Russia's T-90M Tank Is Just 1 Giant Design Flaw
As the Ukraine War progresses, the Russians need to realize that their much-ballyhooed T-90M doesn’t work as they intended.
Summary: Russia's ground offensive in Ukraine has relied heavily on older T-72 tanks rather than the more advanced T-90M.
-Despite the T-90M's advanced features like Explosive Reactive Armor and anti-drone capabilities, it has underperformed on the battlefield. Design flaws, such as its slow reverse speed, have hindered its effectiveness.
-In contrast, the older T-72 variants have proven more resilient and successful. The T-90M's failure to outperform older models raises questions about Russia's investment in these advanced tanks.
Russia's T-90M Tank Is No Super Weapon for Putin in Ukraine
Russia has continued to press ahead with its arduous ground offensive in Ukraine. Despite the fierce resistance they have faced, the Russians have effectively worn down the Ukrainian resistance. They’ve done so not with high-tech weapons platforms that everyone 50 years ago believed the armies of the future would be deploying.
Instead, the Russians have accomplished this gruesome goal with simple perseverance and a willingness to use cheap, mass-produced, easy-to-maintain Soviet era systems, such as the T-72 Main Battle Tank (MBT)and the T-90 MBT (and its subsequent upgrade, the T-90M).
Interestingly, it has been the oldest tank that Russia has deployed, the T-72 (and its upgraded variants), that has dominated the battlespace in Ukraine. The T-90s, meanwhile, have struggled to achieve anywhere near the level of battlefield success that the T-72s have achieved.
It’s strange because the T-90, particularly the T-90M, is a newer MBT that is more advanced than the T-72 but also cheaper and slightly less costly than the T-14 Armata MBT that Russia has been holding in reserve. For example, the T-90M has Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA) across its turret and hull. This advancement should make the T-90M more survivable in combat against NATO-supplied Javelin antitank missiles that have defined the early part of Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion.
Russia’s T-90M has an anti-drone net. This is a wild advantage give to the T-90M, considering how lethal Ukraine’s use of drones has been. What’s more, the T-90M has significant upgrades made to its offensive systems. The T-90M has been given a more powerful main gun.
This MBT’s targeting system is next-generation, too.
The Russians have designed their newer T-90Ms to be more maneuverable in combat, because so many of the previous iterations of Russian MBTs were just annihilated while pushing through the muddy battlefields in Ukraine.
The T-90M is hands down one of Russia’s most advanced tanks on the Ukrainian battlefield today. Despite this reality, the Russians have struggled to properly utilize the T-90M in combat. More importantly, the Ukrainians have smashed countless numbers of the T-90M. In fact, the T-90Ms have, according to The National Interest’s Stavros Altamazoglou, the T-90M has “failed to make any significant impact against Ukrainian forces equipped with Western anti-tank systems.”
All that time and money spent advancing the T-90 into the T-90M and the upgraded version still has not yet proved itself in combat the way that the much older T-72s have proven themselves in war.
Evoking Altamazoglou’s analysis of the T-90M again, he determined that the T-90M has serious design pitfalls, one of them being that it has an extremely slow speed while in reverse. This is an obvious problem because tanks are part of maneuver warfare.
And for one to be truly effective at maneuver warfare, one must be, well, maneuverable. The T-90M, despite all the ra-ra surrounding this land battleship, is not a terribly static system.
As the Ukraine War grounds on, the Russians need to realize that their much-ballyhooed T-90M just doesn’t work.
About the Author
Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
The main image is from Shutterstock. All others are Creative Commons.
