I've been trying to find out about the comparative abilities of the Abrams, Challengers, Leopards and Leclercs against the T-62s & T-90s the Russian army has been fielding. I'm not a military history buff at all, so if anyone has better insight, please chime in. I expect several of you do.
From what I can see, in a battle during the Gulf War, ~30 Abrams managed to destroy 160 T-62s without losing a single tank (though they did lose a Bradley). A bunch of commentators online were pointing out that the Iraqi crew was likely to be significantly worse trained than a modern Russian one. But still, that seems like an extreme gulf (heh) between them.
The Challenger 2 also seems to hold the record for the longest-distance tank-v-tank kill.
You're correct with what you've said. What makes this difficult is that tanks rarely operate on their own but often part of combined armed forces to cover weaknesses, so just comparing tanks head to head doesn't mean a while lot outside of testing gun and armor effectiveness. While some tanks can be argued to be better then others under ideal conditions, war is rarely ideal and sometimes neither are tanks(if production and maintenance corners have been cut). Some of the issues the Iraqis apparently had was the fact they would stick to the roads(which made them much easier targets) and apparently didn't operate at night much either, though apparently also made their own tank ammo, which was of....less quality then they probably would have liked. If you ammo isn't good quality, it doesn't help you much because the shots that do connect probably don't do as much damage.
So the question is how much these less then ideal conditions apply to the Russians, in which case the best thing I can think of is looking up whatever tank battles have already occurred in Ukraine in the past year. A quick check tells me that the Russians have lost 1000+ tanks in the last year, including a fair number of T-80's and T-90's, which are supposed to be the better ones. While I can't speak for Russian production quality, I think we can safely assume at this point that Russian maintenance standards leave a lot to be desired and logistics still seem to be a major hurdle for them. It would also seem that Russia has been having issues with the "combined" part of "Combined arms" at times, and IIRC, during the push on Kyiv there were issues with Russian tanks getting picked off by ambushs because they weren't using infantry to screen them(which is like modern Battle tactics 101 right there).
And of course, there's crew experience and training to take into account. Part of the issue with losing 1000+ tanks is losing 1000+ tank crews and any training and experience they may have had. And sure, you can just stick 3 dudes into a T-72, give them weeklong course on how to drive and shoot the damn thing and call it good, but then you run the risk of, well, them not being able to use the thing effectively and it's much more likely they're also going to get killed(and the tank lost).
If this source is correct, Russia has lost half of it's T-80 fleet, which....well, it's not good. T-90's are doing a bit better, being merely decimated at a 11% confirmed loss.
The announcement this week that Germany will send tanks to Ukraine has dominated headlines. The momentousness of this decision is difficult to overstate. Germany was the European country most resistant […]
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