War in Ukraine: Volume 5: Main Battle Tanks of Russia and Ukraine, 2014-2023 — Post-Soviet Ukrainian MBTs and Combat Experience

By Wen Jian Chung

The two largest heirs to the massive Soviet tank force that faced NATO during the Cold War – Russia and Ukraine – have been fighting one another since 2014 in what has now become the largest war in Europe since 1945.

Volume 5 of the War in Ukraine series examines the development of Soviet legacy MBTs by Ukraine in the post- Soviet era into models including the Bulat and Oplot, and the refurbishment and modernization of T-64, T-72 and T-80 models to meet the need to respond to the war ongoing since 2014. Furthermore, this volume examines the organization and training of the opposed Russian and Ukrainian MBT forces and presents a number of case studies of their employment since 2014. The volume is completed with appendices on Explosive Reactive Armor as used in its various forms in this conflict, and the various types of 125mm gun ammunition and gun-launched anti-tank guided missiles used by both sides.

This volume, extensively illustrated with full color images, is essential reading for the reader interested in post-Soviet Ukrainian MBT design, and the forces employed by both sides in the current war in Ukraine. The full history of the Russo–Ukrainian War remains to be written, but this book aims to at least give a background and a glimpse into one particular aspect of the war, as well as the role the MBT has played in the largest war of the twenty-first century so far.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helion and Company
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781804515204

Wen Jian Chung

Wen Jian Chung is a PhD student at the University of California, Irvine with a long-term interest in tank development, particularly Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian tanks.

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Text © Wen-Jian Chung 2023

Photographs © as individually credited

Colour artwork © David Bocquelet 2023

Maps drawn by and © Tom Cooper 2023

Cover image: Tankers of the 93rd ‘Kholodnyi Yar’ Mechanised Brigade seen in April 2019 during exercises.

Cover design Paul Hewitt, Battlefield Design (www.battlefield-design.co.uk)

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The author and publisher apologise for any errors or omissions in this work, and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

ISBN 978-1-804514-25-2

eISBN 978 1 804515 20 4

mobiISBN 978 1 804515 20 4

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CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

An Introductory Note

Introduction

1Ukrainian Post-Soviet Tanks

2The Opposing Forces

3In Combat

4The Future

Appendices

Bibliography

Endnotes

About The Author

Note: In order to simplify the use of this book, all names, locations and geographic designations are as provided in The Times World Atlas, or other traditionally accepted major sources of reference, as of the time of described events.

ABBREVIATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to express his greatest thanks to Vasiliy Chobitok (owner of ‘Armor.kiev.ua’), Alexey Khlopotov (a.k.a. ‘Gur Khan’, former owner of ‘Gur Khan Attacks!’), Stefan Kotsch (owner of ‘Kotsch88.de’), and Andrei Tarasenko (owner of ‘BTVT’) for their extremely valuable knowledge, discussions, resources, and information.

The author also wishes to thank ‘Haiduk’, the consultant on the Ukrainian forces for the game ‘Combat Mission: Black Sea’ on the Battlefront.com forum for pointing him to several useful Ukrainian sources, and the Ukrainian tanker known as ‘Shawshank Redemption’ on YouTube, whose videos are a valuable and rare glimpse into the Ukrainian tank force, referred to in the text as ‘SR’.

The author thanks Konstantin Popov (kpopov.ru), Lukáš Kaboň (lukaskabon.cz), and Maksim Prikhodko (techtraveling.ru) for generously allowing him to use their excellent photographs in this publication.

Finally, he also wishes to express his immense gratitude to Tom Cooper, for his encouragement and support in writing this book and getting it published, as well as to Dr. Alexander Clarke, for encouraging the author to start writing it in the first place.

AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The ‘Main AFV Directorate’ (Glavnoe bronetankovoe upravlenie, GBTU) was the primary body responsible for Soviet tank development and production. In addition to their military designations, all Soviet tanks were also assigned a numerical index by the GBTU, usually three digits (e.g. T-64A was ‘Object 434’), while the components designed for that tank would have indices that start with the tank’s index, unless they were carried over from a previous vehicle (e.g. T-64A torsion bars have index 434.51.059). Factory indices were also retained for some Ukrainian post-Soviet tank projects, although these may have been abandoned more recently as part of Ukraine’s decommunisation efforts, as there are no known factory indices for the latest Ukrainian tanks. The Ukrainian equivalent of the GBTU is the ‘Central AFV Directorate’ (Tsentralnogo bronetankovogo upravlinniya, TsBTU).

Soviet, Russian, and Ukrainian engines are rated in metric horsepower (1hp = 0.735kW). This is different to the imperial/mechanical horsepower commonly used in the US (1hp = 0.745kW).

INTRODUCTION

T-64BV of the Ukrainian 24th ‘Korol Danylo’ Mechanised Brigade looks on as a Russian vehicle explodes near Svitlodarsk, Donetsk, March 2022. (ZSU)

This book, the second in this mini-series, deals with the main battle tanks (MBTs) developed and modernised by Ukraine since independence in 1991. Ukraine inherited thousands of MBTs from the Soviet Union, as well as the vast 1km² Malyshev tank factory (Kharkovskiy zavod transportnogo mashinostroeniya imeni V. A. Malysheva, KhZTM) and the associated Kharkov Design Bureau for Machine Building (Kharkovskoe konstruktorskoe byuro po mashinostroeniyu, KhKBM). With these assets, the Ukrainian tank industry had great potential, but it was all wasted due to a combination of underfunding, political indifference, corruption, and mismanagement. In the fiercely competitive post-Cold War global arms market, the Ukrainians were unable to compete with Germany or Russia, seeing only limited success in exporting their tanks.

The experiences of the Donbas War and increased exposure to Western/NATO military thinking since 2014 has resulted in Ukrainian tank design and modernisation priorities significantly diverging from those of Russia. This has led to some interesting design choices and compromises being made, especially given Ukraine’s economic realities. For the most part, these have been neglected in English speaking media prior to 2022, where the emphasis has very much been on the Russian military and its hardware. The author hopes that this book will help encourage more interest in researching Ukrainian tank design and the Ukrainian arms industry in general.

The reader is advised to refer to Part 1 for technical information on the T-64, T-72, and T-80, the models on which the Ukrainian modernisations are based.

This book will not discuss Western-designed MBTs provided by the West to Ukraine as aid, such as the German Leopard 2 or British Challenger 2. The author feels that there are already excellent publications available in English that discuss these vehicles from other authors who are more knowledgeable on them. There is also relatively little information about the performance of these MBTs in the war, as they have only very recently been committed to combat at the time of writing (June 2023).

Part 2 will also attempt to build a picture of the state of both tank forces up to the Russian invasion in February 2022 and a rough idea on how they have performed throughout the war. The fluid nature of the ongoing Russo–Ukrainian war makes it very difficult to build a complete picture of the current state of Russia and Ukraine’s tank forces as well as their employment in combat, especially with the intense information war being waged by both sides. However, publicly available information published before and during the war by both Russian and Ukrainian sources, as well as information curated by dedicated groups such as Oryxspioenkop, can help give a decent idea. It is not the intention of this book to judge which nation has the better tank force, for such discussions are heavily context-dependent.

Appendix 1 provides a table of 125mm projectiles likely to be seen in use with either side. Appendix 2 describes the various types of explosive reactive armour (ERA) used by both sides.

1

UKRAINIAN POST-SOVIET TANKS