As of: February 18, 2024, 12:40 p.m
By: Karsten Hinzmann
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Press
Split
Russia had to cope with the loss of numerous T-80 tanks in the Ukraine war.
A T-80 was also destroyed in the battle for the village of Sulyhivka in the Kharkiv region.
(Archive image) © Lev Radin/Imago
They shoot worse, maneuver more slowly and burn faster - Russia's tank stocks are constantly being modernized.
It's the masses that do it.
Moscow – “Vladimir Putin has already ordered T-14 Armata main battle tanks, and now he is having another 3,000 T-80s completely modernized.
The only question is: What does Moscow want with so many tanks?” Eight years ago, Stern
pondered
this question at length;
the answer is now clear.
In the Ukraine war, the stocks of main battle tanks of Russia's invading army are dwindling rapidly.
And the T-80 appears to continue to be considered the workhorse of the Russian army.
That's why it's now being modernized again, as the
militarywatch
magazine reports.
During the Russian attack on Ukraine, both the Russian army and the Ukrainian armed forces used the T-80 - both opponents ultimately resorted to the stocks of the former Soviet army.
According to the statistics platform
Oryx,
as of February 2024, the Russian Armed Forces have lost at least 755 T-80s, and the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost at least 55 T-80s.
The T-80 is a main battle tank designed and manufactured at the same time as the German Leopard 2 and the American M1 Abrams.
While Western countries focused on the production of just one main battle tank, the then Soviet Union in the 1980s offered three tank models that were manufactured in parallel: the T-64, the T-72 (later the T-90) and the T- 80.
Now the classic car apparently represents the future for Vladimir Putin's ambitions in Europe.
A particularly high proportion of T-80s were in stockpile when hostilities between Russia and Ukraine flared into war in February 2022;
the high operating costs led the Kremlin to prefer the T-72 and T-90 for use due to their significantly lower cost.
The T-80 impresses with its gas turbine engine, which makes it comparable to the American Abrams, and its design-related problems, such as its exorbitant thirst.
Economic consideration: Repair vintage tanks instead of building new ones
However, these cheaper tanks lack the additional mobility and high suitability for extreme climates that the T-80 offers due to its use of a gas turbine engine.
The T-80 also works more reliably at lower temperatures.
In this respect, it has long been booming again.
The upgraded T-80BVM tanks have received improved reactive armor, which is intended to provide the crew with longer survivability.
Stern
considers the targeted modernization of classic cars to
be typical of Russian armaments and cites the costs as the reason: the old iron can be brought up to modern standards for a fraction of the cost of a new design.
However, the refurbished old models always lag behind a new design such as the T-14 Armata in terms of quality.
Russian media recently reported that the arms company Omsktransmash had handed over a new batch of T-80BVM tanks to the troops.
The upgraded T-80BVM tanks have received improved reactive armor to better protect the crew.
In addition, the tanks leave the premises of the “Omsk Transport Engineering Plant” with an additional turret protection module.
Technical improvement: T-80 turret is in a cage to protect against drones
The most striking innovation in the latest modernization of the T-80 is actually this large metal cage above the turret, which is intended to provide effective protection against drones and anti-tank missiles attacking from above.
The roof of this cage on the modernized T-80 is additionally provided with reactive armor.
This throws a metal plate at the impacting projectiles in order to deflect the projectile's effective beam.
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The rapid advance of the Russian armored units at the end of the first year of the war forced the Russian leadership to act - on the one hand, to meet the demands of the Ukrainian front, and on the other hand, to assert themselves against the forces that had been brought in from the Western armies: The depots of the Russian army was slowly running dry.
These older vehicles were then modernized with fire control systems, heavier armor, and 21st century armament, which was still insufficient given Russian losses from the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
In their latest versions, however, they are still much less modern than all Western tanks because the Russian tank doctrine is completely different: Russian tanks are less mobile in the terrain, they hit worse and they are more vulnerable - but the Russian leadership is still going away stated that even horrendous losses to individual vehicles could never endanger the victory of the tank formation.
Strategic consideration: A tank army like in Soviet times
At the three largest Russian arms companies, Uralvagonzavod, Omsktransmash and Kurganmashzavod, production has long been running smoothly again, as various media reports.
Last year alone, the Kurganmashzavod plant hired 1,000 new employees, and recently another 1,200, as
Stern
writes.
Armored personnel carriers such as the BMP-3M model are built in Kurganmashzavod, and according to Russian media, several hundred vehicles are built each year.
Main battle tanks are built by the Uralvagonzavod armaments company (in German “Ural Waggonwerk”) - T-72 models roll out from there, as well as T-80, T-90 and T-14 Armata models.
Omsktransmash no longer builds new tanks, the company recently told me, but rather modernizes and repairs older T-80 main battle tank models.
Just last March, Putin announced the production of 1,600 new tanks.
According to Bulgarian military observers, Russia is trying by hook or by crook to return to the Soviet concept of a fleet of many thousands of tanks.
“Several important conclusions can be drawn from this, such as: Due to the war with Ukraine, Russian production is currently unable to meet the needs of tanks for the Russian army,” the Bulgarians claim.
British intelligence may confirm this assumption - according to their information, Russia's industry is capable of producing at least 100 main battle tanks every month.
This will compensate for the current losses.
The Russians have managed to significantly reduce their tank losses compared to the first year of the war in 2022, according to the British on X (formerly Twitter).
Their grim conclusion, according to the
Star
, is that recent offensives have yielded only small gains for the Russians on the ground, but they can "continue this level of offensive activity into the foreseeable future."
Political mishap: Finland's accession to NATO significantly worsens Putin's situation
According to the
Global Firepower Index,
the Russian army has a total of almost 3,500 T-80 tanks in its various model versions.
The reason for the supposed rearmament or the effort to maintain the status quo could also be Finland's accession and the consequent blatant deterioration in Vladimir Putin's situation vis-à-vis NATO - the border between the two systems has now grown by 1,300 kilometers.
Various media are playing with the assumption to what extent Russia has resumed T-80 production in order to be militarily operational in the Murmansk region, north of the Arctic Circle - either to be able to ward off potential NATO aggression, or in order to to militarily re-enforce Finland's neutrality, which was perceived as an existential necessity for Russia's security.
The T-80 could make a decisive contribution to this.
Its gas turbine also starts reliably in extremely sub-zero temperatures, a characteristic that puts it ahead of the diesel units that are also partly installed in other T-80s.
The technical aspects between the tank models are ultimately rather irrelevant to success or failure, says Ralf Raths;
the historian heads the German Tank Museum in Munster.
“The different Russian tank models essentially all belong to one family and have only been further developed in specific areas.
And since both sides use the same or at least similar material, the human factor is much more important: training of the crew, leadership of the unit and morale of the entire force,” he says.
Russian officials had therefore gone way overboard in their rhetoric at the beginning of the war - at the latest when the Western powers sent their battle tanks to the front.
“These tanks will burn like all the rest,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
He was seriously mistaken about that.
The opposite is the case, Russia's tank force ended up wreck after wreck.
That's why Vladimir Putin needs all the tanks, that's the answer for de
Stern
.
With a delay of eight years.