For decades, Russian tanks were the height of land weapons. Tales of steel columns thundering across Europe or incinerating the Middle Eastern deserts created a picture of irresistible might. But in modern wars, from Syria to Ukraine, that legend has been severely dented. The very vehicles once considered to be the symbol of power—particularly the T-72 and its numerous variations—are today spoken of as some of the most heavily damaged tanks in recent conflict.
The T-72 was a Cold War product, designed to fight a type of war that never really materialized. It was not intended to be a general-purpose do-it-all like so much Western design. Rather, it was designed to rush headlong forward, break holes in the enemy front, and make way for the rest. To make it cheap and easy to mass-produce, it employed an automatic loader that reduced its crew to three men and maintained its silhouette as low as possible. While this made it effective in certain aspects, it left major flaws that would become apparent during actual combat.
Most of those who fought alongside the tank continue to extol its simplicity and brute effectiveness as being fast, tough, and inexpensive to manufacture. That approach was taken into more recent Russian tanks, which retained much of the T-72’s genetic code. Over time, the years added incrementally better armor and firepower, but the basic design never really adapted to keep up with the needs of current high-tech battlefields. What was theoretically effective decades ago was expensive in reality.
The conflicts of recent years have taken a particularly heavy toll on this family of vehicles. Russia has lost thousands of T-72s, T-80s, and even T-90s in more than a year of war in Ukraine. Most of those losses were to defenders equipped with outdated hardware, assisted by state-of-the-art Western weaponry. Photos and videos of destroyed tanks, frequently charred and ruptured open, became a dark hallmark of the conflict.
Syria had the same tale. The Syrian army lost almost a thousand T-72s in under a decade, frequently to lightly equipped fighters with little better than DIY weapons or handheld missiles. In comparison, Western armor, such as the Abrams, even in hostile terrain, lost many fewer over much longer periods of time. Even Russian sources conceded just how disastrous those defeats were.
Maybe the most glaring vulnerability is the way that these tanks carry their ammunition. In the T-72, rounds are held directly below the crew within a carousel-type loader. When a round penetrates the armor, the full supply of ammunition will ignite on the spot, usually toppling the turret off in the now-famous “jack-in-the-box” effect. Western tanks like the Abrams and Leopard employ safer ammo storage systems with armored boxes and blowout panels, which are constructed in such a way that if the rounds cook off, the crew will survive. For most Russian tankers, that margin between life and death has proved to be the difference.
But tanks are not simply about steel and gunpowder—about men inside. A well-coordinated and well-trained crew can make an average tank a killer vehicle, and an inexperienced crew can lose even a superior machine. Russian crews have repeatedly grappled with minimal training, poor leadership, and low morale.
In a much-cited case in Ukraine, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle destroyed Russia’s top-of-the-line T-90M by shooting out its rear armor. The Russian crew escaped from the tank in haste, which was subsequently destroyed by a drone. Experts opine that numerous Russia’s most experienced crews were killed early on in the conflict, leaving replacements to fight with minimal training for the ferocity of contemporary combat.
Western armor has met with varied results. Vehicles such as the Leopard and Abrams are heavier, more expensive, and contain better optics, armor, and survivability systems. Even non-Mang-style main battle tanks, such as the Bradley, have accumulated multiple defeats of Russian armor when crewed by experienced operators with current ammunition and targeting systems.
The bigger lesson is obvious: the failure of Russian tank forces cannot be attributed to aging designs alone. It is a result of outdated thinking, inadequate crew training, and a battlefield revolutionized by drones, precision missiles, and smart munitions. Numbers alone do not confer victory. Survivability, flexibility, and the ability of the crew to function under fire are far more important than production numbers.
The T-72 was designed for wars of the past. In today’s wars, its shortcomings have been revealed in the worst manner possible. Modern battlefields reward flexibility, armor, and professionalism—and the fate of Russian tanks in recent wars illustrates how far behind they were.
