Are Main Battle Tanks Obsolete?
Armored vehicles feel like sitting ducks in modern war
There have only been two instances of warfare between two modern states in the past few years. The first was the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The second has been the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In both instances, armored vehicles fared extremely poorly.
The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted just six weeks. During that six-week period, hundreds of armored vehicles were destroyed on both sides. Armenia claimed to have struck 784 armored vehicles, either damaging or destroying them. Azerbaijan claimed to have destroyed over 100 Armenian tanks and BTRs.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been an even starker indictment of the main battle tank. According to the data being compiled and published by Oryx, Russia has lost 2,349 tanks, with 1494 being destroyed and 855 damaged.
Overall, Russia has supposedly lost 13,000+ armored vehicles either damaged, destroyed, or abandoned. A crushing number for a war that has not yet eclipsed the one-year mark.
On the other side, Ukraine has lost over 500 tanks and over 2,200 armored vehicles overall. That brings the butcher bill for armored vehicles in Ukraine to well over 15,000 in less than a year.
