Tank Terror: Just How Deadly is Russia's New Armata Tank?

Wavell Room

Security,

We have a few answers.

The unveiling of the Russian T-14 ‘Armata’ at the Moscow Victory Day Parade in 2015 has exposed the growing obsolescence of current NATO main battle tanks (MBT) and Western military planners have been ignorant of the need for post-Cold War armoured formations. The current British and American MBTs, the Challenger 2 and the M1A2 Abrams have been in service for over a decade and have seen few combat deployments other than the 2003 Iraq War. Other NATO members operating sizeable MBT forces, for example Germany, are also relevant to this debate, but the issues discussed in this article can also be applied to MBTs such as the Leopard 2 without the need for technical specifics. To effectively examine how both NATO MBTs are close to obsolescence, three keys areas must be underlined for debate; Survivability, Firepower and Mobility. All three areas are vital for an effective tank, as argued by armoured theorists and historians including Heinz Guderian, Patrick Wright and Richard Simpkin. During their first years of service, arguably both the Challenger 2 and the M1A2 excelled at these three areas, combining resilient armour, powerful armaments and capable mobility systems with few flaws. By modern standards, particularly when compared with the T-14, the once-modern systems of both NATO MBTs begin the show their age.

This article by Will Flannigan originally appeared on December 11, 2018 in the Wavell Room.