(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Are tanks a negative asset ? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-11-14
In the recent attacks at Avdiivka, the Russian army lost hundreds of tanks and other armored vehicles. Most of these vehicles never even made it to the battlefield when they were destroyed, which makes me wonder how effective tanks are on the current battlefield.
Determining effectiveness is difficult. However, the main goal of weapons is to kill more soldiers on the other side than you lose at your side, and I think it is possible to calculate a ball-park number for the Russian tank’s effectiveness for achieving this goal.
Ukraine claims that they destroyed about 5360 tanks while OSINT has visually confirmed about 2500 of these. Because not every destroyed tank will be visually confirmed and because it is reasonable to assume that Ukraine doesn’t under-report its number, it is likely that the actual number of destroyed tanks is somewhere in the middle. Let’s say 4000.
If, out of the crew or 3, on average 2 soldiers are killed when a tank is destroyed then this results in about 8000 dead tankers on the Russian side.
It is also possible to guestimate the number of soldiers that Russian tanks killed on the Ukrainian side. A US intelligence report recently claimed that about 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers were KIA. Several report in the past have estimated that about 80% of these casualties are caused by artillery. This means that 20% or 14,000 KIA were caused by mines, infantry, bombs, drones and … tanks. Online war reports about losses on the Ukrainian side typically mention mines, infantry (meat attacks), drones and bombs but rarely tanks. It is therefore unlikely that Russian tanks killed more than 7,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian side (likely much lower).
The result is therefore that the Russians lost about 8000 tankers, while these tanks only killed 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers or less. Which means that the Russian tanks in this war have effectively been a negative asset !!
The worst part is that this is likely going to get worse, because with the massive increase of drones, it is easier to spot a tank and destroy it with precision munition (or drone itself), so even more tanks will get destroyed before they get to the front line. Since it costs millions to build a tank and it only costs tens of thousands for drones or precision munition to destroy, means that tanks have in addition to the human cost an approximately 100 : 1 disadvantage in economic cost as well.
The number are significantly better from the Ukrainian point of view, as the Russian have fewer precision weapons, the new NATO tanks that Ukraine received protect the tankers much better, and some of these NATO tanks have much better armor. However better doesn’t mean good. The economic cost of a tank per killed soldier is not very good. People who have read my other posts may know that I am a big believer in drones, and I think spending resources on building thousands of drones is much better than spending that same amount on building a single tank.
In conclusion: My recommendation to the Russians is that they should start building more tank manufacturing plants 😊
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/14/2205926/-Are-tanks-a-negative-asset?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
