Writing in Forbes, David Axe has a tremendous report concerning Russia’s mobilization of its T-55 tanks, a weapons platform that saw its technological peak in the 1950s.
Axe writes:
Desperate to make good some of the 1,900 or so tanks it has lost in 13 months of hard fighting in Ukraine, and struggling to build new tanks, the Kremlin has begun pulling out of storage 70-year-old T-55 tanks that the Soviet army retired back in the 1980s.
Observers were aghast. The T-55 was obsolete decades ago. In a direct clash with better-equipped Ukrainian forces, the life-expectancy of a T-55’s four crew might be . . . minutes? And Russian leaders know it. One Russian expert told Volya Media the tanks are “expendable.”
A readers with a better memory than mine may recall that Ukraine also lays claim to some T-55s. Those tanks, however, are a good deal more modern than Russia’s — thanks in part to Israeli engineers.
The T-55s that Ukraine got from Slovenia last fall are heavily-upgraded M-55S models. They have modern stabilized guns firing modern ammunition plus effective fire-controls and sights, as well as enhancements to their armor and engines.
. . .
The Slovenian government paid Israeli firm Elbit reportedly tens of millions of dollars to take apart 30 T-55s and rebuild them with better subsystems. Partnering with Slovenian firms for much of the labor, Elbit added to the T-55s a British-designed, stabilized L7 105-millimeter rifled gun—a gun the Brits designed specifically for knocking out . . . T-55s.
International trade has many advantages — including, it would seem, the modernization of tank armament.
For what purpose the Russians will end up using their superannuated T-55s is a matter of some debate, as Thomas Newdick and Tyler Rogoway mention over at the Drive‘s War Zone:
Another possibility, raised by the Ukrainian Military Center, is that the T-54/55s will be refurbished and delivered to Syria, where the type remains in widespread use including in that country’s civil war. It’s even possible that the tanks might be provided to Syria in exchange for more modern military equipment that Russia could use in the war in Ukraine. For example, the S-300 air defense system deployed by Russia to Syria, in 2018, appears to have been shipped back to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Tanks are on the move. Where they end up is for the unfortunates within them and before them to find out.