Military historian and Cold War expert Dr David Grummitt is a Staff Tutor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the OU. Here he shares his insight into how the war in Ukraine is being fought and its comparisons to the Cold War – the ‘conflict’ that never took place on the battlefield.
Military historian Dr David Grummitt
One of the many astounding aspects of the war in Ukraine is the extraordinary number of Russian main battle tanks taken out of action – some 1,600 according to the latest estimates.
David says those tank losses have been established by military analysts using open-source, visual evidence to identify Russian and Ukrainian military equipment destroyed, damaged, captured or abandoned since the February 2022 invasion.
His comparison to other wars is shocking: “In the first Gulf War no M1 Abrams tanks were lost to enemy action (although seven were destroyed by friendly fire) and there were only a handful of Abrams damaged by enemy action in the battle for Baghdad in 2003.
“There has never been a British-made Challenger 2 tank, or a Leopard 2 knocked out in battle – some have been disabled with mines in Afghanistan, but none have been destroyed by enemy tanks or missiles. Yet, the Russians have lost a third of their tank force already.”
Russian tanks poorly deployed
So why did Russia lose their tanks so quickly? “All modern militaries use tanks and the principles of armoured warfare haven’t fundamentally changed in 40 years,” says David.
Both sides are currently using the same tanks; even the latest Russian T-90M is a remodelled T-72 tank that was designed in the 1960s and 1970s for the Cold War. According to David, the irony is those tanks were never used in that conflict.
He says: “No piece of equipment wins wars by itself. The Russian tanks in Ukraine have often been sitting ducks because they were poorly deployed and had poorly trained crews. That’s the bottom line.”
And he describes Soviet-era tanks as being a poor design. They store their ammunition within the tank, as opposed to outside the tank, as modern NATO tanks do. A direct hit on the turret can often be catastrophic.
Another issue is this: “You should always have your tanks supported by infantry, which is essentially the battle tactics of both World Wars. Success in armoured warfare is all about combined arms and effective air cover. But neither side has effective air power at the moment.”
Vital importance of long-range artillery
One factor that has made the difference is the Ukrainians’ use of long-range artillery, which took out so many Russian tanks. Having trained with NATO since 2014, the Ukrainians used NATO’s tactics to full advantage, says David: “As soon as they would see the flash from a Russian gun tube, it was located within seconds and targeted.”
Unfortunately for the Russian military, David says they just “can’t seem to do” counterbattery fire. In fact, he goes further “the Russians seem totally incompetent in terms of the basics of modern combined arms warfare”.
He says: “What must be surprising to NATO is just how poorly the Russians have performed. I don’t think anyone really appreciated the level of corruption and incompetence within the Russian military.”
Even Putin may not have had a handle on the reality of his military’s true capability: “Nobody starts a war that they don’t think they can win. Putin must have had no idea just how incompetent his generals and his troops were,” says David.
“His entire war aim appears to be to keep himself in power, which means prolonging the war. Not losing, not winning but feeding hundreds of thousands of Russians into it.”
Current human-cost estimates to Russia
The current human cost to Russia may be as high as 188,000 soldiers, says David. “Which is an enormous number, some three times the number that America lost in the entire Vietnam War. To put that further into perspective, the UK lost 179 service personnel in the Iraq War between 2003 and 2009.”
David says providing Ukraine with new more sophisticated tanks such as the Leopard 2 and Challenger 2, may not be the most practical solution since it will take longer for their soldiers to train to use them. Another issue is they use different ammunition to the tanks Ukraine currently has.
And let’s just focus on ammunition in general: “Ammunition consumption is one of the biggest differences between war now and, say World War Two. The landscape is completely pockmarked by artillery strikes and entire towns and villages are flattened,” says David.
New tanks to the battlefield
In terms of getting new tanks on the battlefield, David says there are other countries in possession of similar tanks to those used by the Ukrainians. Poland, for example, has already delivered over 200 of its older T-72s to Ukraine and plans to give them more.
In the meantime, he says it is highly unlikely that Putin would widen the war by attacking NATO countries or partnership nations, such as Moldova. “Russian forces would be decimated by NATO air power if that happened.”
David adds: “There is only one military superpower in Europe, and that’s America. Ultimately, the defence of western Europe is dependent on American military power, just as it was during the Cold War.
“Its military spending in 2021 outranked the rest of the world combined by some considerable distance and was some 12 times greater than Russia’s.
“Nobody should be under any illusion about America’s military capability and its willingness to defend its interests abroad. Putin knows that, too. That’s why his sole objective is probably to remain in power and sadly many thousands more will likely be killed before this war reaches its conclusion.”
To find out more about the military statistics in relation to tanks lost by both Russia and Ukraine in the present war visit Oryx, the military research blog.
