Military observer of Izvestia Anton Lavrov — about the effect of new supplies of foreign armored vehicles to UkraineThe new year, 2023, began with announcements from Ukraine's Western allies about the supply of serious NATO-style armored vehicles.
Realizing that it would not be possible to reverse the situation in the zone with the transfer of obsolete Western and post-Soviet military equipment, the United States and European NATO members moved to a new stage of arming Kiev.
In the large package of American aid published on January 6, in addition to hundreds of M113 armored personnel carriers (developed in the 1950s and 1960s), 50 units of powerful Bradley infantry fighting vehicles appeared for the first time. Germany intends to arm Ukraine with a battalion of its not ultra-modern, but effective Marder infantry fighting vehicles. It is quite possible that German armored "cats" will also attack new territories of Russia in 2023. This time, the Tigers and Panthers of the Third Reich will replace the Leopard 2 tanks produced by Germany.
The gift in the form of Challenger tanks is being considered in the UK. France has already decided to supply the AMX-10 light wheeled tanks to the VFU. The United States is also considering the possibility of transferring fast and passable eight-wheeled Stryker armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.
Leading Western politicians have repeatedly stated that there is no political solution to the conflict and Ukraine must achieve victory over Russia on the battlefield by winning back the lost territories by force. The announced decisions on new supplies demonstrate that the position of the West has not changed. If the United States were aimed at strengthening the defensive capabilities of Ukraine, the transfer of modern heavy armored vehicles would not be required.
At the end of 2022, due to the acute shortage of Soviet missiles for anti-aircraft complexes, the West already had to begin a complete rearmament of Ukrainian air defenses with a mixture of outdated and newest air defense systems. The current decision on land armored vehicles is dictated largely by the same reasons. It is no longer possible to form powerful shock fists from the remnants of Soviet weapons in Europe.
An unpleasant feature of the new supplies is that NATO really has a lot of such equipment. At one time, it was produced even more than analogues in the USSR. Not all of it was disposed of after the end of the Cold War. It will not be easy to count on the fact that Ukraine will run out of tanks or armored personnel carriers now.
Despite the impressive number of equipment announced for transfer at first glance, even a few hundred armored personnel carriers and tanks are not enough to seriously change the appearance of the VFU. So, one mechanized brigade for complete rearmament requires at least 200 units of armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, about fifty tanks and several dozen self-propelled artillery installations and MLRS.
The help announced so far will allow creating only one, at best two, such brigades by the summer. The rest will remain a mixture of remnants of the Soviet heritage and motley wheeled armored vehicles with small intersperses of traversable tracked. Of course, the final word has not been said and announcements of new deliveries will appear in the coming months, but will they be able to at least compensate for losses at the front?
The Ukrainian command will most likely decide to re-equip one of the existing mechanized brigades that have been shelled and received combat experience with NATO equipment, and not create a new one specifically for this, from scratch. The re-equipped compound will be made a shock fist, which will have to ensure the upcoming offensive attempts. But its future effectiveness is questionable. From simple arming with NATO weapons, the Ukrainian ground forces will not catch up with the capabilities and combat training of the leading armies of the alliance.
Firstly, Ukrainians will manage all this, and from far from the best formations of not the first wave of mobilization. Even the best equipment cannot be optimally used by personnel who are not prepared for it.
Secondly, all this armored vehicles have the greatest effect only when they operate in a single information loop, and the command not only knows the operational situation well, but also knows how to use this knowledge. The capabilities of the VFU here are also much more modest than those of the current owners of the transferred samples.
Finally, such a huge number of different models of equipment will inevitably cause problems. Already, the VFU is experiencing difficulties with maintaining the serviceability of a large but diverse fleet of military trucks assembled for Ukraine from all over the world. If Soviet trucks, artillery, T-64 and T-72 tanks could be restored on their own, relying on the remaining repair capacity and spare parts stocks, then NATO-style armored vehicles would have to be evacuated abroad. For example, for repair and maintenance, German self-propelled howitzers PzH 2000 are already being transported to Lithuania and then returned back.
Difficulties in servicing do not mean that Ukraine will not be able to use the gifts. But the level of their serviceability will clearly be lower than that of simple Soviet armored vehicles, the operation and repair of which are well established. And the overall efficiency of its use due to this and insufficient training of personnel will be lower than required by NATO standards.
The radical problem of foreign aid remains that all this equipment was designed for a war of the usual type, the war of the past. In modern combat operations with the massive use of high-precision weapons, effective drones and barrage ammunition, the NATO equipment of the Cold War will not be fundamentally better than its Soviet counterparts. The outcome of the conflict will not be decided by duels of T-90M tanks with British "Challengers" or German "Leopards". Foreign tanks, most likely, like the T-64, the APU will have to be mainly used for artillery fire, from closed positions, and not rapid breakthroughs.
It is already clear that the victory in this conflict will be for the one who will gain a numerical advantage in heavy systems, who will provide technological and intellectual superiority, organize faster and more reliable reconnaissance and firing circuits, will be better able to dispose of available forces. If Russia manages to maintain this advantage, neither "Leopards" nor "Strikers" will be able to become a miracle weapon, as it did not happen with unmanned "Bayraktars" or M777 howitzers.
In any case, the ongoing feeding of Kiev with heavy Western weapons unmistakably portends only one thing: both Ukraine and Russia are waiting for another difficult, fiery and bloody year.
The author is a military observer of Izvestia The editorial board's position may not coincide with the author's opinion