Russia's Last 1,000 Tanks Are 50 Years Old—But Ukraine Should Still Worry
In a war where drones rule and tanks function as glorified artillery pieces, 50-year-old steel works just fine
As Russia shifts back to mechanized warfare in Ukraine, it’s dragging practically every available tank from Cold War storage yards—including a thousand crude T-72As from the 1970s.
This is bad news for both sides of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. The 46-ton, three-person T-72As are some of the last viable tanks left in Russia’s vast network of vehicle parks, which in 2022 overflowed with 40-, 50- and 60-year-old armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and tanks.
Three years later, as the wider war grinds on and Russian losses deepen, the storage yards are emptying out.
Russian factories can’t produce enough new vehicles to make good all of the front-line losses—22,000 vehicles and other heavy equipment and counting—so engineers have reactivated thousands of old stored vehicles.
Including, increasingly, all those T-72As. Satellite imagery of Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s main tank factory in Siberia 1,600 km from Ukraine, depicted a few old T-72As lining up outside the factory as long ago as early August. Two months later, there are hundreds of T-72As outside Uralvagonzavod, or UZV.
“Something big is happening at UVZ,” observed independent analyst Jompy, whose scrutiny of commercial satellite imagery underpins our understanding of the ebb and flow of old vehicles from storage yards to front-line service with Russian regiments.
There are “literally hundreds of T-72A hulls parked outside the factory now, when there were zero a few months ago,” Jompy added. “Looks like they’re finally tackling all those stored, until-now-unused older T-72s.”
With their unstabilized 125-millimeter cannons and thin armor compared to later vehicles, the T-72As—thousands of which Uralvagonzavod built in the early 1970s—are not great tanks. But they don’t have to be, one analyst stressed.
“Tanks are tanks, considering they [the Russians] mainly use them as up-armored APCs lately,” Jompy wrote.
Read the rest at Euromaidan Press.
where did you get the idea T72A has unstabilized gun and weak armor??? T72A is 1979 version of Ural tank, and it had improved armor, laser rangefinder and stabilized gun.. export model of T72A was T72M1 which all Warshaw Pact countries were using.. T72B only difference to T72A was different armor package, that boosted the protection by about 100mm against KE from 400mm to 500mm average.. T72A is decent tank, old for today's standards, but its not inferior... and if equipped with modern firecontrol system it can be useful.. dont forget that all T72 tanks in Ukrainian service are upgraded T72M1s..
…it’s not just hardware plays role, who and how to use it is deciding who has what advantage and we all know which side that burden is on