Ukraine Desperately Needed Tanks. Now It Needs Planes.

By Fletcher Dean Emeritus James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO

Infantry is still the “queen of the battlefield,” but modern warfare demands both mechanized forces and air support. 

Over the past week, a number of countries have made commitments to provide advanced tanks and armored personnel carriers to the Ukrainian military. How will the Ukrainians take advantage of their windfall in armored combat power? And why is the image of tanks on European battlefields so evocative?

In the coming months, the Ukrainians will be receiving a force of what are known as main battle tanks: extremely capable, modern, well-maintained and lethal. The initial pledges include German-made Leopard 2 tanks from perhaps a dozen nations, most importantly Germany and Poland; the formidable M1-A1 Abrams from the US; and Challenger 2 tanks from the UK. The French have promised Leclerc armored personnel carriers, and the US will send Bradley fighting vehicles and high-speed armored Strykers. Other European nations, from Spain to Sweden, are promising additional armored vehicles.

As for Russia, there were reports the other day that it had just received a bunch of decades-old T-34 tanks from Laos. It turns out Russia did add such tanks to its arsenal, but the shipment arrived a few years ago. They were built in the waning days of World War II, given to Vietnam by the Soviet Union, then passed on in the 1980s, like broken toys, to the Laotians. A Russian state broadcaster described them recently: “Despite the old age of these legendary T-34s [they] still work. The guns here are also in working condition.” Hardly a glowing assessment. 

Given that hundreds of Russian frontline tanks were destroyed in the opening months of the war – most by antitank missiles and sophisticated drones provided by Ukraine’s Western supporters — Russian President Vladimir Putin is desperate for combat armor.

A look at history helps to show why. The broad plains of Central and Eastern Europe were highways for mechanized forces throughout much of the 20th century. Under Hitler, the Nazi Army used tank warfare to launch the vaunted Blitzkrieg that crushed Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in the opening rounds of World War II. German Panzer tanks were used with lethal effect across Eastern Europe (including Ukraine) against the Soviet Union as well.

Eventually, as the industrial superiority of the allies began to wear down the German war machine, it was the turn of the Allies: Patton’s mechanized forces rushing across Europe; the Red Army pushing its way to Berlin. Tanks have constituted the dominant military force across Europe in the memories of older generations. Their reappearance has rattled old ghosts, in Moscow and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Looming major tank warfare has created a sense of opportunity for the Ukrainians. And, despite their bravado over the Western commitments — NATO’s tanks “will burn like all the others,” said a Kremlin spokesman — there’s no question the Russians are very uneasy.

And they should be. The tanks provide Ukraine with three key advantages. 

First and foremost, the unity of the allied decision to provide the armored forces — albeit after a few weeks of wrangling — is a powerful signal of transatlantic solidarity. Morale is a strong and meaningful force on a battlefield. Putin banked on the allies cracking by now in the face of European gas shortages and restive publics, but these announcements give the lie to that theory.

A second element of tank capability is how they provide support to infantry. Military professionals have long talked about infantry as the “queen of the battlefield,” able to move in any direction like the queen on a chessboard. But on a modern battlefield, that maneuver can be too slow without mechanized armor. Supplied with tanks for mobile fire support, alongside the relatively high-speed armored personnel carriers and Strykers, Ukrainian forces should be able to move rapidly up and down the hundreds of miles of the battlefield line in the Donbas to stem any Russian offensive.

Finally, the tanks and armored personnel carriers can be concentrated and used to punch at the Russian front lines at a time of the Ukrainians’ choosing. With sufficient power, they could break through Russian lines and drive to the Black Sea coast. This would split the Russian forces, expose their flanks, complicate their logistics immeasurably, and isolate Russian forces in Crimea from Russia proper.

All of this comes with risks, of course. It will be challenging to quickly train the Ukrainian crews, not only in the individual operation of differing kinds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, but also in how to integrate them into a single fighting force. The logistics for the donor nations in simply getting the tanks into the hands of the Ukrainians will be challenging; the vehicles will not all appear magically in the same moment, but rather will be staggered in arrival.

Maintenance and fuel will be challenging, notably for the Abrams, with its turbine-powered jet engine and complex command-and-control suite. And using the armor in a combined-arms style of fighting — to avoid suffering in the kind of tank “killing fields” the Ukrainians created around Kyiv in the early months — will be a crucial challenge. 

One other aspect of the new armored forces is important. The arrival of the tanks immediately begs for more combat aircraft overhead, particularly Soviet-era MIG-29s and American F-16s. So far, the West has held off supplying aircraft, but that debate is going to heat up soon, despite US President Joe Biden’s comment on Monday that doing so was “not practical”: While the addition of the tanks is crucial, combat airpower may ultimately be decisive. Having spent years as supreme allied commander of NATO studying European war plans and the history of tank warfare on the continent, I can’t imagine operating that armored force without sufficient air cover.

Memories of tank warfare still haunt Europe. The arrival of Western armor in meaningful numbers should become Putin’s next nightmare.

This piece is republished from Bloomberg.