For The First Time Since 2022, Ukraine May Have The Tank Advantage

For the first time in Russia’s 35-month wider war on Ukraine, the Ukrainians may have a tank advantage over the Russians. But only only along certain stretches of the 800-mile front line.

“Our tanks can only operate from covered positions,” one Russian blogger complained in a long missive translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated.

Reduced to firing from camouflaged positions miles behind the front line, Russian tanks are essentially inaccurate howitzers—and not the assault-leading combat vehicles their designers intended.

By contrast, Ukrainian tanks operate “more freely,” the blogger claimed.

It all comes down to drones, as is often the case in a war that is increasingly dominated by robotic systems of all types. “The enemy has achieved sufficient scale and variety in its drones and has honed its tactics for their use,” the blogger explained.

Anywhere along the front line where the Ukrainians have managed to deploy two company-sized drone groups, each with a few dozen operators, Russian tanks “simply don’t reach the line for launching an attack,” according to the blogger. They get droned miles behind the line of contact.

Ukrainian tanks enjoy safer air space, the blogger claimed. “Our drone operations are much weaker” owing to intensive Ukrainian radio jamming and poor quality control in drone manufacturing overseen by corrupt Kremlin bureaucrats.

So Ukrainian tanks can roll right up to the line of contact to directly engage Russian forces with their cannons and machine guns. The Russians’ only salvation is their abundant stocks of shoulder-fired anti-tank guided missiles, the blogger wrote.

The Ukrainians’ purported tank advantage as the wider war grinds toward its fourth year represents a reversal since 2022. Back then, Ukrainian brigades “rarely used direct fire with tanks” owing to Russia’s huge advantage in artillery and air power. Tiny drones and drone jammers hadn’t yet transformed the battlefield and tilted the tank advantage toward Ukraine.

The exception to this alleged new dynamic is in Kursk Oblast in western Russia, where a strong Ukrainian force is fighting to retain control of 250 square miles of Russian soil it seized back in August. The Kremlin has supplied its regiments and brigades in Kursk with the best fiber-optic drones, which are controlling via signals traveling through thin cables—and can’t be jammed by traditional means.

The Russians’ fiber-optic drones helped blunt a Ukrainian attack along the northern edge of the Kursk salient on Jan. 5. Evidence abounds of the new jam-proof drones striking Ukrainian tanks, including the best American-made M-1 Abrams and German-made Leopard 2s.

But the Kremlin only supplies the new drones to “priority sectors” including Kursk, the blogger explained. That leaves units in other sectors to make do with drones that often don’t work—and when they do work, are promptly grounded by Ukrainian jamming.

The Ukrainians’ drone advantage has become a tank advantage as the war has ground on. Russian anti-tank missiles blunt this advantage, but the main reason the Ukrainians can’t leverage their armored edge to roll back recent Russian gains may be a persistent shortage of infantry.

“While they may lack the infantry to hold large areas … they remain a formidable opponent,” the blogger warned.