Image source: Photo: mod.gov.az, Bravery2004
The recently ended war in Nagorno-Karabakh has sparked new speculation about the end of the age of tanks. This was written about in both Russian and foreign publications.
But anyone with any interest in military history knows that tanks are buried regularly after every war, starting with the events in the middle East in 1967.
You can recall the October war in 1973 between Egypt, Syria, the Arab countries that support them, and Israel. Then, in just 18 days, the sides lost more than 2,500 armored vehicles.
During the battles of the Iran-Iraq war, hundreds of units of defeated equipment remained on the battlefield during some operations.
During the conflict in Lebanon in 1982, for example, two Syrian tank brigades South of lake karoun lost more than 200 T-62s in a short period of time, 90 of them abandoned because they lost fuel.
Image source: Photo: mod.gov.az, Bravery2004
The terrible" death " of tanks was also during the Gulf war in 1991, then during the American aggression in Iraq in 2003.
However, there is not a single model of weapons for the ground forces that could replace tanks. It doesn't occur to anyone that infantry is outdated for modern warfare, given how many combined-arms units have died this time. You can also remember the gunners or drivers of vehicles. There are also huge victims. Because of the risk of losses, the combat helicopters of Armenia and Azerbaijan were practically not used, and they also became useless?
Yes, the Armenian tank formations suffered significant losses. As already noted, the material part was long outdated, developed in the 70-80 years. But even these not young "seventy-second" quite staunchly endured all the vicissitudes of this war of the XXI century.
Image source: Photo: mod.gov.az, Bravery2004
If you evaluate the videos posted by the Azerbaijani defense Ministry, you can see that the high-precision mam-C ammunition of the Turkish Bayraktar UAVs only disabled the tanks - the crawler belts and engine and transmission compartments were affected. In other words, if the Armenian side's evacuation services were operating normally, this equipment could be returned to service. As it was, it was simply thrown to the advancing enemy.
Of course, more fatal were the defeats when the drone operators managed to get into the open crew hatches or set fire to the external fuel tanks, from which for some reason the fuel was not drained. Also, serious damage was caused by Israeli HAROP kamikaze drones weighing 135 kg, with a 15-kilogram warhead. By the way, these UAVs were intended primarily for knocking out air defense systems, but during this conflict, even to the surprise of manufacturers, they successfully changed their specialization.
The Azerbaijani side speaks well of the Israeli spike ATGM of various modifications capable of attacking the roof, but there were cases when the T-72 withstood the hits of such missiles.
An interesting detail: during this war, almost no T-72s with their turrets torn off were demonstrated.
Image source: Photo: mod.gov.az, Bravery2004
Also, those who talk about the inferiority of the " seventy-second "for some reason forget that the Azerbaijani side was also armed with them. Moreover, the samples that fought were not superior to their opponents in terms of armor protection. However, only three dozen cars were lost. This is what it means to use it correctly with good infantry support under air cover.
Of course, the results of the conflict in Karabakh will be well analyzed, and conclusions will be drawn from what happened that can affect the quality of equipment entering the Russian army.
Dmitry Lemeshko