The post After Losing 1,000 Tanks, Ukraine Is Rethinking How It Uses Them appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

A Ukrainian Leopard 2A4 crosses a river in Donetsk Oblast in 2024. Ukrainian defense ministry photo The Ukrainian National Guard’s best brigades are getting some of Ukraine’s best tanks. Last week, Gen. Oleksandr Pivnenko—commander of the roughly 100,000-strong paramilitary force—announced some of his brigades had received German-made Leopard 1A5 and Leopard 2A4 tanks. The four-person tanks “have already proven their effectiveness in combat conditions,” Pivnenko wrote. “They combine high mobility, firepower and reliability, which are critical on the modern battlefield.” The 42-ton Leopard 1A5 packs a 105-millimeter main gun; the 61-ton Leopard 2A4’s gun is bigger at 120 millimeters. Both tanks have four crew, but the heavier Leopard 2A4 offers its crew much more protection. It’s unclear which National Guard units will get the German tanks, but it’s likely the 12 so-called “offensive guard” brigades, each with at least 2,000 troopers, are first in line. The offensive guard brigades are, like all Ukrainian guard brigades, made up of border guards, federal police and other internal security forces. But they’re trained and equipped to the same standards as the Ukrainian army, air assault forces and marine corps. The guard brigades’ armor upgrade does not represent an expansion of the overall Ukrainian armor corps, however. Instead, it’s part of a total rewriting of Ukrainian tank doctrine for the drone era. After losing more than 1,000 tanks, many of them to Russian drones, Ukrainian leaders have accepted that the heavy, powerfully armed fighting vehicles need to operate differently if they’re going to survive on a battlefield where tiny drones are everywhere all the time. Tank crews should operate extremely carefully—hiding most of the time in barns, garages or dugouts and rolling out only occasionally to fire a few shells before scurrying back under cover. It’s a new “era of the cautious tank,” David…

---

Filed under: News - @ May 13, 2025 11:24 pm