Russia has one of the strongest militaries in the world, with an abundance of combat vehicles, including of course tanks. Russia has about 12,000 tanks, almost twice that of the United States. No wonder so many tanks were used to invade Ukraine.
Now, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine entered its 7th week, quite a lot of Russian tanks were victims of Ukrainian missiles. On social media, Russian tanks were either destroyed or damaged.
As quoted from Yahoo News, Friday (8/4/2022) the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine claimed hundreds of Russian tanks were damaged. Moreover, Ukraine is assisted by advanced tank destroying missiles such as the Javelin from the United States and the Next Generation Antitank Weapon from the UK.
According to data from the Oryx organization, Russia has lost a total of 450 tanks, of which 221 units were destroyed, 6 damaged, 41 abandoned and 182 captured by the Ukrainian army. With the help of new weapons such as the American Switchblade suicide drone, Russian tanks can be damaged even more.
This raises the question, are tanks generally useless on the battlefield? "The tank is too expensive and easily damaged by missiles or drones," said Russian military expert Anders Aslund.
However, other experts still consider tanks useful to support a military operation. Moreover, the Ukrainians themselves asked for the assistance of the combat vehicle against Russia.
"The evidence (tanks are still useful) is that Ukraine itself is currently asking for more combat vehicles. They would love to have support from the US and the west with more tanks and combat vehicles," said Scott Boston, defense analyst at the RAND Corporation.
Why did the Russian tanks fail, according to Boston, because Russia was in an attacking position and Ukraine was defending, so Ukraine could target it more. Ukraine could also destroy Russian logistics so that Russian tanks could hardly refuel on the front lines.
"We are not yet in the last generation of tanks. There should be infantry protecting the tanks. Without it, the tanks are as useless as the rest," he added.
Russia's tactics in operating tanks have been criticized for their lack of support. "Russia's bad tactics are bad advertising for tanks. There is no artillery, infantry and air support. This shouldn't happen in an era of multi-domain operations," said former British soldier Nicholas Drummond.
Perhaps the Russians initially underestimated the lack of a meaningful Ukrainian attack on their tanks. So far, however, that prediction has turned out to be wrong.