The Great Tank Battle! The Ukrainian Army May Finally Have a Solid Advantage Over the Russians

For the first time in Russia's 35-month war against Ukraine, the Ukrainians may have a tank advantage over the Russians. But only in certain sections of the 1,287-kilometer front line, writes David Axe for Forbes.

"Our tanks can only operate from concealed positions", complains a Russian blogger in a lengthy text translated by the Estonian analyst WarTranslated.

Limited to firing from camouflaged positions kilometers behind the front line, Russian tanks are essentially inaccurate howitzers - and not the leading assault fighting vehicles their designers envisioned.

In contrast, Ukrainian tanks operate "more freely", the blogger claims.

It all comes down to drones, as often happens in a war increasingly dominated by robotic systems of all kinds. "The enemy has achieved sufficient scale and diversity of its drones and has perfected its tactics for using them," the blogger explains.

Along the front line, where the Ukrainians have managed to deploy two company-sized groups of drones, each with several dozen operators, Russian tanks "simply do not reach the line of attack", according to the blogger. They are chased away by drones kilometers behind the line of contact.

Ukrainian tanks enjoy safer airspace, the blogger claims. "Our drone operations are much weaker" due to intensive Ukrainian radio jamming and poor quality control in drone production overseen by "corrupt Kremlin bureaucrats".

So Ukrainian tanks can move all the way to the contact line to directly attack Russian forces with their cannons and machine guns. For the Russians, their only salvation is their rich stock of anti-tank guided missiles, the blogger writes.

The Ukrainians' supposed tank advantage, as the wider war approaches its fourth year, represents a reversal since 2022. Back then, Ukrainian brigades "rarely used direct tank fire" due to Russia's overwhelming advantage in artillery and air power. Small drones and drone disruptors had not yet transformed the battlefield and tilted the tank advantage in Ukraine’s favor.

The exception to this supposed new dynamic is in the Kursk region in western Russia, where strong Ukrainian forces are struggling to maintain control of the 647 sq km of Russian territory they seized in August. The Kremlin has equipped its regiments and brigades in Kursk with the best fiber-optic drones, which are controlled by signals traveling along thin cables—and cannot be jammed by traditional means.

Russian fiber-optic drones helped blunt a Ukrainian attack on the northern edge of the Kursk Strait on Jan. 5. There is ample evidence of how the new drones, which cannot be silenced, are destroying Ukrainian tanks, including the best American M-1 Abrams and German Leopard 2s.

But the Kremlin is only delivering the new drones to “priority sectors”, including Kursk, the blogger explains. This leaves units in other sectors to make do with drones that often don’t work, and when they do, they are immediately shut down by Ukrainian interference.

As the war progressed, the advantage of Ukrainian drones became an advantage of tanks. Russian anti-tank missiles blunted this advantage, but the main reason why the Ukrainians were unable to use their armor advantage to roll back recent Russian successes may be a persistent shortage of infantry. "Although they don't have enough infantry to hold large territories, they remain a formidable opponent," the blogger warns.