukrainian army was incomparably weaker than the Russian army. In terms of weapons, equipment, aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles and other military equipment, Russia was many times stronger than Ukraine. For this reason, military experts from almost all over the world were saying that the war would be short and Russia would get what it wanted.

Those who said this overlooked one thing. In the meantime, the United States had begun to supply Ukraine with thousands of Javelins and Britain with thousands of NLAW anti-tank guns. At the time, I wrote in Strasam that in view of this arms aid, "the US and the UK had been preparing the Ukrainian army for a possible war since 2014 and had realised that Ukraine had no chance in a conventional war against the huge Russian army".

For this reason, I said that "Ukraine planned to implement a strategy based on the concept of attrition against the Russian army, thus prolonging the war and ensuring that Russia would suffer heavy casualties and become unable to bear the cost of the war, as the Soviet Union once experienced in Afghanistan".

Indeed, events unfolded as I predicted. Instead of a conventional line-based defence, Ukraine adopted a defence approach based on urban warfare and irregular warfare in the field. As a result, these anti-tank weapons were used to devastating effect to neutralise Russian armoured convoys in hundreds of raids and ambushes by large numbers of tank destroyer teams.

Following these initial successes, the United States and some European countries also began to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons. Shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns were followed by the supply of towed and self-propelled artillery batteries consisting of howitzers and rockets. These weapons helped Ukraine to completely halt the Russian advance.

However, both the United States and European countries hesitated for some time to supply Ukraine with tanks. There were two main reasons for this. The first was that tanks were considered offensive rather than defensive weapons. The second was that tank production in Europe was very low and it was almost impossible to increase this production in a short time.

On the other hand, more flexibility was adopted with regard to Armoured Combat Vehicles and Armoured Personnel Carriers. This was because the battles in the post-Cold War wars took place predominantly in urban areas, and almost all armies added a large number of wheeled light armoured vehicles to their inventories in addition to the existing armoured vehicles.

In other words, there was no major problem in the stocks and supply of armoured vehicles. Indeed, a large number of countries provided Ukraine with armoured vehicles of various types and models, not only to replace those lost, but also to modernise the Ukrainian Army. Although a significant number of these vehicles were outdated, they were doing a good job.

In fact, Ukraine had a large number of armoured vehicles. It even had factories in the Kharkov region dating back to the Soviet era. However, since Kharkov became one of the most intense areas of conflict from the very beginning, Ukraine lost its production capacity. Therefore, Ukraine kept asking its Western allies for armoured vehicles and tanks from the beginning of the war.

Despite Ukraine's intense demand, the US and European countries initially refused to supply tanks because they did not want to risk a direct confrontation with Russia. However, the UK was more daring than anyone else. By giving 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, it became the first country in the Western world to give tanks to Ukraine. Russia reacted very harshly to this. It made many threats, saying that they would fire missiles at the UK. But it could not put this into practice.

This situation encouraged other countries. Following the UK, the US M1A1 Abrams, Germany Leopard and former Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland gave Russian T-72 and PT-91 tanks to Ukraine. However, Leopard tanks were given the most. Because there were too many Leopards on the market. For this reason, Leopard 1s, which most armies have now removed or are about to remove from their inventories, were the most common tanks. Then various models of Leopard 2 tanks were also issued.

While this strengthened Kiev's will to fight, it also placed a huge burden on Ukraine. This burden stems from the problems arising in many areas from training to logistics due to the diversity. For example, the Challenger 2's rifled cannon requires 120 mm shells. The smoothbore gun of the Abrams and Leopard 2 requires a different 120 mm projectile. In addition, there are weapons that use 125 mm and (as in the Leopard 1s) 105 mm ammunition.

As such, replenishment becomes a major problem. The lack of standardisation also makes it impossible to standardise the use of weapons according to their impact effects. The survivability of the armoured vehicles and tanks supplied is also different. Some have lower survivability while others have higher survivability. This affects the tank crews. No one wants to be the crew of a tank that is more easily hit and less likely to survive when hit.

However, no matter how strong the survivability of tanks and armoured vehicles, this does not mean absolute protection. There is no model of tank or armoured vehicle that has not been hit in combat so far. Some are hit by tank mines, some by laser-guided anti-tank guns that hit the tank from the top, and some by FPV drones.

For this reason, tanks and armoured vehicles cannot benefit from the armour protection, mobility and impact effect for which they were built. In other words, tanks are not very useful in the offensive. As a matter of fact, when Russia, which suffered many tank and armoured vehicle casualties, went on the defensive, Ukraine carried out a counter-attack operation with Western tanks and armoured vehicles last spring. But the result was disappointing.

This situation shows that tanks and armoured vehicles, which Ukraine has insisted on since the beginning of the war, are no longer a panacea in today's battles. It is understood that old-fashioned defence measures as well as newly developed anti-tank weapons have as much to do with the uselessness of tanks and armoured vehicles.

For example, Russia has established three-tier defence lines similar to the old Soviet doctrine. In front of these lines, it dug tank trenches, built concrete tank barriers and laid minefields. Tank mines and obstacles were the cause of most of the hits on Ukrainian tanks and armoured vehicles.

Some tanks were disabled by stepping on mines. Other tanks became a more obvious target when they were organised in single file in order to pass through the passage through the minefield. They were hit by drones, UCAVs, artillery and anti-tank weapons. Even deployed Russian tanks hit some Western tanks.

For this reason, Ukraine is now buying a large number of Leopard 1 tanks from Germany to convert them into demining vehicles. Ukraine is also trying to mount large calibre weapons on some older armoured vehicles. Ukraine has a large number of BMP-1 and BMP-2 armoured vehicles and is trying to use them for this purpose.

The efforts to increase mine clearance vehicles and firepower show that Ukraine is determined to utilise offensive operations whenever possible, albeit with limited targets. However, it needs to find a solution to the problems created by the diversity of vehicles. Because when other armoured vehicles supplied from the West are taken into consideration, the supply, maintenance and training problems experienced for tanks are also experienced for armoured vehicles. All of these armoured vehicles use different calibre weapons.

The Turkish army had similar problems during the War of Independence. The inventory of the Turkish army, which used German, British, Russian, French and even Mexican-made weapons, resembled an arms museum. The problems in the fields of supply, maintenance, training, etc. caused by this situation could not be solved until the end of the Battle of Sakarya.

In order to solve this problem, a method of collecting similar weapons in the same units was tried after the Battle of Sakarya. Armies, corps and divisions took all their weapon inventories. Accordingly, the weapons were redistributed among armies, corps and divisions in such a way that each unit had one weapon model.

Ukraine must be working on similar solutions. But this is not a complete solution either. It is more advantageous to equip the army with a single model of weapon, or at least one or two models, in order to maintain its combat capability. However, it is not possible for Ukraine to achieve this with European resources. Because no country has the production capacity to do so.

In the short term, only the United States can supply the significant number of tanks and armoured vehicles that Ukraine needs to start recovering from its war losses. If this can be done, it may soon be possible to train crews to operate to their full potential and provide logistical support more easily.

However, there is no indication that the US would take on such a burden. In this situation, Ukraine is unlikely to go on the offensive again in the near future. Russia has already been on the defensive for a long time and is busy consolidating its defences. In this situation, both sides are likely to remain on the defensive in the short and medium term.

Only in some areas can the two sides carry out limited targeted offensives with small units in order to make position adjustments. That is why Ukraine is building defence lines similar to Russia's.

The bottom line is this: Western assistance is vital to sustain Ukraine's war effort, but the systems provided are not enough for Ukraine to tip the balance with counter-attacks. This is because the aid consists of both old technology and very different weapons and equipment.