The rise of drones has prompted armies to change tactics and add defenses to the powerful armored vehicles
By Alistair MacDonald, Gordon Lubold and Ievgeniia Sivorka
September 13, 2024
The Wall Street Journal
POKROVSK, Ukraine—Even as tanks help Ukraine push into Russia, armies are rethinking how the powerful vehicles are made and deployed after a recent history of being humbled in combat.
Tanks were once the king of the battlefield. But the proliferation of drones in Ukraine means the large, noisy vehicles can be spotted and targeted within minutes. That has seen dozens of cutting-edge Western tanks used only sparingly in the battle they were meant to shape, while others have been damaged, destroyed or captured.
In response, armies are adding technology to tanks to spot and protect against drones while also exploring design changes to make the heavy, armored vehicles more maneuverable. Battlefield tactics are already changing and lessons from Ukraine are being integrated into training. “In the near term, we absolutely need to urgently make some adjustments to maintain the survivability of our armored formations,” said Gen. James Rainey, who heads the U.S. Army Futures Command, which looks at ways to equip and transform the army.
The rethink is another sign of how drones are reshaping warfare. Adapting tanks for the drone age is vitally important if Western armies, some of which have placed the vehicles at the heart of their land strategy for decades, are to maintain their edge in conventional warfare. Tanks have adapted to new adversaries before, including planes and antitank missiles.
In recent weeks, tanks have helped Ukrainian forces sweep through Russia’s Kursk region, an area where a pivotal World War II battle took place in 1943. Ukraine’s use of tanks shows how a military vehicle that the British army first rolled out in 1916 still has a role in fast-paced maneuvers, though in this case Kyiv’s forces were met by lightly armed conscripts with little drone cover. For much of the war, Ukrainian forces equipped with the best Western tanks saw them incapacitated within hours.
When crew members from Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade were told last year that they would receive an Abrams tank, they hoped the American machine would allow them to finally puncture Russian lines.
During an early summer visit, their tank sat idle with four other Abrams tanks in a field miles from the front line. Of the 31 Abrams tanks the U.S. has sent Ukraine, six have been destroyed, according to Oryx, an independent team of analysts that tracks losses. Others are now used only sparingly. At $10 million each, tanks like the Abrams aren’t easy to replace. Abrams tanks have yet to be used in the Kursk region.
Among other Western tanks sent to Ukraine, 12 of the 18 newer model German-made Leopards have been destroyed or damaged, according to Oryx. Russia has also suffered heavy tank losses, analysts say. “As soon as you hit the road a drone sees you and then you’re hit with artillery, mines, antitank missiles, drones, guided air bombs,” said the Ukrainian driver of one Abrams whose call sign is Smilik.
At the start of the war, commanders would often hide their tanks and other armored vehicles by digging trenches and camouflaging them. They would then emerge to shoot at the enemy when they came into range. “Now everything is being watched, so you can’t even dig a hole to hide,” said Lubomyr Stakhiv, a junior sergeant in another brigade. These days they stay out of the range of drones and drive into position to hit the enemy, he said.
A tank commander’s skill was once determined by their ability in tank duels and protecting infantry, but now it is about the ability to covertly fire and quickly retreat, said Anton Havrish, the commander of a tank company equipped with Leopards.
Ukrainian forces are modifying their tanks to protect against drones. Crews often build metal cages around a tank’s turret, some rising like miniature forts.
Tanks are more vulnerable to drones than other armored vehicles because of their sheer size and their large turrets, the top of which is thinly armored. A tank’s cannon also isn’t suited to shooting down drones, and the vehicles typically carry only 30 to 40 shells.
Drones represent a new threat that is cheaper than the tanks’ traditional foes, such as planes or antitank missiles. Surveillance drones can allow those older adversaries to be better directed at tank formations. “It is this combination which means they are such a big threat to the tank,” said Col. Juhana Skyttä, the commander of Finland’s Armored Brigade. The rise of drones has increased the focus of training on the need for constant movement, Skyttä said. “You cannot leave for even a moment battle tanks in the open area. Whenever movement stops, you have to be below the trees, you have to get cover,” he said.
The U.S., meanwhile, is trying to find lighter metals for its tanks as it tries to make them more maneuverable. The Abrams has a 500-gallon fuel tank and needs several gallons just to start up, making it a behemoth in the U.S. arsenal. “We have got to get the weight off them,” Rainey said.
Efforts are also under way to make tanks harder to detect, from changing how they are painted to reducing their electronic signatures, said Doug Bush, the U.S. Army’s assistant secretary for acquisitions, logistics and technology.
Sweden’s Saab says it is seeing a lot of interest in a camouflage netting it offers that wraps around all parts of a tank, making them harder to see and partly cloaking the heat emitted from the vehicles.
The U.S. and its allies are also adding new countermeasures to many of their tanks. Those include an Israeli system called Iron Fist, which shoots out small explosive munitions when it detects airborne threats.
Poland agreed to buy hundreds of South Korean K2 tanks soon after the war began. When negotiating with their maker, Hyundai Rotem, for a batch of them several months later they added new requirements, including drone-jamming equipment.
Such electronic-warfare devices, which disrupt the signals guiding drones, rendering them mostly useless, are becoming essential on tanks. “Without it, you won’t make it,” said a Ukrainian gunner of an Abrams tank whose call sign is Joker.
To be sure, many U.S. officials say there is a danger of drawing too many lessons from Ukraine. The country’s flat, treeless landscape is perfect for drones, while tanks have also been kept at bay because Russia was able to dig defenses and lay vast quantities of land mines. Moreover, if the U.S. were fighting a conflict, it would use tanks in combination with planes and air-defense systems that would offer more protection, in a way Ukraine has been unable to do, American officials say.
Large numbers of tanks being destroyed in combat is also nothing new, the Army’s Bush and others argue. Vast amounts were destroyed in World War II, while Israel lost large numbers in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
But some senior U.S. Army officers say the military is too heavily invested in tanks. The U.S. Marine Corps gave up its active-duty tanks four years ago as part of a restructuring aimed at making the organization more nimble. Other countries have already whittled back their tanks. Norway last year decided to reduce an order of Leopards and invest instead in missile-defense systems.
Despite the tank’s vulnerabilities, armies say they still have a vital role to play.
In conflicts where adversaries have armored vehicles, the U.S. will need tanks to deliver the “shock effect to penetrate and consolidate rapidly,” said Lt. Gen. Kevin Admiral, who commands the Army’s III Armored Corps in Fort Cavazos, Texas.
Last month, a platoon of Ukrainian soldiers entered a village in Russia’s Kursk region before having to retreat under fire, according to a corporal whose call sign is Perchik. That was until support arrived. “A tank came and dismantled this enemy position, and that was it,” he said.
Alistair MacDonald is a senior reporter for The Wall Street Journal in London, where he covers European defense companies and Ukraine, in particular stories related to arms supply, corruption and the war’s effects on the global food chain. Alistair also takes an interest in the intellectual and developmental disabilities community, writing about the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine on people with autism, Down syndrome and other conditions. Alistair has won several awards, including six Sabews and an OPC. He has held a variety of jobs at the Journal, including markets editor for EMEA, senior Canada correspondent, and U.K. politics and general news reporter in London. Alistair has also worked at Reuters and outlets in his native North East of England.