They still had 18 left?
They didn’t specify if the tanks were in a working condition before.
Artillery > Obsolete Tanks (especially turtle “tanks”) & Obsolete Doctrine
This was true long before drones. Drones make first contact with Ukraine far more deadly for russians and artillery makes contact never stop until the russians die or run.
Think of it this way, russia has been bullshitting having real boxing gloves for decades and they haven’t actually been training either and now they have no way to stop the Jab of drones knocking them off balance long enough for the Uppercut of artillery to end the story.
Tanks are not obsolete however, rather russian armored maneuver doctrine and vehicle design are obsolete.
And the Russian way of tanks killing their crews when hit isn’t making easy for them to have experienced people.
“Western” tanks prioritise crew survival a lot more
On that note I bet you can’t guess what the hardest part to replace in an effective Main Battle Tank is!
Hint -> it is not the transmission.
Indulge me in an oversimplification. If tanks get destroyed by 200$ drones and those tanks have no way of hiding from those said drones even with anti drone cages, they are essentially useless. But I won’t argue much since this is just being an armchair general.
You cannot simplify combined arms military practice and theory this way, as is the current popular “common sense” is to answer everything “but what about cheap drones!?”.
edit ok fine here you go lol
Suffice to say nobody who actually knows what they are talking about and understands armor, on either side of the Ukrainian War, thinks like this.
Riddle me this, if cheap “$200” drones make Main Battle Tanks obsolete than why is Ukraine still keen on buying a large amount of Javelin anti-tank missiles which cost an order of magnitude more money than a fpv drone with a mortar round strapped to it?
longer explanation TL;DR Abrams with a Perch system.
What people miss about the use of FPV drones is that they require a high amount of infantry expertise for them to be deployed in the right spot with the right information and the right tactics at the right time, FPV drones are undoubtedly brutally effective and Ukraine has genuinely changed warfare forever but the difficulties that face getting the FPV drone to the fight are the same ones that infantry have faced forever even if they can be launched fairly deep back from the frontline… infantry can still be killed far back from the frontline so the point stands.
Now consider what the best platform to control drones from in a frontal assault at the most absolutely brutal part of the frontline would be? Well you would want a lot of body armor right? Hmmm… that would get heavy so it has to be a machine, maybe an atv!!! but wait no matter how agile an atv is it isn’t as agile as an FPV drone is… so it has to have armor but that armor gets heavy really fast and lights on fire anyways when a devastating attack happens… so hmm. maybe make it a heavy frame with big massive tires and ground clearance to deter mineblasts as well as thick armor all around to deter shaped explosives being dropped by drones… so then we have an MRAP which is very useful but the fundamental problem with an MRAP is that it has a MASSIVE profile which makes them incredible targets for direct fire munitions such as tanks, autocannons on IFVs, attack helicopters, or most crucially sophisticated anti-tank rockets like Javelins… so what do you do? You go even heavier with the armor and then you need tracks because of the weight but to compensate you widen and lengthen the frame of the armored vehicle to make it lower slung to the ground like a sports car and you simplify ALL the moving parts down to a main body and main cannon…
… and where do we end up again???
That is why it is called “Combined Arms” Warfare, we aren’t talking about 1+1=2 algebra here we are talking about linear algebra with matrices and complex interdependencies, synergies and vulnerabilities…
https://www.gdls.com/perch2025/
PERCH is a modular kit that integrates AV’s Switchblade 300 and Switchblade 600 loitering munitions into M1A2 Abrams SEPv3 main battle tanks and Stryker infantry carrier vehicles for beyond-line-of-sight surveillance and lethality. PERCH does not require welding nor cutting for mounting; instead, it replaces the Abrams’ loader sponson box and is bolted into place using existing attachment points. Future iterations will operate on existing vehicle computer systems.
