CHAPTER 4 – THE MODERN MBT IN RECENT WARS
A Turkish LEOPARD 2 (German-made) main battle tank destroyed in Syria in 2020.
LEBANON AND SYRIA: NASTY SURPRISES
Recent fighting in the last few years around Lebanon and Syria brought some nasty surprises to the makers and users of modern main battle tanks reputed to be nearly invincible. One case was the destruction of a number of Turkish-operated LEOPARD 2 main battle tanks inside Syria, which fell victim to man-portable anti-tank guided missiles. The Turkish tankers, engaged in fights against Kurdish infantry, Syrian fighters and ISIS fanatics, found out to their sorrow that the way gun ammunition was stored inside their tanks made them vulnerable to a well-placed hit from a missile. That then convinced the Turkish forces to take their opponents more seriously and to become more tactically wary while moving around in the open.
In Lebanon and along its border with Israel, Hezbollah fighters armed with the latest Russian portable anti-tank missiles were able to damage or destroy a number of the mighty Israeli MERKAVA tanks, thus pouring some cold water on its reputation of invincibility. That particular lesson was a reminder that tanks operating without proper infantry support become vulnerable to close-in attacks by enemy infantry, particularly within built-up areas and densely-forested regions. It also showed that, however much you add to the armor protecting a tank, the enemy will eventually develop a way to defeat that armor.
THE IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN EXPERIENCES
While the initial phases of the 1990-91 Gulf War saw Allied tanks inflict a lopsided defeat in the field on the Iraqi Army, equipped with Soviet tanks, the fighting that followed inside Iraqi cities and the subsequent occupation of Iraq cost extra casualties to the Allies, due to the close-combat nature of urban fighting, where the Western advantage in superior long-range gunnery did not apply. The more fanatical and resolute Iraqi fighters who resisted the Allied occupation used close-in infantry ambushes, armed with RPG-7 anti-tank rocket launchers and improvised explosive devices to attack Allied vehicles. Some M1 tanks were knocked out by RPG-7s fired from building rooftops and highway overpasses which gave downward shots at the American tanks rolling down streets and avenues and thus presented them the weakest spots of those armored vehicles. In Afghanistan, the Coalition forces encountered a fanatical enemy who massively used mines and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, placed along or under roads and trails and remotely detonated. Those IEDs often contained enough explosives to be able to flip over an armored vehicle or truck and caused hundreds of Coalition casualties.
THE LATEST: TANK HOLOCAUST IN UKRAINE
Starting on 24 February, 2022, the Russians invaded Ukraine with over 170,000 soldiers and thousands of armored vehicles, including hundreds of main battle tanks. However, the Russian advance, targeting mostly Kyiv, Kharkiv and the coastal area on the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, quickly bogged down, blocking hundreds of Russian combat and service vehicles in huge road jams and thus offering juicy targets to Ukrainian soldiers, who started sniping at the immobilized columns with portable anti-tank missiles and anti-tank rocket launchers. The same thing happened when Russian armored and mechanized units started entering Ukrainian villages and city suburbs, where Ukrainian defenders skillfully used urban combat tactics to repeatedly ambush Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers (APC) with anti-tank missiles and rockets. As of early April, Russian tank losses were estimated to be over 300 main battle tanks destroyed, immobilized or captured, most of them being of the T-72 variety. This represents about a third of the Russian tank force that entered Ukraine at the start of the invasion. However, the anti-tank weapons and tactics used by the Ukrainians were not the only factors in causing such heavy Russian tank losses. Significantly contributing to these Russian losses were the general Russian tactical incompetence, lack of fighting spirit, poor leadership and poor logistical support of the Russian frontal units. On the other hand, the Ukrainians lost an estimated eighty tanks, all of them of types similar to those used by the Russian Army, representing about twelve percent of their total tank force. So, while both sides basically used the same types of tanks, the Russians lost nearly three times the proportion of tanks lost by the Ukrainians. All these facts point in turn to a crucial element that has too often been neglected or ignored by too many in past wars: the human factor. In the case of this war, that factor included, among other things, troop morale, motivation, combat leadership, training levels, tactical competence and initiative and also the quality of higher-level leadership. In all of those domains Russian forces proved grossly deficient, something aggravated by wildly inaccurate intelligence assessments by Moscow on Ukrainian readiness and resolve. The Russians were not the only ones, by far, to so misjudge the Ukrainian capacity to resist and fight: many ‘experts’ and pundits in Washington and in other capitals had estimated at the start of the Russian invasion that Kyiv would fall within two to three days. Now, at the time of writing this after 35 days of war, Kyiv is still solidly in Ukrainian hands and the Russian forces around the city are being pushed back by a series of Ukrainian counter-attacks. Also, as Russian troops initially started to surround Kyiv, Washington officially offered to President Zelensky to fly him and his government to safety in Poland. Zelensky’s reply, which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would have warmly applauded, was that ‘I don’t need a ride: I need ammunition’.
The first month of the war in Ukraine revealed the often-shoddy state and substandard performance of many pieces of Russian military equipment and weapons systems. As covered earlier on, Russian main battle tanks showed themselves prone to simply blowing up when hit by Ukrainian anti-tank missiles and rockets. Media reports and videos taken of the destroyed or abandoned Russian tanks revealed a few stunning facts, like the poor state of the reactive armor elements hooked to the sides of those tanks and the generally poor level of maintenance that was evident. Also, there are reports that a significant percentage of the Russian air-to-surface missiles fired at Ukrainian targets malfunctioned and failed to destroy their targets. As well, a large number of Russian vehicles of all kinds broke down during their advance and had to be abandoned, while Russian soldiers complained of frostbites caused by the lack of proper winter gear and about long-expired rations or plain shortages of field rations, forcing them to steal food from Ukrainian shops and houses. A possible explanation for all this could be the endemic and widespread state of corruption within the Russian government system, including within the armed forces, with budgets meant to cover maintenance, supplies and spare parts possibly plundered by officials and senior officers. If that is the case, then it would also constitute part of what I call the human factor, but concerning a level much higher than that at the frontlines.