Global Courant 2023-05-17 02:06:00
Why Russia uses old tanks as artilleryOLGA MALTSEVA – Getty Images
In late March, photos of tank-laden trains unearthed on Russian social media strongly suggested that Russia had finally started ractivating some of its thousands of old T-54B tanks in deep storage for use in combat in Ukraine, due to massive losses of more modern T-72, T-80 and T-90 main battle tanks.
The T-54 entered production in the late 1940s and carries a crew of four, unlike Russia’s modern three-person tanks.
Photos in April showed that the tanks had indeed arrived in Ukraine, without many visible upgrades such as extra bricks of explosive reactive armor.
Now, according to social media to post by Andrei Tarasenko, owner of Russian-language tank-themed website btvt.info sources in the Russian military say that T-54s are indeed deployed in combat – supposedly used not so much as tanks, but as armored artillery vehicles firing indirect shells at distant targets.
The post states that a company of T-54Bs and T-55s (usually 10 or 13 tanks in the Russian army) has been transferred to an artillery regiment operating in southern Ukraine. Despite a T-54 normally requiring a crew of four (commander, driver, gunner, loader), the post claims these T-54s were operated by a crew of three, presumably due to the limited need to move and to shoot. Reportedly, the crews were drawn from both the artillery and tank divisions—rather than just the latter—and received only a week’s training. Elsewhere he reports that artillery firing tables already exist for the T-54/55 and their 100-millimeter guns.
A photo posted later shows a T-54 hidden in a muddy wilderness area with a two-layer “cope cage” of armor over the turret, likely in hopes of protecting against attacking drones and anti-tank missiles carrying tandem charges.
Later posts from the same blog indicate that this is what Russia originally intended use slightly less obsolete T-62M tanks in the artillery role, but that these were ultimately assigned to front-line units with an assault role.
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The technical condition of the T-62Ms – which have been modernized with reinforced BDD-laminated BDD armor on the forward turret and mostly shipped to the Kherson region – has been described as being at “bottom level”.
Tarasenko writes that many T-62Ms were abandoned during a personnel change and eventually abandoned when Russia withdrew from the west bank of the Dnieper River in November 2022, resulting in their capture by Ukrainian forces.
Russia’s confirmed loss of at least 2,000 tanks destroyed, abandoned or captured had already clearly forced Moscow to tap into more and more rusty reserves as it began reactivating T-62s in the summer of 2022. Procession on Victory Day in Moscow – mostly a tank-stravaganza – had only one tank, a World War II T-34/85 tank.
The lone tank at the Victory Day parade in Moscow in 2023: a T-34/85 tank most used at the end of World War II.VCG-Getty Images
Tank as artillery: good or bad idea?
The repurposing of tanks to serve as indirect-fire ersatz artillery, firing shells over longer distances, has a long history. And Russia now no doubt wants to deploy more artillery in Ukraine and make more shells usable for artillery missions, even though large-scale indirect fire is not an ideal use of a tank’s main gun.
That’s because tank guns are designed to fire shells at very high velocities to maximize armor down penetration and accuracy – a method that puts more stress on the gun barrel. This means that the barrel usually needs to be replaced after several hundred shots, otherwise you risk bursting.
Specially designed howitzers and field guns, however, do not require as much armor penetration speed and are built for much longer barrel life. So tanks dedicated to artillery missions will wear through their valuable gun barrels much faster than purpose built howitzers.
That said, the T-54’s 100-millimeter D10T gun (introduced in World War II on the turretless Su-100 tank destroyer) isn’t as valuable as the modern 125-millimeter 2A46 tank guns mounted on modern Russian tanks are used. And the supply of 100 millimeter shells compatible with the D-10T is probably not as extensively tapped as standard Russian 122 and 152 millimeter artillery shells. So the supply of 100-millimeter high-explosive shells – while less effective – may at least be easy to obtain.
It’s also worth noting that both Russian and Ukrainian tankers have, in videos, occasionally performed unusually accurate indirect fire attacks on individual enemy vehicles by using drone spotters to correct their fire. However, such tactics seem to be implemented only through improvisation in the field, especially as there is a voracious demand for drones in both armies.
Despite being supposedly used as artillery, it seems likely that at some point the Russian T-54s will be called upon to provide direct fire support – perhaps to help Russian units in a particularly bad entrapment, or for defensive use as a moving pillbox .
Tanks – even those as old as T-54s – do affect battlefield morale, especially for dismounted troops. In an interview filmed by the New York Times, a Ukrainian medic described:
“It’s scary when a tank shoots at you. If it’s a mortar fire, you can hear where it’s going, where it’s going to land. If it’s a tank, you can hear it firing, and the grenade lands immediately. You can’t say where it will land. It happens in a split second. There’s a bang and it lands before you even hear it.”
While T-54s provide some basic firepower and armor, their 1950s designs will still be very vulnerable to modern anti-tank weapons. They will also be unable to penetrate the frontal armor of enemy main battle tanks, and lack the sensors and fire control to be the first to detect and accurately hit more distant enemies, especially at night. So the crew of those T-54s probably really hope they continue to serve only in an indirect fire role.
Ukraine has also started incorporating a variant of the T-55 tank, called the M-55S, into its 47th Assault Brigade. However, this is a much improved Slovenian variant, armed with capable Western 105mm guns and fire control systems.
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